Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Nov;22(6):665-674.
doi: 10.5351/CSAM.2015.22.6.665. Epub 2015 Nov 30.

ppcor: An R Package for a Fast Calculation to Semi-partial Correlation Coefficients

Seongho Kim  1
Affiliations

ppcor: An R Package for a Fast Calculation to Semi-partial Correlation Coefficients

Seongho Kim. Commun Stat Appl Methods. 2015 Nov.

Abstract

Lack of a general matrix formula hampers implementation of the semi-partial correlation, also known as part correlation, to the higher-order coefficient. This is because the higher-order semi-partial correlation calculation using a recursive formula requires an enormous number of recursive calculations to obtain the correlation coefficients. To resolve this difficulty, we derive a general matrix formula of the semi-partial correlation for fast computation. The semi-partial correlations are then implemented on an R package ppcor along with the partial correlation. Owing to the general matrix formulas, users can readily calculate the coefficients of both partial and semi-partial correlations without computational burden. The package ppcor further provides users with the level of the statistical significance with its test statistic.

Keywords: correlation; part correlation; partial correlation; ppcor; semi-partial correlation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Graphical illustration of partial and semi-partial correlations among the three random variables X, Y, and Z
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abdi H. Kendall rank correlation. In: Salkind NJ, editor. Encyclopedia of Measurement and Statistics. Thousand Oaks (CA): Sage; 2007. pp. 508–510.
    1. Baum ES, Rude SS. Acceptance-enhanced expressive writing prevents symptoms in participants with low initial depression. Cognitive Therapy and Research. 2013;37:35–42.
    1. Castelo R, Roverato A. A Robust Procedure for Gaussian Graphical Model Search from Microarray Data with p Larger than n. J Mach Learn Res. 2006;7:2621–2650.
    1. Drummond DA, Raval A, Wilke CO. A Single Determinant Dominates the Rate of Yeast Protein Evolution. Molecular Biology and Evolution. 2006;23:327–337. - PubMed
    1. Fang XZ, Luo L, Reveille JD, Xiong M. Discussion: Why do we test multiple traits in genetic association studies? Journal of the Korean Statistical Society. 2009;38:17–23. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources