Normalisation is the operation of bringing indicators onto comparable scales so that they can be aggregated more fairly. To see why this is necessary, consider aggregating GDP values (billions or trillions of dollars) with percentage tertiary graduates (tens of percent). Average values here would make no sense because one is on a completely different scale to the other.

The normalisation function in COINr is imaginatively named Normalise(). It has the following main features:

As of COINr v1.0, Normalise() is a generic function with methods for different classes. This means that Normalise() can be called on coins, but also on data frames, numeric vectors and purses (time-indexed collections of coins).

Since Normalise() might be a bit over-complicated for some applications, the qNormalise() function gives a simpler interface which might be easier to use. See the Simplified normalisation section.

Coins

The Normalise() method for coins follows the familiar format: you have to specify:

x the coin
global_specs default specifications to apply to all indicators
indiv_specs individual specifications to override global_specs for specific indicators, if required
directions a data frame specifying directions - this overrides the directions in iMeta if specified
out2 whether to output an updated coin or simply a data frame

Let’s begin with a simple example. We build the example coin and normalise the raw data.

library(COINr)

# build example coin
coin <- build_example_coin(up_to = "new_coin")
#> iData checked and OK.
#> iMeta checked and OK.
#> Written data set to .$Data$Raw

# normalise the raw data set
coin <- Normalise(coin, dset = "Raw")
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised

We can compare one of the raw and un-normalised indicators side by side.

plot_scatter(coin, dsets = c("Raw", "Normalised"), iCodes = "Goods")

This plot also illustrates the linear nature of the min-max transformation.

The default normalisation uses the min-max approach, scaling indicators onto the $[0, 100]$ interval. But we can change the normalisation type and its parameters using the global_specs argument.

coin <- Normalise(coin, dset = "Raw",
                   global_specs = list(f_n = "n_zscore",
                                        f_n_para = list(c(10,2))))
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)

Again, let’s plot an example of the result:

plot_scatter(coin, dsets = c("Raw", "Normalised"), iCodes = "Goods")

Again, the z-score transformation is linear. It simply puts the resulting indicator on a different scale.

Notice the syntax of global_specs. If specified, it takes entries f_n (the name of the function to apply to each column) and f_n_para (any further arguments to f_n, not including x). Importantly, f_n_para must be specified as a list, even if it only contains one parameter.

Note that COINr has a number of normalisation functions built in, all of which are of the form n_*(), such as n_minmax(), n_borda(), etc. Type n_ in the R Studio console and press the Tab key to see a list, or else browse the COINr functions alphabetically.

Calling external functions

Since f_n points to a function name, any function can be passed to Normalise() as long as it is available in the namespace. To illustrate, consider an example where we want to categorise into discrete bins. We can use base R’s cut() function for this purpose. We simply need to specify the number of bins. We could directly call cut(), but for clarity we will create a simple wrapper function around it, then pass that function to Normalise().

# wrapper function
f_bin <- function(x, nbins){
  cut(x, breaks = nbins, labels = FALSE)
}

# pass wrapper to normalise, specify 5 bins
coin <- Normalise(coin, dset = "Raw",
                   global_specs = list(f_n = "f_bin",
                                        f_n_para = list(nbins = 5)))
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)

To illustrate the difference with the linear transformations above, we again plot the raw against normalised indicator:

plot_scatter(coin, dsets = c("Raw", "Normalised"), iCodes = "Goods")

Obviously this is not linear.

Generally, the requirements of a function to be passed to Normalise() are that its first argument should be x, a numeric vector, and it should return a numeric vector of the same length as x. It should also be able to handle NAs. Any further arguments can be passed via the f_n_para entry.

Directions

By default, the directions are taken from the coin. These will have been specified as the Direction column of iMeta when constructing a coin with new_coin(). However, you can specify different directions using the directions argument of normalise(): in this case you need to specify a data frame with two columns: iCode (with an entry for each indicator code found in the target data set) and Direction giving the direction as -1 or 1.

To show an example, we take the existing directions from the coin, modify them slightly, and then run the normalisation function again:

# get directions from coin
directions <- coin$Meta$Ind[c("iCode", "Direction")]

head(directions, 10)
#>       iCode Direction
#> 9     Goods         1
#> 10 Services         1
#> 11      FDI         1
#> 12   PRemit         1
#> 13  ForPort         1
#> 31    Renew         1
#> 32 PrimEner        -1
#> 33      CO2        -1
#> 34   MatCon        -1
#> 35   Forest        -1

We’ll change the direction of the “Goods” indicator and re-normalise:

# change Goods to -1
directions$Direction[directions$iCode == "Goods"] <- -1

# re-run (using min max default)
coin <- Normalise(coin, dset = "Raw", directions = directions)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)

Individual normalisation

Finally let’s explore how to specify different normalisation methods for different indicators. The indiv_specs argument takes a named list for each indicator, and will override the specifications in global_specs. If indiv_specs is specified, we only need to include sub-lists for indicators that differ from global_specs.

To illustrate, we can use a contrived example where we might want to apply min-max to all indicators except two. For those, we apply a rank transformation and distance to maximum approach. Note, that since the default of global_specs is min-max, we don’t need to specify that at all here.

# individual specifications:
# LPI - borda scores
# Flights - z-scores with mean 10 and sd 2
indiv_specs <- list(
  LPI = list(f_n = "n_borda"),
  Flights = list(f_n = "n_zscore",
                 f_n_para = list(m_sd = c(10, 2)))
)

# normalise
coin <- Normalise(coin, dset = "Raw", indiv_specs = indiv_specs)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)

# a quick look at the first three indicators
get_dset(coin, "Normalised")[1:4] |>
  head(10)
#>    uCode LPI   Flights      Ship
#> 1    AUS  36  9.889993  66.14497
#> 2    AUT  44  9.588735   0.00000
#> 3    BEL  45  9.711512  97.14314
#> 4    BGD   4  8.529810  45.80661
#> 5    BGR   7  8.741971  37.40495
#> 6    BRN   9  8.433044  35.38920
#> 7    CHE  42 10.563483   0.00000
#> 8    CHN  30 13.235114 100.00000
#> 9    CYP  14  8.721372  55.21211
#> 10   CZE  31  9.001961   0.00000

This example is meant to be illustrative of the functionality of Normalise(), rather than being a sensible normalisation strategy, because the indicators are now on very different ranges.

In practice, if different normalisation strategies are selected, it is a good idea to keep the indicators on similar ranges, otherwise the effects will be very unequal in the aggregation step.

Use of targets

A particular type of normalisation is “distance to target”. This normalises indicators by the distance of each value to a specified target. Targets may often have a political or business meaning, such as e.g. emissions targets or sales targets.

Targets should be input into a coin using the iMeta argument when building the coin using new_coin(). In fact, the built-in example data has targets for all indicators:

head(ASEM_iMeta[c("iCode", "Target")])
#>     iCode     Target
#> 1     LPI   4.118031
#> 2 Flights 200.332655
#> 3    Ship  20.113377
#> 4    Bord 115.900000
#> 5    Elec 104.670585
#> 6     Gas  90.060420

(Note that these targets are fabricated just for the purposes of an example)

To use distance-to-target normalisation, we call the n_dist2targ() function. Like other built in normalisation functions, this normalises a vector using a specified target. We can’t use the f_n_para entry in Normalise() here because this would only pass a single target value, whereas we need to use a different target for each indicator.

However, COINr has a special case built in so that targets from iMeta can be used automatically. Simply set global_specs = list(f_n = "n_dist2targ"), and the Normalise() function will automatically retrieve targets from iMeta$Target. If targets are not present, this will generate an error. Note that the directions of indicators are also passed to n_dist2targ() - see that function documentation for how the normalisation is performed depending on the direction specified.

Our normalisation will then look like this:

coin <- Normalise(coin, dset = "Raw", global_specs = list(f_n = "n_dist2targ"))

It is also possible to specify the cap_max parameter of n_dist2targ() as follows:

coin <- Normalise(coin, dset = "Raw", global_specs = list(f_n = "n_dist2targ", f_n_para = list(cap_max = TRUE)))

Data frames and vectors

Normalising a data frame is very similar to normalising a coin, except the input is a data frame and output is also a data frame.

mtcars_n <- Normalise(mtcars, global_specs = list(f_n = "n_dist2max"))

head(mtcars_n)
#>         mpg cyl      disp        hp      drat        wt      qsec vs am gear
#> 1 0.4510638 0.5 0.2217511 0.2049470 0.5253456 0.2830478 0.2333333  0  1  0.5
#> 2 0.4510638 0.5 0.2217511 0.2049470 0.5253456 0.3482485 0.3000000  0  1  0.5
#> 3 0.5276596 0.0 0.0920429 0.1448763 0.5023041 0.2063411 0.4892857  1  1  0.5
#> 4 0.4680851 0.5 0.4662010 0.2049470 0.1474654 0.4351828 0.5880952  1  0  0.0
#> 5 0.3531915 1.0 0.7206286 0.4346290 0.1797235 0.4927129 0.3000000  0  0  0.0
#> 6 0.3276596 0.5 0.3838863 0.1872792 0.0000000 0.4978266 0.6809524  1  0  0.0
#>        carb
#> 1 0.4285714
#> 2 0.4285714
#> 3 0.0000000
#> 4 0.0000000
#> 5 0.1428571
#> 6 0.0000000

As with coins, columns can be normalised with individual specifications using the indiv_spec argument in exactly the same way as with a coin. Note that non-numeric columns are always ignored:

Normalise(iris) |>
  head()
#>   Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
#> 1    22.222222    62.50000     6.779661    4.166667  setosa
#> 2    16.666667    41.66667     6.779661    4.166667  setosa
#> 3    11.111111    50.00000     5.084746    4.166667  setosa
#> 4     8.333333    45.83333     8.474576    4.166667  setosa
#> 5    19.444444    66.66667     6.779661    4.166667  setosa
#> 6    30.555556    79.16667    11.864407   12.500000  setosa

There is also a method for numeric vectors, although usually it is just as easy to call the underlying normalisation function directly.

# example vector
x <- runif(10)

# normalise using distance to reference (5th data point)
x_norm <- Normalise(x, f_n = "n_dist2ref", f_n_para = list(iref = 5))

# view side by side
data.frame(x, x_norm)
#>            x     x_norm
#> 1  0.1703396 0.00000000
#> 2  0.9204453 0.94629280
#> 3  0.7819251 0.77154324
#> 4  0.2229070 0.06631615
#> 5  0.9630178 1.00000000
#> 6  0.3801415 0.26467475
#> 7  0.4021895 0.29248930
#> 8  0.4669191 0.37414865
#> 9  0.1856739 0.01934490
#> 10 0.1848585 0.01831620

Purses

The purse method for normalise() is especially useful if you are working with multiple coins and panel data. This is because to make scores comparable from one time point to the next, it is usually a good idea to normalise indicators together rather than separately. For example, with the min-max method, indicators are typically normalised using the minimum and maximum over all time points of data, as opposed to having a separate max and min for each.

If indicators were normalised separately for each time point, then the highest scoring unit would get a score of 100 in time $t$ (assuming min-max between 0 and 100), but the highest scoring unit in time $t+1$ would also be assigned a score of 100. The underlying values of these two scores could be very different, but they would get

This means that the purse method for normalise() is a bit different from most other purse methods, because it doesn’t independently apply the function to each coin, but takes the coins all together. This has the following implications:

Any normalisation function can be applied globally to all coins in a purse, ensuring comparability. BUT:
If normalisation is done globally, it is no longer possible to automatically regenerate coins in the purse (i.e. using regenerate()), because the coin is no longer self-contained: it needs to know the values of the other coins in the purse. Perhaps at some point I will add a dedicated method for regenerating entire purses, but we are not there yet.

Let’s anyway illustrate with an example. We build the example purse first.

purse <- build_example_purse(quietly = TRUE)

Normalising a purse works in exactly the same way as normalising a coin, except for the global argument. By default, global = TRUE, which means that the normalisation will be applied over all time points simultaneously, with the aim of making the index comparable. Here, we will apply the default min-max approach to all coins:

purse <- Normalise(purse, dset = "Raw", global = TRUE)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)

Now let’s examine the data set of the first coin. We’ll see what the max and min of a few indicators is:

# get normalised data of first coin in purse
x1 <- get_dset(purse$coin[[1]], dset = "Normalised")

# get min and max of first four indicators (exclude uCode col)
sapply(x1[2:5], min, na.rm = TRUE)
#>     LPI Flights    Ship    Bord 
#>       0       0       0       0
sapply(x1[2:5], max, na.rm = TRUE)
#>      LPI  Flights     Ship     Bord 
#> 83.98913 88.79325 85.91861 93.62416

Here we see that the minimum values are zero, but the maximum values are not 100, because in other coins these indicators have higher values. To show that the global maximum is indeed 100, we can extract the whole normalised data set for all years and run the same check.

# get entire normalised data set for all coins in one df
x1_global <- get_dset(purse, dset = "Normalised")

# get min and max of first four indicators (exclude Time and uCode cols)
sapply(x1_global[3:6], min, na.rm = TRUE)
#>     LPI Flights    Ship    Bord 
#>       0       0       0       0
sapply(x1_global[3:6], max, na.rm = TRUE)
#>     LPI Flights    Ship    Bord 
#>     100     100     100     100

And this confirms our expectations: that the global maximum and minimum are 0 and 100 respectively.

Any type of normalisation can be performed on a purse in this “global” mode. However, keep in mind what is going on. Simply put, when global = TRUE this is what happens:

The data sets from each coin are joined together into one using the get_dset() function.
Normalisation is applied to this global data set.
The global data set is then split back into the coins.

So if you specify to normalise by e.g. rank, ranks will be calculated for all time points. Therefore, consider carefully if this fits the intended meaning.

Normalisation can also be performed independently on each coin, by setting global = FALSE.

purse <- Normalise(purse, dset = "Raw", global = FALSE)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)
#> Written data set to .$Data$Normalised
#> (overwritten existing data set)

# get normalised data of first coin in purse
x1 <- get_dset(purse$coin[[1]], dset = "Normalised")

# get min and max of first four indicators (exclude uCode col)
sapply(x1[2:5], min, na.rm = TRUE)
#>     LPI Flights    Ship    Bord 
#>       0       0       0       0
sapply(x1[2:5], max, na.rm = TRUE)
#>     LPI Flights    Ship    Bord 
#>     100     100     100     100

Now the normalised data set in each coin will have a min and max of 0 and 100 respectively, for each indicator.