# Clustermatch Correlation Coefficient (CCC)
[](https://github.com/greenelab/ccc/actions/workflows/pytest.yaml)
[](https://codecov.io/gh/greenelab/ccc)
[](https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.15.496326)
[](https://greenelab.github.io/ccc-manuscript/)
## Overview
The Clustermatch Correlation Coefficient (CCC) is a highly-efficient, next-generation not-only-linear correlation coefficient that can work on numerical and categorical data types.
This repository contains the code of CCC and instructions to install and use it.
It also has all the scripts/notebooks to run the analyses for the [manuscript](https://github.com/greenelab/ccc-manuscript), where we applied CCC on gene expression data.
## Installation
CCC is available as a PyPI (Python) package (`ccc-coef`). We tested CCC in Python 3.9+, but it should work on prior 3.x versions.
You can quickly test it by creating a conda environment and then install it with `pip`:
```bash
# ipython and pandas are used in the following examples, but they are not needed for CCC to work
conda create -y -n ccc-env python=3.9 ipython pandas
conda activate ccc-env
pip install ccc-coef
```
## Usage
Run `ipython` in your terminal:
```bash
$ ipython
Python 3.10.4 (main, Mar 31 2022, 08:41:55) [GCC 7.5.0]
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 8.3.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.
In [1]:
```
When computing the correlation coefficient on a pair of features, CCC supports `numpy.array` or `pandas.Series`.
This is an example with numerical data (you can copy/paste the entire lines below including `In [...]`):
```python
In [1]: import numpy as np
In [2]: import pandas as pd
In [3]: from ccc.coef import ccc
In [4]: random_feature1 = np.random.rand(1000)
In [5]: random_feature2 = np.random.rand(1000)
In [6]: ccc(random_feature1, random_feature2)
Out[6]: 0.0018815884476534295
In [7]: random_feature1 = pd.Series(random_feature1)
In [8]: random_feature2 = pd.Series(random_feature2)
In [9]: ccc(random_feature1, random_feature2)
Out[9]: 0.0018815884476534295
```
CCC always returns a value between zero (no relationship) and one (perfect relationship).
As we show in the manuscript, the distribution of CCC values is much more skewed than other coefficients like Pearson's or Spearman's.
A comparison between these coefficients should account for that.
You can also mix numerical and categorical data:
```python
In [10]: categories = np.array(["blue", "red", "green", "yellow"])
In [11]: categorical_random_feature1 = np.random.choice(categories, size=1000)
In [12]: categorical_random_feature2 = np.random.choice(categories, size=1000)
In [13]: categorical_random_feature2[:10]
Out[13]:
array(['yellow', 'red', 'red', 'yellow', 'blue', 'blue', 'red', 'yellow',
'green', 'blue'], dtype='<U6')
In [14]: ccc(categorical_random_feature1, categorical_random_feature2)
Out[14]: 0.0009263483455638076
In [15]: ccc(random_feature1, categorical_random_feature2)
Out[15]: 0.0015123522641692117
```
The first argument of `ccc` could also be a matrix, either as a `numpy.array` (features are in rows and objects in columns) or as a `pandas.DataFrame` (objects are in rows and features in columns).
In this case, `ccc` will compute the pairwise correlation across all features:
```python
In [16]: # with a numpy.array
In [17]: data = np.random.rand(10, 1000)
In [18]: c = ccc(data)
In [19]: c.shape
Out[19]: (45,)
In [20]: c[:10]
Out[20]:
array([0.00404461, 0.00185342, 0.00248847, 0.00232761, 0.00260786,
0.00121495, 0.00227679, 0.00099051, 0.00313611, 0.00323936])
In [21]: # with a pandas.DataFrame
In [22]: data_df = pd.DataFrame(data.T)
In [23]: c = ccc(data_df)
In [24]: c.shape
Out[24]: (45,)
In [25]: c[:10]
Out[25]:
array([0.00404461, 0.00185342, 0.00248847, 0.00232761, 0.00260786,
0.00121495, 0.00227679, 0.00099051, 0.00313611, 0.00323936])
```
If your data has a mix of numerical and categorical features, it's better to work on a `pandas.DataFrame`.
As an example, we load the [Titanic dataset](https://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic/data) (from [seaborn](https://github.com/mwaskom/seaborn-data/)'s repository):
```python
In [26]: titanic_url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mwaskom/seaborn-data/master/raw/titanic.csv"
In [27]: titanic_df = pd.read_csv(titanic_url)
In [28]: titanic_df.shape
Out[28]: (891, 11)
In [29]: titanic_df.head()
Out[29]:
survived pclass name sex age sibsp parch ticket fare cabin embarked
0 0 3 Braund, Mr. Owen Harris male 22.0 1 0 A/5 21171 7.2500 NaN S
1 1 1 Cumings, Mrs. John Bradley (Florence Briggs Th... female 38.0 1 0 PC 17599 71.2833 C85 C
2 1 3 Heikkinen, Miss. Laina female 26.0 0 0 STON/O2. 3101282 7.9250 NaN S
3 1 1 Futrelle, Mrs. Jacques Heath (Lily May Peel) female 35.0 1 0 113803 53.1000 C123 S
4 0 3 Allen, Mr. William Henry male 35.0 0 0 373450 8.0500 NaN S
```
The Titanic dataset has missing values:
```python
In [30]: titanic_df.isna().sum()
Out[30]:
survived 0
pclass 0
name 0
sex 0
age 177
sibsp 0
parch 0
ticket 0
fare 0
cabin 687
embarked 2
dtype: int64
```
So we need some kind of preprocessing before moving on:
```python
In [31]: titanic_df = titanic_df.dropna(subset=["embarked"]).dropna(axis=1)
In [32]: titanic_df.shape
Out[32]: (889, 9)
```
Now we can run CCC on the dataset and get a correlation matrix across features:
```python
In [33]: ccc_corrs = ccc(titanic_df)
In [34]: from scipy.spatial.distance import squareform
In [35]: ccc_corrs = squareform(ccc_corrs)
In [36]: np.fill_diagonal(ccc_corrs, 1.0)
In [37]: ccc_corrs = pd.DataFrame(ccc_corrs, index=titanic_df.columns.tolist(), columns=titanic_df.columns.tolist())
In [38]: ccc_corrs.shape
Out[38]: (9, 9)
In [39]: with pd.option_context('display.float_format', '{:,.2f}'.format):
...: display(ccc_corrs)
survived pclass name sex sibsp parch ticket fare embarked
survived 1.00 0.12 0.00 0.32 0.04 0.05 0.00 0.07 0.05
pclass 0.12 1.00 0.00 0.04 0.02 0.01 0.00 0.33 0.01
name 0.00 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
sex 0.32 0.04 0.00 1.00 0.08 0.11 0.00 0.04 0.04
sibsp 0.04 0.02 0.00 0.08 1.00 0.29 0.00 0.23 0.00
parch 0.05 0.01 0.00 0.11 0.29 1.00 0.00 0.14 0.00
ticket 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 0.02 0.00
fare 0.07 0.33 0.00 0.04 0.23 0.14 0.02 1.00 0.03
embarked 0.05 0.01 0.00 0.04 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.03 1.00
```
The `ccc` function also has a `n_jobs` parameter that allows to control the number of CPU cores used.
Below we compute the pairwise correlation between 20 features across 1000 objects:
```python
In [40]: data = np.random.rand(20, 1000)
In [41]: %timeit ccc(data, n_jobs=1)
1.32 s ± 45.8 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)
In [42]: %timeit ccc(data, n_jobs=2)
771 ms ± 11 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)
```
## Reproducible research
Below we provide the steps to reproduce all the analyses in the CCC manuscript.
### Setup
To prepare the environment to run the analyses in the manuscript, follow the steps in [environment](environment/).
After completing those steps, you'll have the source code in this repository, a Python environment (either using a Docker image or creating your own conda environment) and the necessary data to run the analyses.
### Running code
All the analyses are written as Jupyter notebooks and stored in the folder `nbs/`.
All notebooks are organized by directories, such as `01_preprocessing`, with file names that indicate the order in which they should be run (if they share the prefix, then it means they can be run in parallel).
You can run the analyses either using the JupyterLab server and your browser, or from the command line using [papermill](https://papermill.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).
**Using the browser.** For example, let's say you want to run the preprocessing notebooks.
If you want to use your browser, you first need to start the JupyterLab server:
```bash
bash scripts/run_nbs_server.sh
```
and then go to http://127.0.0.1:8893/ and browse to `nbs/05_preprocessing`.
Then you need to run each notebook in order.
If you use the Docker image, the steps are very similar for any command, but you need to prepend the `scripts/run_docker.sh` script.
```bash
bash scripts/run_docker.sh \
bash scripts/run_nbs_server.sh --container-mode
```
Note that the port is different: http://127.0.0.1:8888/
**Using the command-line.** You can also run the notebooks using the command-line with papermill instead of going to the browser.
Using as example the same preprocessing notebooks, you can pick one of these commands to run all the preprocessing notebooks in order:
```bash
# using your own conda environment:
# requires GNU Parallel: https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/
# To install in Ubuntu: apt install parallel
parallel \
-k \
--lb \
--halt 2 \
-j1 \
'bash nbs/run_nbs.sh {}' ::: nbs/05_preprocessing/*.ipynb
# using the Docker image:
bash scripts/run_docker.sh \
parallel \
-k \
--lb \
--halt 2 \
-j1 \
'bash nbs/run_nbs.sh {}' ::: nbs/05_preprocessing/*.ipynb
```