Extract Column Design Information

Retrieves metadata associated with the columns (variables) of a multidesign or related object. This function is particularly useful for datasets where variables have associated metadata, such as feature names, measurement types, or other variable-specific information.

Usage

column_design(x, ...)

# S3 method for class 'hyperdesign'
column_design(x, block, ...)

# S3 method for class 'multidesign'
column_design(x, ...)

Arguments

x

The object containing column design information

...

Additional arguments passed to methods: * For hyperdesign objects: 'block' parameter to specify which block's column design to return

block

Optional block index to get design for a specific block

Value

The column design component of the object (typically a data frame or tibble), or a list of column designs for hyperdesign objects

Details

The function behaves differently depending on the class of the input object: * For multidesign objects: Returns the column_design data frame component * For hyperdesign objects: Returns a list of column design data frames, one for each block (or a single column design if a specific block is requested)

Column design information typically includes variable names, feature types, regions of interest, or other metadata that describes the variables rather than the observations.

See also

design for extracting observation design information, xdata for extracting the data matrix

Examples

# With a multidesign object including column metadata
X <- matrix(rnorm(20*10), 20, 10)
Y <- data.frame(condition = rep(c("A", "B"), each=10))
col_info <- data.frame(
  feature = paste0("var", 1:10),
  type = rep(c("continuous", "categorical"), 5)
)
mds <- multidesign(X, Y, col_info)
col_metadata <- column_design(mds)

# With a hyperdesign object
d1 <- multidesign(matrix(rnorm(10*5), 10, 5), 
                 data.frame(condition=rep(c("A","B"), 5)),
                 data.frame(feature=paste0("var", 1:5)))
d2 <- multidesign(matrix(rnorm(10*5), 10, 5), 
                 data.frame(condition=rep(c("A","B"), 5)),
                 data.frame(feature=paste0("var", 1:5)))
hd <- hyperdesign(list(d1, d2))
all_col_designs <- column_design(hd)
block1_col_design <- column_design(hd, block=1)