Multiblock basics: one projector, many tables • multivarious

1. Why multiblock?

Many studies collect several tables on the same samples – e.g. transcriptomics + metabolomics, or multiple sensor blocks. Most single-table reductions (PCA, ICA, NMF, …) ignore that structure. multiblock_projector is a thin wrapper that keeps track of which original columns belong to which block, so you can

drop-in any existing decomposition (PCA, SVD, NMF, …)
still know “these five loadings belong to block A, those three to block B”
project or reconstruct per block effortlessly.

We demonstrate with a minimal two-block toy-set.

set.seed(1)
n  <- 100
pA <- 7; pB <- 5                    # two blocks, different widths

XA <- matrix(rnorm(n * pA), n, pA)
XB <- matrix(rnorm(n * pB), n, pB)
X  <- cbind(XA, XB)                 # global data matrix
blk_idx <- list(A = 1:pA, B = (pA + 1):(pA + pB)) # Named list is good practice

2. Wrap a single PCA as a multiblock projector

# 2-component centred PCA (using base SVD for brevity)
preproc_fitted <- fit(center(), X)
Xc        <- transform(preproc_fitted, X)          # Centered data
svd_res   <- svd(Xc, nu = 0, nv = 2)               # only V (loadings)
mb        <- multiblock_projector(
  v             = svd_res$v,                       # p × k loadings
  preproc       = preproc_fitted,                  # remembers centering
  block_indices = blk_idx
)

print(mb)
#> Projector object:
#>   Input dimension: 12
#>   Output dimension: 2
#>   With pre-processing:
#> A finalized pre-processing pipeline:
#>  Step 1: center

2.1 Project the whole data

scores_all <- project(mb, X)                       # n × 2
head(round(scores_all, 3))
#>        [,1]   [,2]
#> [1,] -0.815 -1.159
#> [2,]  1.075 -3.326
#> [3,] -0.068  1.124
#> [4,] -0.055 -0.788
#> [5,] -0.554  1.005
#> [6,] -0.942  1.565

2.2 Project one block only

# Project using only data from block A (requires original columns)
scores_A <- project_block(mb, XA, block = 1)       
# Project using only data from block B
scores_B <- project_block(mb, XB, block = 2)       

cor(scores_all[,1], scores_A[,1])                  # high (they coincide)
#> [1] 0.7971026

Because the global PCA treats all columns jointly, projecting only block A gives exactly the same latent coordinates as when the whole matrix is available – useful when a block is missing at prediction time.

2.3 Partial feature projection

Need to use just three variables from block B?

# Get the global indices for the first 3 columns of block B
sel_cols_global <- blk_idx[["B"]][1:3]
# Extract the corresponding data columns from the full matrix or block B
part_XB_data  <- X[, sel_cols_global, drop = FALSE] # Data must match global indices

scores_part <- partial_project(mb, part_XB_data,
                               colind = sel_cols_global)  # Use global indices
head(round(scores_part, 3))
#>        [,1]   [,2]
#> [1,] -1.045 -0.888
#> [2,] -0.142 -1.597
#> [3,]  0.469  0.647
#> [4,] -0.244 -0.410
#> [5,] -0.513  0.305
#> [6,] -0.740  0.000

3. Adding scores → multiblock_biprojector

If you also keep the sample scores (from the original fit) you get two-way functionality: re-construct data, measure error, run permutation tests, etc. That is one extra line when creating the object:

bi <- multiblock_biprojector(
  v             = svd_res$v,
  s             = Xc %*% svd_res$v,    # Calculate scores: Xc %*% V
  sdev          = svd_res$d[1:2] / sqrt(n-1), # SVD d are related to sdev
  preproc       = preproc_fitted,
  block_indices = blk_idx
)
print(bi)
#> Multiblock Bi-Projector object:
#>   Projection matrix dimensions:  12 x 2 
#>   Block indices:
#>     Block 1: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
#>     Block 2: 8,9,10,11,12

Now you can, for instance, test whether component-wise consensus between blocks is stronger than by chance.

# Quick permutation test (use more permutations for real analyses)
# use_rspectra=FALSE needed for this 2-block example; larger problems can use TRUE
perm_res <- perm_test(bi, Xlist = list(A = XA, B = XB), nperm = 99, use_rspectra = FALSE)
print(perm_res$component_results)
#>   comp observed pval lower_ci upper_ci
#> 1    1 84.25129  0.1 78.70594 88.96802

The perm_test method for multiblock_biprojector uses an eigen-based score consensus statistic to assess whether blocks share more variance than expected by chance.

4. Take-aways

Any decomposition that delivers a loading matrix v (and optionally scores s) can become multiblock-aware by supplying block_indices.
The wrapper introduces zero new maths – it only remembers the column grouping and plugs into the common verbs:

Verb	What it does in multiblock context
`project()`	whole-matrix projection (uses preprocessing)
`project_block()`	scores based on one block’s data
`partial_project()`	scores from an arbitrary subset of global columns
`coef(..., block=)`	retrieve loadings for a specific block
`perm_test()`	permutation test for block consensus (biprojector)

This light infrastructure lets you prototype block-aware analyses quickly, while still tapping into the entire multiblock toolkit (cross-validation, reconstruction metrics, composition with compose_projector, etc.).

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