Prediction model class (learner)
Author: Klaus Kähler Holst, Benedikt Sommer
Date: 2026-01-11

# Introduction

Methods for targeted and semiparametric inference rely on fitting nuisance models to observed data when estimating the target parameter of interest. The `{targeted}` package implements the R6 reference class `learner` to harmonize common statistical and machine learning models for the usage as nuisance models across the various implemented estimators. Commonly used models are constructed as `learner` class objects through the `learner_` functions. These functions are wrappers for statistical and machine learning models that have been implemented in other R packages. This is conceptually similar to packages such as `{caret}` and `{mlr3}`. Besides implementing a large number of prediction models, these packages provide extensive functionalities for data preprocessing, model selection and diagnostics, and hyper-parameter optimization. The design of the `learner` class and accompanied functions is much leaner, as our use-cases often only require a standardized interface for estimating models and generating predictions, instead of the full predictive modelling pipeline.

This vignette uses the Mayo Clinic Primary Biliary Cholangitis data (`?survival::pbc`) to exemplify the usage of the `learner` class objects. Our interest lies in the prediction of the composite event of death or transplant before 2 years.

    data(pbc, package="survival")
    pbc <- transform(pbc, y = (time < 730) * (status > 0))

A logistic regression model with a single `age` covariate is defined and estimated via

    lr <- learner_glm(y ~ age, family = binomial())
    lr$estimate(pbc)

and predictions for the event `y = 1` (class 2 probabilities) for new data are obtained by

    lr$predict(newdata = data.frame(age = c(20, 40, 60, 80)))

             1          2          3          4
    0.02578001 0.06868011 0.17047725 0.36415988

The remainder of this vignette is structured as follows. We first provide more details about the built-in learners that wrap statistical and machine learning models from other R packages. Once the usage of the returned `learner` class objects has been introduced, we provide details to implement new learners.

# Built-in learners

The various constructors for commonly used statistical and machine learning models are listed as part of the `learner` class documentation

    ?learner # help(learner)

which contains all essential information for the usage of the `learner` class objects. With the exception of `learner_sl`, all constructors require a `formula` argument that specify the response vector and design matrix for the underlying model. This way the construction of a learner is separated from the estimation of the model, as shown in the above logistic regression example. A result of this design is the convenient specification of ensemble learners (superlearner), where individual learners operate on different subsets of features.

    lr_sl <- learner_sl(
      learners = list(
        glm1 = learner_glm(y ~ age * bili, family = "binomial"),
        glm2 = learner_glm(y ~ age, family = "binomial"),
        gam = learner_gam(y ~ s(age) + s(bili), family = "binomial")
      )
    )
    lr_sl$estimate(pbc, nfolds = 10)
    lr_sl

    ────────── learner object ──────────
    superlearner
        glm1
        glm2
        gam

    Estimate arguments: learners=<list>, nfolds=5, meta.learner=<function>, model.score=<function>
    Predict arguments:
    Formula: y ~ age * bili
    ─────────────────────────────────────
              score     weight
    glm1 0.09769340 0.43113258
    glm2 0.10782347 0.06930387
    gam  0.09809214 0.49956355

Most constructors have additional arguments that impact the resulting model fit, ranging from the specification of a link function for generalized linear models to hyper hyperparameters of machine learning models. Arguments naturally vary between the constructors and are documented for each function (e.g. `?learner_gam`). The implemented constructors only provide arguments for the most relevant parameters of the underlying fit function (`mgcv::gam` in case of `learner_gam`). As described in the documentation, the ellipsis argument (`...`) can be used to pass additional arguments to the fit function. However, in most situations this is rarely required.

It is often necessary to consider a range of models with different hyper-parameters and to facilitate this we can use the `learner_expand_grid` function

    lrs <- learner_expand_grid( learner_xgboost,
                                list(formula = Sepal.Length ~ .,
                                    eta = c(0.2, 0.5, 0.3)) )
    lrs

    $`xgboost reg:squarederror`
    ────────── learner object ──────────
    xgboost reg:squarederror

    Estimate arguments: max_depth=2, learning_rate=1, nrounds=2, subsample=1, reg_lambda=1, objective=reg:squarederror, eta=0.2
    Predict arguments:
    Formula: Sepal.Length ~ .

    $`xgboost reg:squarederror.1`
    ────────── learner object ──────────
    xgboost reg:squarederror

    Estimate arguments: max_depth=2, learning_rate=1, nrounds=2, subsample=1, reg_lambda=1, objective=reg:squarederror, eta=0.5
    Predict arguments:
    Formula: Sepal.Length ~ .

    $`xgboost reg:squarederror.2`
    ────────── learner object ──────────
    xgboost reg:squarederror

    Estimate arguments: max_depth=2, learning_rate=1, nrounds=2, subsample=1, reg_lambda=1, objective=reg:squarederror, eta=0.3
    Predict arguments:
    Formula: Sepal.Length ~ .

The list of models can then serve as inputs for `predictor_sl` or for assessing the generalization error of the model across different hyper-parameters with the `cv` method.

# Usage

The basic usage is to construct a new learner by providing the `formula` argument and the set of additional parameters that control the model fitting process and the task (binary classification in this example).

    lr_xgboost <- learner_xgboost(
      formula = y ~ age + sex + bili,
      eta = 0.3, nrounds = 5,  # hyperparameters
      objective = "binary:logistic" # learning task
    )
    lr_xgboost

    ────────── learner object ──────────
    xgboost binary:logistic

    Estimate arguments: max_depth=2, learning_rate=1, nrounds=5, subsample=1, reg_lambda=1, objective=binary:logistic, eta=0.3
    Predict arguments:
    Formula: y ~ age + sex + bili

The model is estimated via the `estimate` method

    lr_xgboost$estimate(data = pbc)

The default behavior is to assign the fitted model to the learner object, which can be accessed via

    class(lr_xgboost$fit)

    [1] "xgb.Booster"

Once the model has been fitted, predictions are generated with

    lr_xgboost$predict(head(pbc))

    [1] 0.66811311 0.10537987 0.32460621 0.10537987 0.11731242 0.03387715

where the fitted model is used inside the learner object to generate the predictions.

S3 methods are implemented for the `learner` class objects as an alternative to the R6 class syntax for fitting the model and making predictions.

    lr <- learner_glm(y ~ age, family = "binomial")
    estimate(lr, pbc)
    predict(lr, head(pbc))

             1          2          3          4          5          6
    0.16171479 0.14624529 0.25614862 0.13566571 0.06272415 0.22071201

## Update formula

The estimate and predict functions of `learner` class objects are by design immutable. Both functions can be inspected as part of the return values of the summary method

    lr_xgboost$summary()$estimate

    function (x, y, ...)
    {
        params <- list(...)
        par1 <- intersect(formalArgs(xgboost::xgb.params), names(params))
        xgb_params <- params[par1]
        xgb_train_args <- params
        xgb_train_args[par1] <- NULL
        d <- xgboost::xgb.DMatrix(x, label = y)
        res <- do.call(xgboost::xgb.train, c(list(data = d), xgb_train_args,
            list(params = xgb_params)), )
        return(res)
    }
    <bytecode: 0xa8674c8c8>
    <environment: 0xa86608bd8>

Rare situations may arise where one wants to update the formula argument. This supported and implemented via the `update` method

    lr_xgboost$update(y ~ age + sex)

The design matrix that results from by the specified formula can be inspected via

    head(lr_xgboost$design(pbc)$x)

           age sexf
    1 58.76523    1
    2 56.44627    1
    3 70.07255    0
    4 54.74059    1
    5 38.10541    1
    6 66.25873    1

and the response vector via

    head(lr_xgboost$response(pbc))

    1 2 3 4 5 6
    1 0 0 0 0 0

See `?learner` for the differences between `learner$design` and `learner$response` and `?design` for more details about the construction of the design matrix and response vector.

## Cross-validation

The `{targeted}` package provides a generic implementation for repeated k-fold cross-validation with `learner` class objects. Parallelization is supported via the `{future}` and `{parallel}` packages (see `?cv` for more details).

    # future::plan("multicore")
    lrs <- list(
      glm = learner_glm(y ~ age + age, family = "binomial"),
      gam = learner_gam(y ~ s(age) + s(bili), family = "binomial")
    )
     # 2 times repeated 5-fold cross-validation
    cv(lrs, data = pbc, rep = 2, nfolds = 5)

    Call: cv.default(object = lrs, data = pbc, nfolds = 5, rep = 2)

    5-fold cross-validation with 2 repetitions

              mse       mae
    glm 0.1070937 0.2123937
    gam 0.1007523 0.1901411

# Defining new learners

Statistical or machine learning models for which no constructors are provided can be implemented with a few lines of code. In what follows we cover three general cases where the input to the fit function differs.

## Fit function with formula and data arguments

The first general case covers fit functions which expect a formula and data argument. Both arguments are used then by the fitting routine to construct the design matrix and response vector. Statistical models are usually implement with such an interface, with examples including `stats::glm`, `mgcv::gam` and `earth::earth`. The `learner` R6 class supports these fitting routines by checking if the provided estimate function has a `formula` and `data` argument. If it does, then the `formula` and `data` argument are passed on to the estimate function without further modifications. This is exemplified in the following for `stats::glm`, where we define a new constructor to return a `learner` class object that fits a generalized model

    new_glm <- function(formula, ...) {
      learner$new(
        formula = formula,
        estimate = stats::glm,
        predict = stats::predict,
        predict.args = list(type = "response"),
        estimate.args = list(...),
        info = "new glm learner" # optional
      )
    }
    lr <- new_glm(y ~ age, family = "binomial")
    lr

    ────────── learner object ──────────
    new glm learner

    Estimate arguments: family=binomial
    Predict arguments: type=response
    Formula: y ~ age

It can be seen that the optional arguments of `new_glm` define the `estimate.args` of a constructed learner object. When estimating the model with

    lr$estimate(pbc)

the parameters defined in `estimate.args` are passed on with the `formula` and `data` to `stats::glm` (i.e. the function specified via the `estimate` argument). Thus, the above is equivalent to

    fit <- glm(y ~ age, family = "binomial", data = pbc)
    all(coef(fit) == coef(lr$fit))

    [1] TRUE

The code further instructs to construct a learner object that uses `stats::predict` to make predictions. The learner object similarly passes on the `predict.args` to `stats::predict` for

    lr$predict(head(pbc))

             1          2          3          4          5          6
    0.16171479 0.14624529 0.25614862 0.13566571 0.06272415 0.22071201

which is equivalent to

    predict(fit, newdata = head(pbc), type = "response")

             1          2          3          4          5          6
    0.16171479 0.14624529 0.25614862 0.13566571 0.06272415 0.22071201

Indeed, the documentation of `?learner` reveals that the predict method always requires an `object` and `newdata` argument. An important implementation detail is that the `learner` R6 class allows to overrule the defined `estimate.args` and `predict.args` in the method calls.

    lr$estimate(pbc, family = "poisson")
    lr$predict(head(pbc), type = "link")

            1         2         3         4         5         6
    -1.837279 -1.939001 -1.341276 -2.013822 -2.743535 -1.508572

## Fit function with x and y arguments

Most fitting routines for machine learning models expect a design matrix and response vector as inputs. The R6 `learner` class supports these fitting functions by internally processing the `formula` argument via the `targeted::design` function. Take the example of `grf::probability_forest`, which expects a `X` (design matrix) and `Y` (response vector) as inputs.

    new_grf <- function(formula, ...) {
      learner$new(
        formula = formula,
        estimate = function(x, y, ...) grf::probability_forest(X = x, Y = y, ...),
        predict = function(object, newdata) {
          predict(object, newdata = newdata)$predictions
        },
        estimate.args = list(...),
        info = "grf::probability_forest"
      )
    }
    lr <- new_grf(as.factor(y) ~ age + bili, num.trees = 100)
    lr$estimate(pbc)

Compared to the previous case, the `pbc` data object is not directly passed on to the fit function. Instead,`targeted::design` constructs the design matrix and response vector from the defined `formula` argument. As shown previously,

    dsgn <- lr$design(pbc)

can be used to inspect the design object. The `x` and `y` attributes of the returned `design` object are then passed on to the fit function.

## Fit function with single data argument

To support ensemble/meta learners, it is also possible to construct a learner without providing a formula argument.

    new_sl <- function(learners, ...) {
      learner$new(
        info = "new superlearner",
        estimate = superlearner,
        predict = targeted:::predict.superlearner,
        estimate.args = c(list(learners = learners), list(...))
      )
    }
    lrs <- list(
      glm = learner_glm(y ~ age, family = "binomial"),
      gam = learner_gam(y ~ s(age), family = "binomial")
    )
    lr <- new_sl(lrs, nfolds = 2)
    lr$estimate(pbc)
    lr

    ────────── learner object ──────────
    new superlearner

    Estimate arguments: learners=<list>, nfolds=2
    Predict arguments:
    Formula: NULL
    ─────────────────────────────────────
            score        weight
    glm 0.1085128  1.000000e+00
    gam 0.1099285 -6.992615e-18

In this case, all arguments provided to `lr$estimate` are joined together with the specified `estimate.args` and passed on to the defined estimate function (i.e. `superlearner`).

## Specials in formula

Certain learner functions allow for specifying special terms in the formula. For example, let’s consider an aggregated dataset that includes only the response variable, treatment, and sex:

    library("data.table")
    dd <- data.table(pbc)[!is.na(trt), .(.N), by=.(y,trt,sex)]
    print(dd)

           y   trt    sex     N
       <int> <int> <fctr> <int>
    1:     1     1      f    13
    2:     0     1      f   124
    3:     0     1      m    19
    4:     0     2      f   123
    5:     1     2      f    16
    6:     0     2      m    12
    7:     1     2      m     3
    8:     1     1      m     2

Next, we fit a Naive Bayes classifier using the `weights` special term to specify the frequency weights for the estimation

    lr <- learner_naivebayes(y ~ trt + sex + weights(N))
    lr$estimate(dd)
    lr$predict(dd)

    [1] 0.09138473 0.09138473 0.12139346 0.11913520 0.11913520 0.15668515 0.15668515
    [8] 0.12139346

Here `weights.numeric` is simply the identity function

    targeted:::weights.numeric

    function (object, ...)
    object
    <bytecode: 0xa810ce628>
    <environment: namespace:targeted>

To illustrate how to define a custom learner that utilizes special terms, consider the following example where we introduce a `strata` term. In this case, we introduce an estimation method that fits a linear regression model for each value of the strata variable, as well as a corresponding prediction method

    est <- function(formula, data, strata, ...)
      lapply(levels(strata), \(s) lm(formula, data[which(strata==s),]))

    pred <- function(object, newdata, strata, ...) {
      res <- numeric(length(strata))
      for (i in seq_along(levels(strata))) {
        idx <- which(strata == levels(strata)[i])
        res[idx] <- predict(object[[i]], newdata[idx, ], ...)
      }
      return(res)
    }

The new learner is now defined by including the argument `specials = “strata”, which ensures that the strata variable is correctly passed to both the estimate and predict functions

    lr <- learner$new(y ~ sex + strata(trt),
                      estimate=est, predict=pred, specials = "strata")
    des <- lr$design(head(pbc))
    des

    ────────── design object ──────────

    response (length: 6)

    1   1
    2   0
    ---
    5   0
    6   0

    specials
     - strata [factor]

    design matrix (dim: 6, 1)
        sexf
    1   1
    2   1
    ---
    5   1
    6   1

    des$strata

        1     2     3     4     5     6
    trt=1 trt=1 trt=1 trt=1 trt=2 trt=2
    Levels: trt=1 trt=2

    lr$estimate(pbc)
    lr

    ────────── learner object ──────────
    Estimate arguments:
    Predict arguments:
    Formula: y ~ sex + strata(trt)
    ─────────────────────────────────────
    [[1]]

    Call:
    lm(formula = formula, data = data[which(strata == s), ])

    Coefficients:
    (Intercept)         sexf
      0.0952381   -0.0003476

    [[2]]

    Call:
    lm(formula = formula, data = data[which(strata == s), ])

    Coefficients:
    (Intercept)         sexf
        0.20000     -0.08489

    lr$predict(head(pbc))

    [1] 0.09489051 0.09489051 0.09523810 0.09489051 0.11510791 0.11510791