ensr: R Package for Simultaneous Selection of Elastic Net Tuning Parameters

Abstract

Motivation: Elastic net regression is a form of penalized regression that lies between ridge and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression. The elastic net penalty is a powerful tool controlling the impact of correlated predictors and the overall complexity of generalized linear regression models. The elastic net penalty has two tuning parameters: ${\lambda}$ for the complexity and ${\alpha}$ for the compromise between LASSO and ridge. The R package glmnet provides efficient tools for fitting elastic net models and selecting ${\lambda}$ for a given ${\alpha}.$ However, glmnet does not simultaneously search the ${\lambda} - {\alpha}$ space for the optional elastic net model. Results: We built the R package ensr, elastic net searcher. enser extends the functionality of glment to search the ${\lambda} - {\alpha}$ space and identify an optimal ${\lambda} - {\alpha}$ pair. Availability: ensr is available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network at https://cran.r-project.org/package=ensr