expression data in the multi-set format (see checkSets). A vector of lists, one per set. Each set must contain a component data that contains the expression data, with rows corresponding to samples and columns to genes or probes.

optional observation weights in the same format (and dimensions) as multiExpr. These weights are used in correlation calculation.

logical: should data be checked for excessive numbers of missing entries in genes and samples, and for genes with zero variance? See details.

optional specification of blocks in which hierarchical clustering and module detection should be performed. If given, must be a numeric vector with one entry per gene of multiExpr giving the number of the block to which the corresponding gene belongs.

integer giving maximum block size for module detection. Ignored if blocks above is non-NULL. Otherwise, if the number of genes in datExpr exceeds maxBlockSize, genes will be pre-clustered into blocks whose size should not exceed maxBlockSize.

number specifying how strongly blocks should be penalized for exceeding the maximum size. Set to a lrge number or Inf if not exceeding maximum block size is very important.

number of centers for pre-clustering. Larger numbers typically results in better but slower pre-clustering. The default is as.integer(min(nGenes/20, 100*nGenes/preferredSize)) and is an attempt to arrive at a reasonable number given the resources available.

integer to be used as seed for the random number generator before the function starts. If a current seed exists, it is saved and restored upon exit. If NULL is given, the function will not save and restore the seed.

character string specifying the correlation to be used. Allowed values are (unique abbreviations of) "pearson" and "bicor", corresponding to Pearson and bidweight midcorrelation, respectively. Missing values are handled using the pariwise.complete.obs option.

only used for corType=="bicor". Specifies the maximum percentile of data that can be considered outliers on either side of the median separately. For each side of the median, if higher percentile than maxPOutliers is considered an outlier by the weight function based on 9*mad(x), the width of the weight function is increased such that the percentile of outliers on that side of the median equals maxPOutliers. Using maxPOutliers=1 will effectively disable all weight function broadening; using maxPOutliers=0 will give results that are quite similar (but not equal to) Pearson correlation.

real number between 0 and 1 that controls the handling of missing data in the calculation of correlations. See details.

Specifies whether the bicor calculation, if used, should revert to Pearson when median absolute deviation (mad) is zero. Recongnized values are (abbreviations of) "none", "individual", "all". If set to "none", zero mad will result in NA for the corresponding correlation. If set to "individual", Pearson calculation will be used only for columns that have zero mad. If set to "all", the presence of a single zero mad will cause the whole variable to be treated in Pearson correlation manner (as if the corresponding robust option was set to FALSE). Has no effect for Pearson correlation. See bicor.

logical: should the cosine version of the correlation calculation be used? The cosine calculation differs from the standard one in that it does not subtract the mean.

soft-thresholding power for network construction. Either a single number or a vector of the same length as the number of sets, with one power for each set.

network type. Allowed values are (unique abbreviations of) "unsigned", "signed", "signed hybrid". See adjacency.

logical: should basic sanity check be performed on the supplied power? If you would like to experiment with unusual powers, set the argument to FALSE and proceed with caution.

logical: should missing values in calculated adjacency be replaced by 0?

one of "none", "unsigned", "signed", "signed Nowick", "unsigned 2", "signed 2" and "signed Nowick 2". If "none", adjacency will be used for clustering. See TOMsimilarityFromExpr for details.

a character string specifying the TOM variant to be used. Recognized values are "min" giving the standard TOM described in Zhang and Horvath (2005), and "mean" in which the min function in the denominator is replaced by mean. The "mean" may produce better results in certain special situations but at this time should be considered experimental.

Logical: should TOM be set to zero for zero adjacencies?

Logical: should the result be set to zero when negative? Negative TOM values can occur when TOMType is "signed Nowick".

logical: should calculated TOMs be saved to disk (TRUE) or returned in the return value (FALSE)? Returning calculated TOMs via the return value ay be more convenient bt not always feasible if the matrices are too big to fit all in memory at the same time.

character string giving the file names to save individual TOMs into. The following tags should be used to make the file names unique for each set and block: %s will be replaced by the set number; %N will be replaced by the set name (taken from names(multiExpr)) if it exists, otherwise by set number; %b will be replaced by the block number. If the file names turn out to be non-unique, an error will be generated.

non-negative integer specifying the number of parallel threads to be used by certain parts of correlation calculations. This option only has an effect on systems on which a POSIX thread library is available (which currently includes Linux and Mac OSX, but excludes Windows). If zero, the number of online processors will be used if it can be determined dynamically, otherwise correlation calculations will use 2 threads.

Logical: should WGCNA's own, slow, matrix multiplication be used instead of R-wide BLAS? Only useful for debugging.

integer level of verbosity. Zero means silent, higher values make the output progressively more and more verbose.

indentation for diagnostic messages. Zero means no indentation, each unit adds two spaces.

Only returned if input saveTOMs is TRUE. A matrix of character strings giving the file names in which each block TOM is saved. Rows correspond to data sets and columns to blocks.

Only returned if input saveTOMs is FALSE. A list in which each component corresponds to one block. Each component is a matrix of dimensions (N times (number of sets)), where N is the length of a distance structure corresponding to the block. That is, if the block contains n genes, N=n*(n-1)/2. Each column of the matrix contains the topological overlap of variables in the corresponding set ( and the corresponding block), arranged as a distance structure. Do note however that the topological overlap is a similarity (not a distance).

if input blocks was given, its copy; otherwise a vector of length equal number of genes giving the block label for each gene. Note that block labels are not necessarilly sorted in the order in which the blocks were processed (since we do not require this for the input blocks). See blockOrder below.

a list with one component for each block of genes. Each component is a vector giving the indices (relative to the input multiExpr) of genes in the corresponding block.

if input checkMissingData is TRUE, the output of the function goodSamplesGenesMS. A list with components goodGenes (logical vector indicating which genes passed the missing data filters), goodSamples (a list of logical vectors indicating which samples passed the missing data filters in each set), and allOK (a logical indicating whether all genes and all samples passed the filters). See goodSamplesGenesMS for more details. If checkMissingData is FALSE, goodSamplesAndGenes contains a list of the same type but indicating that all genes and all samples passed the missing data filters.

Number of genes that passed missing data filters (if input checkMissingData is TRUE), or the number of all genes (if checkMissingData is FALSE).

the vector blocks (above), restricted to good genes only.

number of threads used to calculate correlation and TOM matrices.

logical: were calculated matrices saved in files (TRUE) or returned in the return value (FALSE)?

integer codes for network and correlation type.

number of sets in input data.

the names attribute of input multiExpr.