For Discussion: Function to extract statistics from ARD

[ddsjoberg]

I see two kinds of functions.

1. The first to simply grab a statistic from an ARD. This is perhaps already covered by the get_ard_statistics() function.

2. The second would do a bit more because it would also format the statistics and have the ability to return stats in a string. For example, if a user wanted the statistics above, and wanted them returned with Ns and percentages, they could include an argument like foo(ard, pattern = "{n} / {N} ({p}%)"). The function would apply the formatting function it the ARD to get the stat_fmt column, then using glue, inject for formatted statistics in to a string, e.g. "42 / 86 (49%)". This could be massively helpful for medical writers. They could get an LLM to summarize a table/figure by passing it the JSON representation of the ARD (the LLMs are already good at this). Then request that the LLM replace and statistics with calls to this function so the numbers will dynamically update as more data comes in.

[bzkrouse]

Combining multiple stats in a "pattern" is something we do in tfrmt as well. For it to work, the stats need to share a common label. Right now we need to do manual data manipulation to prep a shared label value between stats. Here's an open issue to try to make this easier - GSK-Biostatistics/tfrmt#554

Not sure if this utility could serve two use cases, but worth considering!