Small bug in MATLAB R2017B LogLikelihood after fitnlm? - matlab

Question

Background: I am working on a problem similar to the nonlinear logistic regression described in the link [1] (my problem is more complicated, but link [1] is enough for the next sections of this post). Comparing my results with those obtained in parallel with a R package, I got similar results for the coefficients, but (very approximately) an opposite logLikelihood.
Hypothesis: The logLikelihood given by fitnlm in Matlab is in fact the negative LogLikelihood. (Note that this impairs consequently the BIC and AIC computation by Matlab)
Reasonning: in [1], the same problem is solved through two different approaches. ML-approach/ By defining the negative LogLikelihood and making an optimization with fminsearch. GLS-approach/ By using fitnlm.
The negative LogLikelihood after the ML-approach is:380
The negative LogLikelihood after the GLS-approach is:-406
I imagine the second one should be at least multiplied by (-1)?
Questions: Did I miss something? Is the (-1) coefficient enough, or would this simple correction not be enough?
Self-contained code:
%copy-pasting code from [1]
myf = #(beta,x) beta(1)*x./(beta(2) + x);
mymodelfun = #(beta,x) 1./(1 + exp(-myf(beta,x)));
rng(300,'twister');
x = linspace(-1,1,200)';
beta = [10;2];
beta0=[3;3];
mu = mymodelfun(beta,x);
n = 50;
z = binornd(n,mu);
y = z./n;
%ML Approach
mynegloglik = #(beta) -sum(log(binopdf(z,n,mymodelfun(beta,x))));
opts = optimset('fminsearch');
opts.MaxFunEvals = Inf;
opts.MaxIter = 10000;
betaHatML = fminsearch(mynegloglik,beta0,opts)
neglogLH_MLApproach = mynegloglik(betaHatML);
%GLS Approach
wfun = #(xx) n./(xx.*(1-xx));
nlm = fitnlm(x,y,mymodelfun,beta0,'Weights',wfun)
neglogLH_GLSApproach = - nlm.LogLikelihood;
Source:
[1] https://uk.mathworks.com/help/stats/examples/nonlinear-logistic-regression.html

Answer 1

This answer (now) only details which code is used. Please see Tom Lane's answer below for a substantive answer.
Basically, fitnlm.m is a call to NonLinearModel.fit.
When opening NonLinearModel.m, one gets in line 1209:
model.LogLikelihood = getlogLikelihood(model);
getlogLikelihood is itself described between lines 1234-1251.
For instance:
function L = getlogLikelihood(model)
(...)
L = -(model.DFE + model.NumObservations*log(2*pi) + (...) )/2;
(...)
Please also not that this notably impacts ModelCriterion.AIC and ModelCriterion.BIC, as they are computed using model.LogLikelihood ("thinking" it is the logLikelihood).
To get the corresponding formula for BIC/AIC/..., type:
edit classreg.regr.modelutils.modelcriterion

Answer 2

this is Tom from MathWorks. Take another look at the formula quoted:
L = -(model.DFE + model.NumObservations*log(2*pi) + (...) )/2;
Remember the normal distribution has a factor (1/sqrt(2*pi)), so taking logs of that gives us -log(2*pi)/2. So the minus sign comes from that and it is part of the log likelihood. The property value is not the negative log likelihood.
One reason for the difference in the two log likelihood values is that the "ML approach" value is computing something based on the discrete probabilities from the binomial distribution. Those are all between 0 and 1, and they add up to 1. The "GLS approach" is computing something based on the probability density of the continuous normal distribution. In this example, the standard deviation of the residuals is about 0.0462. That leads to density values that are much higher than 1 at the peak. So the two things are not really comparable. You would need to convert the normal values to probabilities on the same discrete intervals that correspond to individual outcomes from the binomial distribution.