I'm trying to compute the Bayesian with results from fit.m
According to the Wikipedia, log-likelihood can be approximated (when noise is ~N(0,sigma^2)) as:
L = -(n/2)*log(2*pi*sigma^2) - (rss(2*sigma^2))
with n as the number of samples, k as the number of free parameters, and rss as residual sum of squares. And BIC is defined as:
-2*L + k*log(n)
But this is a bit different from the fitglm.m result even for simple polynomial models and the discrepancy seems to increase when higher order terms are used.
Because I want to fit Gaussian models and compute BICs of them, I cannot just use fitglm.m Or, is there any other way to write Gaussian model with the Wilkinson notation? I'm not familiar with the notation, so I don't know if it's possible.
I'm not 100% sure this is your issue, but I think your definition of BIC may be misunderstood.
The Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) is an approximation to the log of the evidence, and is defined as:
where
is the data,
is the number of adaptive parameters of your model,
is the data size, and most importantly,
is the maximimum a posteriori estimate for your model / parameter set.
Compare for instance with the much simpler Akaike Information Criterion (AIK):
which relies on the usually simpler to obtain maximum likelihood estimate
of the model instead.
Your
is simply a parameter, which is subject to estimation. If the
you're using here is derived from the sample variance, for instance, then that simply corresponds to the
estimate, and not the
one.
So, your discrepancy may simply derive from the builtin function using the 'correct' estimate and you using the wrong one in your 'by-hand' calculations of the BIC.
Related
In one hierarchical model, we have two hyer parameters: dnorm(A_mu, 0.25^-2) and dnorm (B_mu, 0.25^-2). In this case, 0.25 is the sd, I use the fixed number. A_mu and B_mu represent the mean of group level. After fitting the data by rjags, we get the distributions for each parameter. So I just directly compare the highest posterior density interval (HDI) of A_mu and B_mu? Do I need to calculate something using the sd(0.25)?
In another case, if the sd of two hyper parameters is not fixed, like that: dnorm(A_mu, A_sd) and dnorm (B_mu, B_sd). How can I compare the two hyper parameters and make a decision, e.g. this group is significantly different another group?
Remember that you are getting posterior distributions for A_mu and B_mu. This makes your comparison easy as you can have a look at 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the parameters (or pick a confidence value that satisfies your needs). I believe JAGS uses Gibbs sampling and so you should be able to get the raw samples from the posteriors for A_mu and B_mu. You can then ask "what is the probability that B_mu is greater than some value?" by calculating the percentage of posterior samples that are greater than that value. Alternatively, and in a similar way to frequentist Hypothesis testing, you can ask what is the probability that the mean of B_mu is a draw from the posterior of A_mu. So the key is just to directly use the samples from your posterior. I would recommend taking a look at Andrew Gelman's BDA3 textbook (Chapter 4) for a really good reference on these concepts.
A few things to keep in mind before drawing conclusions from the data: (1) you should always check the validity of your Markov Chains by evaluating things like autocorrelation (2) try to do a posterior predictive check to make sure your model is well fit to the data. If your model is poorly fit to the data then you can get very misleading results from the procedure above.
Does anyone know how to tell the difference between distributions (ie their goodness of fit) using the dfittool in Matlab? In a class I took forever ago, we learned about the log likelihood parameter and how to compare a pdf fitted to Gaussian vs gamma, etc. But right now, all the matlab help files online are like "it means something." Any assistance would be appreciated. Basically, I need to interpret the "results" in "edit fit" of the dfittool. I want to be able to compare my dfits to each other from the results, so I can pick the best fit for my analysis. I don't know what the difference is between a log likelihood of -111 vs -105.
Example below:
Distribution: Normal
Log likelihood: -110.954
Domain: -Inf < y < Inf
Mean: 101.443
Variance: 436.332
Parameter Estimate Std. Err.
mu 101.443 4.17771
sigma 20.8886 3.04691
Estimated covariance of parameter estimates:
mu sigma
mu 17.4533 6.59643e-15
sigma 6.59643e-15 9.28366
Thank you!
(Log) likelihood is a measure of the fit of a distribution to data, so the simple answer is: the distribution with the largest likelihood is the one that fits best. However, what you get here as an output is the maximized likelihood, i.e. the likelihood at those parameter values where it is maximal. Different families of distributions might be differently "flexible", so that it is easier to get a larger likelihood with one of them in general, so this limits comparability. This holds especially if you compare families with different numbers of parameters. A fix for this is to use formal model comparison, e.g. using the Bayes factor, which however is considerably more complex mathematically, or its approximation, the Bayesian information criterion.
More generally speaking however, it is seldomly a good idea to just randomly pick distributions and see how well they fit. It would be better to have some at least partially theoretically motivated idea why a distribution is a candidate. On the most basic level this means considering its definition range: the normal distribution is defined on the whole real line, the gamma distribution only for nonnegative real numbers. This way it should be possible to rule one of them out based on basic properties of your data.
(Note: This is intended to be a community Wiki.)
Suppose I have a set of points xi = {x0,x1,x2,...xn} and corresponding function values fi = f(xi) = {f0,f1,f2,...,fn}, where f(x) is, in general, an unknown function. (In some situations, we might know f(x) ahead of time, but we want to do this generally, since we often don't know f(x) in advance.) What's a good way to approximate the derivative of f(x) at each point xi? That is, how can I estimate values of dfi == d/dx fi == df(xi)/dx at each of the points xi?
Unfortunately, MATLAB doesn't have a very good general-purpose, numerical differentiation routine. Part of the reason for this is probably because choosing a good routine can be difficult!
So what kinds of methods are there? What routines exist? How can we choose a good routine for a particular problem?
There are several considerations when choosing how to differentiate in MATLAB:
Do you have a symbolic function or a set of points?
Is your grid evenly or unevenly spaced?
Is your domain periodic? Can you assume periodic boundary conditions?
What level of accuracy are you looking for? Do you need to compute the derivatives within a given tolerance?
Does it matter to you that your derivative is evaluated on the same points as your function is defined?
Do you need to calculate multiple orders of derivatives?
What's the best way to proceed?
These are just some quick-and-dirty suggestions. Hopefully somebody will find them helpful!
1. Do you have a symbolic function or a set of points?
If you have a symbolic function, you may be able to calculate the derivative analytically. (Chances are, you would have done this if it were that easy, and you would not be here looking for alternatives.)
If you have a symbolic function and cannot calculate the derivative analytically, you can always evaluate the function on a set of points, and use some other method listed on this page to evaluate the derivative.
In most cases, you have a set of points (xi,fi), and will have to use one of the following methods....
2. Is your grid evenly or unevenly spaced?
If your grid is evenly spaced, you probably will want to use a finite difference scheme (see either of the Wikipedia articles here or here), unless you are using periodic boundary conditions (see below). Here is a decent introduction to finite difference methods in the context of solving ordinary differential equations on a grid (see especially slides 9-14). These methods are generally computationally efficient, simple to implement, and the error of the method can be simply estimated as the truncation error of the Taylor expansions used to derive it.
If your grid is unevenly spaced, you can still use a finite difference scheme, but the expressions are more difficult and the accuracy varies very strongly with how uniform your grid is. If your grid is very non-uniform, you will probably need to use large stencil sizes (more neighboring points) to calculate the derivative at a given point. People often construct an interpolating polynomial (often the Lagrange polynomial) and differentiate that polynomial to compute the derivative. See for instance, this StackExchange question. It is often difficult to estimate the error using these methods (although some have attempted to do so: here and here). Fornberg's method is often very useful in these cases....
Care must be taken at the boundaries of your domain because the stencil often involves points that are outside the domain. Some people introduce "ghost points" or combine boundary conditions with derivatives of different orders to eliminate these "ghost points" and simplify the stencil. Another approach is to use right- or left-sided finite difference methods.
Here's an excellent "cheat sheet" of finite difference methods, including centered, right- and left-sided schemes of low orders. I keep a printout of this near my workstation because I find it so useful.
3. Is your domain periodic? Can you assume periodic boundary conditions?
If your domain is periodic, you can compute derivatives to a very high order accuracy using Fourier spectral methods. This technique sacrifices performance somewhat to gain high accuracy. In fact, if you are using N points, your estimate of the derivative is approximately N^th order accurate. For more information, see (for example) this WikiBook.
Fourier methods often use the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm to achieve roughly O(N log(N)) performance, rather than the O(N^2) algorithm that a naively-implemented discrete Fourier transform (DFT) might employ.
If your function and domain are not periodic, you should not use the Fourier spectral method. If you attempt to use it with a function that is not periodic, you will get large errors and undesirable "ringing" phenomena.
Computing derivatives of any order requires 1) a transform from grid-space to spectral space (O(N log(N))), 2) multiplication of the Fourier coefficients by their spectral wavenumbers (O(N)), and 2) an inverse transform from spectral space to grid space (again O(N log(N))).
Care must be taken when multiplying the Fourier coefficients by their spectral wavenumbers. Every implementation of the FFT algorithm seems to have its own ordering of the spectral modes and normalization parameters. See, for instance, the answer to this question on the Math StackExchange, for notes about doing this in MATLAB.
4. What level of accuracy are you looking for? Do you need to compute the derivatives within a given tolerance?
For many purposes, a 1st or 2nd order finite difference scheme may be sufficient. For higher precision, you can use higher order Taylor expansions, dropping higher-order terms.
If you need to compute the derivatives within a given tolerance, you may want to look around for a high-order scheme that has the error you need.
Often, the best way to reduce error is reducing the grid spacing in a finite difference scheme, but this is not always possible.
Be aware that higher-order finite difference schemes almost always require larger stencil sizes (more neighboring points). This can cause issues at the boundaries. (See the discussion above about ghost points.)
5. Does it matter to you that your derivative is evaluated on the same points as your function is defined?
MATLAB provides the diff function to compute differences between adjacent array elements. This can be used to calculate approximate derivatives via a first-order forward-differencing (or forward finite difference) scheme, but the estimates are low-order estimates. As described in MATLAB's documentation of diff (link), if you input an array of length N, it will return an array of length N-1. When you estimate derivatives using this method on N points, you will only have estimates of the derivative at N-1 points. (Note that this can be used on uneven grids, if they are sorted in ascending order.)
In most cases, we want the derivative evaluated at all points, which means we want to use something besides the diff method.
6. Do you need to calculate multiple orders of derivatives?
One can set up a system of equations in which the grid point function values and the 1st and 2nd order derivatives at these points all depend on each other. This can be found by combining Taylor expansions at neighboring points as usual, but keeping the derivative terms rather than cancelling them out, and linking them together with those of neighboring points. These equations can be solved via linear algebra to give not just the first derivative, but the second as well (or higher orders, if set up properly). I believe these are called combined finite difference schemes, and they are often used in conjunction with compact finite difference schemes, which will be discussed next.
Compact finite difference schemes (link). In these schemes, one sets up a design matrix and calculates the derivatives at all points simultaneously via a matrix solve. They are called "compact" because they are usually designed to require fewer stencil points than ordinary finite difference schemes of comparable accuracy. Because they involve a matrix equation that links all points together, certain compact finite difference schemes are said to have "spectral-like resolution" (e.g. Lele's 1992 paper--excellent!), meaning that they mimic spectral schemes by depending on all nodal values and, because of this, they maintain accuracy at all length scales. In contrast, typical finite difference methods are only locally accurate (the derivative at point #13, for example, ordinarily doesn't depend on the function value at point #200).
A current area of research is how best to solve for multiple derivatives in a compact stencil. The results of such research, combined, compact finite difference methods, are powerful and widely applicable, though many researchers tend to tune them for particular needs (performance, accuracy, stability, or a particular field of research such as fluid dynamics).
Ready-to-Go Routines
As described above, one can use the diff function (link to documentation) to compute rough derivatives between adjacent array elements.
MATLAB's gradient routine (link to documentation) is a great option for many purposes. It implements a second-order, central difference scheme. It has the advantages of computing derivatives in multiple dimensions and supporting arbitrary grid spacing. (Thanks to #thewaywewalk for pointing out this glaring omission!)
I used Fornberg's method (see above) to develop a small routine (nderiv_fornberg) to calculate finite differences in one dimension for arbitrary grid spacings. I find it easy to use. It uses sided stencils of 6 points at the boundaries and a centered, 5-point stencil in the interior. It is available at the MATLAB File Exchange here.
Conclusion
The field of numerical differentiation is very diverse. For each method listed above, there are many variants with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. This post is hardly a complete treatment of numerical differentiation.
Every application is different. Hopefully this post gives the interested reader an organized list of considerations and resources for choosing a method that suits their own needs.
This community wiki could be improved with code snippets and examples particular to MATLAB.
I believe there is more in to these particular questions. So I have elaborated on the subject further as follows:
(4) Q: What level of accuracy are you looking for? Do you need to compute the derivatives within a given tolerance?
A: The accuracy of numerical differentiation is subjective to the application of interest. Usually the way it works is, if you are using the ND in forward problem to approximate the derivatives to estimate features from signal of interest, then you should be aware of noise perturbations. Usually such artifacts contain high frequency components and by the definition of the differentiator, the noise effect will be amplified in the magnitude order of $i\omega^n$. So, increasing the accuracy of differentiator (increasing the polynomial accuracy) will no help at all. In this case you should be able to cancelt the effect of noise for differentiation. This can be done in casecade order: first smooth the signal, and then differentiate. But a better way of doing this is to use "Lowpass Differentiator". A good example of MATLAB library can be found here.
However, if this is not the case and you're using ND in inverse problems, such as solvign PDEs, then the global accuracy of differentiator is very important. Depending on what kind of bounady condition (BC) suits your problem, the design will be adapted accordingly. The rule of thump is to increase the numerical accuracy known is the fullband differentiator. You need to design a derivative matrix that takes care of suitable BC. You can find comprehensive solutions to such designs using the above link.
(5) Does it matter to you that your derivative is evaluated on the same points as your function is defined?
A: Yes absolutely. The evaluation of the ND on the same grid points is called "centralized" and off the points "staggered" schemes. Note that using odd order of derivatives, centralized ND will deviate the accuracy of frequency response of the differentiator. Therefore, if you're using such design in inverse problems, this will perturb your approximation. Also, the opposite applies to the case of even order of differentiation utilized by staggered schemes. You can find comprehensive explanation on this subject using the link above.
(6) Do you need to calculate multiple orders of derivatives?
This totally depends on your application at hand. You can refer to the same link I have provided and take care of multiple derivative designs.
After we created a Naive Bayes classifier object nb (say, with multivariate multinomial (mvmn) distribution), we can call posterior function on testing data using nb object. This function has 3 output parameters:
[post,cpre,logp] = posterior(nb,test)
I understand how post is computed and the meaning of that, also cpre is the predicted class, based on the maximum over posterior probabilities for each class.
The question is about logp. It is clear how it is computed (logarithm of the PDF of each pattern in test), but I don't understand the meaning of this measure and how it can be used in the context of Naive Bayes procedure. Any light on this is very much appreciated.
Thanks.
The logp you are referring to is the log likelihood, which is one way to measure how good a model is fitting. We use log probabilities to prevent computers from underflowing on very small floating-point numbers, and also because adding is faster than multiplying.
If you learned your classifier several times with different starting points, you would get different results because the likelihood function is not log-concave, meaning there are local maxima that you would get stuck in. If you computed the likelihood of the posterior on your original data you would get the likelihood of the model. Although the likelihood gives you a good measure of how one set of parameters fits compared to another, you need to be careful that you're not overfitting.
In your case, you are computing the likelihood on some unobserved (test) data, which gives you an idea of how well your learned classifier is fitting on the data. If you were trying to learn this model based on the test set, you would pick the parameters based on the highest test likelihood; however in general when you're doing this it's better to use a validation set. What you are doing here is computing predictive likelihood.
Computing the log likelihood is not limited to Naive Bayes classifiers and can in fact be computed for any Bayesian model (gaussian mixture, latent dirichlet allocation, etc).
I need to fit data in quite an indirect way. The original data to be recovered in the fit is some linear function with small oscillations and drifts on it, that I would like to identify. Let's call this f(t). We can not record this parameter in the experiment directly, but only indirectly, let's say as g(f) = sin(a f(t)). (The real transfer funcion is more complex, but it should not play a role in here)
So if f(t) changes direction towards the turning points of the sin function, it is difficult to identify and I tried an alternative approach to recover f(t) than just the inverse function of g and some data continuing guesses:
I create a model function fm(t) which undergoes the same and known transfer function g() and fit g(fm(t)) to the data. As the dataset is huge, I do this piecewise for successive chunks of data guaranteeing the continuity of fm across the whole set.
A first try was to use linear functions using the optimize.leastsq, where the error estimate is derived from g(fm). It is not completely satisfactory, and I think it would be far better to fit a spline to the data to get fspline(t) as a model for f(t), guaranteeing the continuity of the data and of its derivative.
The problem with it is, that spline fitting from the interpolate package works on the data directly, so I can not wrap the spline using g(fspline) and do the spline interpolation on this. Is there a way this can be done in scipy?
Any other ideas?
I tried quadratic functions and fixing the offset and slope such to match the ones of the preceeding fitted chunk of data, so there is only one fitting parameter, the curvature, which very quickly starts to deviate
Thanks
What you would need is a matrix of spline basis functions, b(t), so you can approximate f(t) as a linear combination of spline basis function
f(t) = np.dot(b(t), coefs)
and then estimate the coefficients, coefs, by optimize.leastsq.
However, spline basis functions are not readily available in python, as far as I know (unless you borrow experimental scripts or search through the code of some packages).
Instead you could also use polynomials, for example
b(t) = np.polynomial.chebvander(t, order)
and use a polynomial approximation instead of the splines.
The structure of this problem is very similar to generalized linear models where g is your known link function and similar to index problems in econometrics.
It would be possible to use the scipy splines in an indirect way if you create artificial data
y_i = f(t_i)
where f(t_i) are scipy.interpolate splines, and the y_i are the parameters to be estimated in the least squares optimization. (Loosely based on a script that I saw some time ago that used this for creating a different kind of smoothing splines than the scipy version. I don't remember where I saw this.)
Thank you for these comments. I tried out the polynomial basis suggested above, but polynomials are no option for my needs, ads they tend to create ringing, which is difficult to condition.
The solution on using splines I now found is quite simple and straightforward, and I think it is what you meant by "using the splines in an indirect way".
The fitting function f(t) is obtained by the interpolate.splev(x, (t,c,k)) function, but providing the spline coefficients c by the omptimize.leastsq function. In this way, f(t) is no direct spline fit (as one would usually obtain with the splrep(x, y) function) but indirectly optimized in the fit, and therefore it is possible to use the link function g on it. The initial guess for c might be obtained by one evaluation of splrep(xinit, yinit, t=knots) on model data.
One trick is to restrict the number of knots for the spline to below the number of datapoints by explicitly specifying them during the function call of splrep() and giving this reduced set during the evaluation using splev().