Finding the average number of consecutive same value elements in matlab - matlab

I have a question that I couldn't solve by myself, and search results have also not been what I am looking for (unless I missed one that explains it all, in which case I apologize!)
I have a system that can be in three states, S = S1, S2 and S3. It can change between these three states with a certain probability: From S1 to S2 with P1, S2 to S1 with P2, S2 to S3 with P3 and S3 to S2 with P4. However, to make things simple, I'll begin with P1 = P2 = P3 = P4 = P.
Now I have a dataset, an array of 1000000 values which correspond to these specific states. So S1 means a 1 in the array, S2 means 0.5 and S3 means 0.
So now I want to find out how long the average 'string' of consecutive 1's, or 0.5's, or 0's is in my array. As it is simply a binomial process, (change state with p = P), I should in principle be able to extract P from this information. Although I'm not sure how yet, as I can't simply fit the distribution of 'string lengths' to the binomial distribution, can I?
In any case, a good place to start would be to be able to extract the length of 'strings' of consecutive equal values. Could anyone point me in a direction for where to start?
Edit:
I see that fitdist could fit the 'string lengths' to the binomial distribution. So now I simply want to find how to create an array that contains the 'string lengths' for consecutive 1's, 0.5's and 0's.
Edit 2: It seems that Series of consecutive numbers (different lengths) might be doing exactly what I want. I'll have a quick look at it, and if so I'll delete the post. I apologize!

You could do something as simple as using a derivative. This will identify when there is a change in the sequence. Anywhere the derivative returns something other than 0, this indicates a change. Find what index those changes happen, and then you can find the differences between these indices to get the lengths. Here is some example code
% all just setup
a = 0*ones(1,randi([1,10]));
b = 1*ones(1,randi([1,10]));
c = 0.5*ones(1,randi([1,10]));
vals = {a,b,c};
len = 1e6;
temp = cell(1,len);
for i = 1:len
index = randi([1,3]);
temp{i} = vals{index};
end
mat = cell2mat(temp);
% code that actually does what you need
mat = [mat,nan];
seqLengths = diff([0,find(diff(mat) ~= 0)]);
Please note that the nan is added to the end of your vector so that you will get a vector of the same length at the end. nan is used because it is assumed that your vector will contain all valid numbers, if not, nan can be replaced with any value that does not match the last value in the matrix.

If it's really a binomial process, there is no need to count the average length. Count the transitions for each state:
y=sparse(x(1:end-1),x(2:end),ones(numel(x)-1,1))
And divide it by the total number of transitions:
z=y./sum(sum(y))

Related

Optimize nested for loop for calculating xcorr of matrix rows

I have 2 nested loops which do the following:
Get two rows of a matrix
Check if indices meet a condition or not
If they do: calculate xcorr between the two rows and put it into new vector
Find the index of the maximum value of sub vector and replace element of LAG matrix with this value
I dont know how I can speed this code up by vectorizing or otherwise.
b=size(data,1);
F=size(data,2);
LAG= zeros(b,b);
for i=1:b
for j=1:b
if j>i
x=data(i,:);
y=data(j,:);
d=xcorr(x,y);
d=d(:,F:(2*F)-1);
[M,I] = max(d);
LAG(i,j)=I-1;
d=xcorr(y,x);
d=d(:,F:(2*F)-1);
[M,I] = max(d);
LAG(j,i)=I-1;
end
end
end
First, a note on floating point precision...
You mention in a comment that your data contains the integers 0, 1, and 2. You would therefore expect a cross-correlation to give integer results. However, since the calculation is being done in double-precision, there appears to be some floating-point error introduced. This error can cause the results to be ever so slightly larger or smaller than integer values.
Since your calculations involve looking for the location of the maxima, then you could get slightly different results if there are repeated maximal integer values with added precision errors. For example, let's say you expect the value 10 to be the maximum and appear in indices 2 and 4 of a vector d. You might calculate d one way and get d(2) = 10 and d(4) = 10.00000000000001, with some added precision error. The maximum would therefore be located in index 4. If you use a different method to calculate d, you might get d(2) = 10 and d(4) = 9.99999999999999, with the error going in the opposite direction, causing the maximum to be located in index 2.
The solution? Round your cross-correlation data first:
d = round(xcorr(x, y));
This will eliminate the floating-point errors and give you the integer results you expect.
Now, on to the actual solutions...
Solution 1: Non-loop option
You can pass a matrix to xcorr and it will perform the cross-correlation for every pairwise combination of columns. Using this, you can forego your loops altogether like so:
d = round(xcorr(data.'));
[~, I] = max(d(F:(2*F)-1,:), [], 1);
LAG = reshape(I-1, b, b).';
Solution 2: Improved loop option
There are limits to how large data can be for the above solution, since it will produce large intermediate and output variables that can exceed the maximum array size available. In such a case for loops may be unavoidable, but you can improve upon the for-loop solution above. Specifically, you can compute the cross-correlation once for a pair (x, y), then just flip the result for the pair (y, x):
% Loop over rows:
for row = 1:b
% Loop over upper matrix triangle:
for col = (row+1):b
% Cross-correlation for upper triangle:
d = round(xcorr(data(row, :), data(col, :)));
[~, I] = max(d(:, F:(2*F)-1));
LAG(row, col) = I-1;
% Cross-correlation for lower triangle:
d = fliplr(d);
[~, I] = max(d(:, F:(2*F)-1));
LAG(col, row) = I-1;
end
end

Multiply two vectors with dimensions increasing along time

I have two vectors (called A and B) with length N. Then I need to multiply both of them, but as an "integration" process. Which means I have to multiply first A(1)*B(1), then A(1:2)*B(1:2), until A(1:N)*B(1:N). The result of multiplying booth vector is a number, since B is a column vector. I've done it with a for loop:
for k = 1:N
C(k) = A(1:k) * B(1:k).';
end
But I wanted to ask you if this is the best solution or there is any other option more time-efficient, since N is very large (about 110,000)
C = cumsum(A.*B)
does the same thing without for loop. As EBH suggested in the comments if you are not sure whether A and B have same orientation, then use
C = cumsum(A(:).*B(:))

MATLAB: Find abbreviated version of matrix that minimises sum of matrix elements

I have a 151-by-151 matrix A. It's a correlation matrix, so there are 1s on the main diagonal and repeated values above and below the main diagonal. Each row/column represents a person.
For a given integer n I will seek to reduce the size of the matrix by kicking people out, such that I am left with a n-by-n correlation matrix that minimises the total sum of the elements. In addition to obtaining the abbreviated matrix, I also need to know the row number of the people who should be booted out of the original matrix (or their column number - they'll be the same number).
As a starting point I take A = tril(A), which will remove redundant off-diagonal elements from the correlation matrix.
So, if n = 4 and we have the hypothetical 5-by-5 matrix above, it's very clear that person 5 should be kicked out of the matrix, since that person is contributing a lot of very high correlations.
It's also clear that person 1 should not be kicked out, since that person contributes a lot of negative correlations, and thus brings down the sum of the matrix elements.
I understand that sum(A(:)) will sum everything in the matrix. However, I'm very unclear about how to search for the minimum possible answer.
I noticed a similar question Finding sub-matrix with minimum elementwise sum, which has a brute force solution as the accepted answer. While that answer works fine there it's impractical for a 151-by-151 matrix.
EDIT: I had thought of iterating, but I don't think that truly minimizes the sum of elements in the reduced matrix. Below I have a 4-by-4 correlation matrix in bold, with sums of rows and columns on the edges. It's apparent that with n = 2 the optimal matrix is the 2-by-2 identity matrix involving Persons 1 and 4, but according to the iterative scheme I would have kicked out Person 1 in the first phase of iteration, and so the algorithm makes a solution that is not optimal. I wrote a program that always generated optimal solutions, and it works well when n or k are small, but when trying to make an optimal 75-by-75 matrix from a 151-by-151 matrix I realised my program would take billions of years to terminate.
I vaguely recalled that sometimes these n choose k problems can be resolved with dynamic programming approaches that avoid recomputing things, but I can't work out how to solve this, and nor did googling enlighten me.
I'm willing to sacrifice precision for speed if there's no other option, or the best program will take more than a week to generate a precise solution. However, I'm happy to let a program run for up to a week if it will generate a precise solution.
If it's not possible for a program to optimise the matrix within an reasonable timeframe, then I would accept an answer that explains why n choose k tasks of this particular sort can't be resolved within reasonable timeframes.
This is an approximate solution using a genetic algorithm.
I started with your test case:
data_points = 10; % How many data points will be generated for each person, in order to create the correlation matrix.
num_people = 25; % Number of people initially.
to_keep = 13; % Number of people to be kept in the correlation matrix.
to_drop = num_people - to_keep; % Number of people to drop from the correlation matrix.
num_comparisons = 100; % Number of times to compare the iterative and optimization techniques.
for j = 1:data_points
rand_dat(j,:) = 1 + 2.*randn(num_people,1); % Generate random data.
end
A = corr(rand_dat);
then I defined the functions you need to evolve the genetic algorithm:
function individuals = user1205901individuals(nvars, FitnessFcn, gaoptions, num_people)
individuals = zeros(num_people,gaoptions.PopulationSize);
for cnt=1:gaoptions.PopulationSize
individuals(:,cnt)=randperm(num_people);
end
individuals = individuals(1:nvars,:)';
is the individual generation function.
function fitness = user1205901fitness(ind, A)
fitness = sum(sum(A(ind,ind)));
is the fitness evaluation function
function offspring = user1205901mutations(parents, options, nvars, FitnessFcn, state, thisScore, thisPopulation, num_people)
offspring=zeros(length(parents),nvars);
for cnt=1:length(parents)
original = thisPopulation(parents(cnt),:);
extraneus = setdiff(1:num_people, original);
original(fix(rand()*nvars)+1) = extraneus(fix(rand()*(num_people-nvars))+1);
offspring(cnt,:)=original;
end
is the function to mutate an individual
function children = user1205901crossover(parents, options, nvars, FitnessFcn, unused, thisPopulation)
children=zeros(length(parents)/2,nvars);
cnt = 1;
for cnt1=1:2:length(parents)
cnt2=cnt1+1;
male = thisPopulation(parents(cnt1),:);
female = thisPopulation(parents(cnt2),:);
child = union(male, female);
child = child(randperm(length(child)));
child = child(1:nvars);
children(cnt,:)=child;
cnt = cnt + 1;
end
is the function to generate a new individual coupling two parents.
At this point you can define your problem:
gaproblem2.fitnessfcn=#(idx)user1205901fitness(idx,A)
gaproblem2.nvars = to_keep
gaproblem2.options = gaoptions()
gaproblem2.options.PopulationSize=40
gaproblem2.options.EliteCount=10
gaproblem2.options.CrossoverFraction=0.1
gaproblem2.options.StallGenLimit=inf
gaproblem2.options.CreationFcn= #(nvars,FitnessFcn,gaoptions)user1205901individuals(nvars,FitnessFcn,gaoptions,num_people)
gaproblem2.options.CrossoverFcn= #(parents,options,nvars,FitnessFcn,unused,thisPopulation)user1205901crossover(parents,options,nvars,FitnessFcn,unused,thisPopulation)
gaproblem2.options.MutationFcn=#(parents, options, nvars, FitnessFcn, state, thisScore, thisPopulation) user1205901mutations(parents, options, nvars, FitnessFcn, state, thisScore, thisPopulation, num_people)
gaproblem2.options.Vectorized='off'
open the genetic algorithm tool
gatool
from the File menu select Import Problem... and choose gaproblem2 in the window that opens.
Now, run the tool and wait for the iterations to stop.
The gatool enables you to change hundreds of parameters, so you can trade speed for precision in the selected output.
The resulting vector is the list of indices that you have to keep in the original matrix so A(garesults.x,garesults.x) is the matrix with only the desired persons.
If I have understood you problem statement, you have a N x N matrix M (which happens to be a correlation matrix), and you wish to find for integer n where 2 <= n < N, a n x n matrix m which minimises the sum over all elements of m which I denote f(m)?
In Matlab it is fairly easy and fast to obtain a sub-matrix of a matrix (see for example Removing rows and columns from matrix in Matlab), and the function f is relatively inexpensive to evaluate for n = 151. So why can't you implement an algorithm that solves this backwards dynamically in a program as below where I have sketched out the pseudocode:
function reduceM(M, n){
m = M
for (ii = N to n+1) {
for (jj = 1 to ii) {
val(jj) = f(m) where mhas column and row jj removed, f(X) being summation over all elements of X
}
JJ(ii) = jj s.t. val(jj) is smallest
m = m updated by removing column and row JJ(ii)
}
}
In the end you end up with an m of dimension n which is the solution to your problem and a vector JJ which contains the indices removed at each iteration (you should easily be able to convert these back to indices applicable to the full matrix M)
There are several approaches to finding an approximate solution (eg. quadratic programming on relaxed problem or greedy search), but finding the exact solution is an NP-hard problem.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on binary quadratic programming, and you may want to consult the academic literature for more sophisticated algorithms.
Mathematically equivalent formulation:
Your problem is equivalent to:
For some symmetric, positive semi-definite matrix S
minimize (over vector x) x'*S*x
subject to 0 <= x(i) <= 1 for all i
sum(x)==n
x(i) is either 1 or 0 for all i
This is a quadratic programming problem where the vector x is restricted to taking only binary values. Quadratic programming where the domain is restricted to a set of discrete values is called mixed integer quadratic programming (MIQP). The binary version is sometimes called Binary Quadratic Programming (BQP). The last restriction, that x is binary, makes the problem substantially more difficult; it destroys the problem's convexity!
Quick and dirty approach to finding an approximate answer:
If you don't need a precise solution, something to play around with might be a relaxed version of the problem: drop the binary constraint. If you drop the constraint that x(i) is either 1 or 0 for all i, then the problem becomes a trivial convex optimization problem and can be solved nearly instantaneously (eg. by Matlab's quadprog). You could try removing entries that, on the relaxed problem, quadprog assigns the lowest values in the x vector, but this does not truly solve the original problem!
Note also that the relaxed problem gives you a lower bound on the optimal value of the original problem. If your discretized version of the solution to the relaxed problem leads to a value for the objective function close to the lower bound, there may be a sense in which this ad-hoc solution can't be that far off from the true solution.
To solve the relaxed problem, you might try something like:
% k is number of observations to drop
n = size(S, 1);
Aeq = ones(1,n)
beq = n-k;
[x_relax, f_relax] = quadprog(S, zeros(n, 1), [], [], Aeq, beq, zeros(n, 1), ones(n, 1));
f_relax = f_relax * 2; % Quadprog solves .5 * x' * S * x... so mult by 2
temp = sort(x_relax);
cutoff = temp(k);
x_approx = ones(n, 1);
x_approx(x_relax <= cutoff) = 0;
f_approx = x_approx' * S * x_approx;
I'm curious how good x_approx is? This doesn't solve your problem, but it might not be horrible! Note that f_relax is a lower bound on the solution to the original problem.
Software to solve your exact problem
You should check out this link and go down to the section on Mixed Integer Quadratic Programming (MIQP). It looks to me that Gurobi can solve problems of your type. Another list of solvers is here.
Working on a suggestion from Matthew Gunn and also some advice at the Gurobi forums, I came up with the following function. It seems to work pretty well.
I will award it the answer, but if someone can come up with code that works better I'll remove the tick from this answer and place it on their answer instead.
function [ values ] = the_optimal_method( CM , num_to_keep)
%the_iterative_method Takes correlation matrix CM and number to keep, returns list of people who should be kicked out
N = size(CM,1);
clear model;
names = strseq('x',[1:N]);
model.varnames = names;
model.Q = sparse(CM); % Gurobi needs a sparse matrix as input
model.A = sparse(ones(1,N));
model.obj = zeros(1,N);
model.rhs = num_to_keep;
model.sense = '=';
model.vtype = 'B';
gurobi_write(model, 'qp.mps');
results = gurobi(model);
values = results.x;
end

Matlab: Find first item in a vector that satisfies criteria, then skip over 100+ values to find the next first

In Matlab R2010a:
I am familiar with finding values based on criteria as well as finding the first value in a vector that satisfies criteria. However, how does one find X's and not Y's in the following example? In this case, X's are the first values of a group of values that are findable given my criteria, and there are multiple groups like this amidst thousands of junk values.
I have an vector with 10,000 or more values. Let J be junk values, while X and Y are both values my find criteria will pick up. X's are interesting to me because they are the 'first' values of a series of values that satisfy my criteria before becoming J's. Assume that there are hundreds or thousands more J's in between the X's and Y's, but here is a small example
[J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,X,Y,Y,Y,Y,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,X,Y,Y,Y,Y,J];
Assuming that you're not doing something to strange with those Xs and Ys, this is quite easy. You just need to find the beginning of each cluster:
% Create data using your example (Y can equal X, but we make it different)
J = 1; X = 2; Y = 3;
A = [J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,X,Y,Y,Y,Y,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,X,Y,Y,Y,Y,J];
a0 = (A==X); % Logical indices of A that match X condition
start = find([a0(1) diff(a0)]==1) % Start index of each group beginning with X
vals = A(start) % Should all be equal to X
which returns
start =
12 26
vals =
2 2
The J values don't even need to be all the same, just not equal to what ever you're detecting as X. You might also find my answer to this similar question helpful.
A = [J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,X,Y,Y,Y,Y,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,J,X,Y,Y,Y,Y,J]; % created vector
I = A(A~=J); % separated out all values that are not junk
V = I(I==I(1)); % separated all values that match the first non-junk value

MATLAB: Indexing a large matrix for Monte Carlo Simulation

I'm trying to index a large matrix in MATLAB that contains numbers monotonically increasing across rows, and across columns, i.e. if the matrix is called A, for every (i,j), A(i+1,j) > A(i,j) and A(i,j+1) > A(i,j).
I need to create a random number n and compare it with the values of the matrix A, to see where that random number should be placed in the matrix A. In other words, the value of n may not equal any of the contents of the matrix, but it may lie in between any two rows and any two columns, and that determines a "bin" that identifies its position in A. Once I find this position, I increment the corresponding index in a new matrix of the same size as A.
The problem is that I want to do this 1,000,000 times. I need to create a random number a million times and do the index-checking for each of these numbers. It's a Monte Carlo Simulation of a million photons coming from a point landing on a screen; the matrix A consists of angles in spherical coordinates, and the random number is the solid angle of each incident photon.
My code so far goes something like this (I haven't copy-pasted it here because the details aren't important):
for k = 1:1000000
n = rand(1,1)*pi;
for i = length(A(:,1))
for j = length(A(1,:))
if (n > A(i-1,j)) && (n < A(i+1,j)) && (n > A(i,j-1)) && (n < A(i,j+1))
new_img(i,j) = new_img(i,j) + 1; % new_img defined previously as zeros
end
end
end
end
The "if" statement is just checking to find the indices of A that form the bounds of n.
This works perfectly fine, but it takes ridiculously long, especially since my matrix A is an image of dimensions 11856 x 11000. is there a quicker / cleverer / easier way of doing this?
Thanks in advance.
You can get rid of the inner loops by performing the calculation on all elements of A at once. Also, you can create the random numbers all at once, instead of one at a time. Note that the outermost pixels of new_img can never be different from zero.
randomNumbers = rand(1,1000000)*pi;
new_img = zeros(size(A));
tmp_img = zeros(size(A)-2);
for r = randomNumbers
tmp_img = tmp_img + A(:,1:end-2)<r & A(:,3:end)>r & A(1:end-1,:)<r & A(3:end,:)>r;
end
new_img(2:end-1,2:end-1) = tmp_img;
/aside: If the arrays were smaller, I'd have used bsxfun for the comparison, but with the array sizes in the OP, the approach would run out of memory.
Are the values in A bin edges? Ie does A specify a grid? If this is the case then you can QUICKLY populate A using hist3.
Here is an example:
numRand = 1e
n = randi(100,1e6,1);
nMatrix = [floor(data./10), mod(data,10)];
edges = {0:1:9, 0:10:99};
A = hist3(dataMat, edges);
If your A doesn't specify a grid, then you should create all of your random values once and sort them. Then iterate through those values.
Because you know that n(i) >= n(i-1) you don't have to check bins that were too small for n(i-1). This is a very easy way to optimize away most redundant checks.
Here is a snippet that should help a lot in the inner loop, it finds the location of the greatest point that is smaller than your value.
idx1 = A<value
idx2 = A(idx1) == max(A(idx1))
if you want to find the exact location you can wrap it with a find.