Abbreviations in Sequence Regression Trees - traminer

I use Sequence Regression Trees to examine differences in career trajectories. Both in the plot as well as in the printed description of the tree, there are abbreviations that are not explained neither in the TraMineR help menu nor in Matthias Studer's paper on Sequence Regression Trees/Weighted Clusters.
Can you please let me know what the following abbreviations in the example below mean (d-plot on hierarchical advancement of 377 participants over 15 years (30 periods of 6 months each)? Thank you very much!
PRINTED OUTPUT
Dissimilarity tree:
Parameters: minSize=18.85, maxdepth=3, R=5000, pval=0.01
Formula: matOM ~ Age + Degree + Gender + YearsSinceGrad
Global R2: 0.011589
Fitted tree:
|-- Root (n: 377 disc: 0.55559)
|-> Age 0.011589
|-- <= 48 with NA (n: 260 disc: 0.53812)[(1,20)-(2,8)-(3,2)] *
|-- > 48 (n: 117 disc: 0.57369)[(1,14)-(2,12)-(3,4)] *
Question 1: disc = ? (--> Equals s2 in the plot, see below)
Question 2: [(1,20)-(2,8)-(3,2)] * = ? (Is this the most typical sequence?)
PLOTTED OUTPUT
Question 3: s2 = ? (Equals "disc" in printed output above)

Thank you for your remarks!
Question 1: Yes, 'disc' = 's2' in the plot (I have to fix this). This means "discrepancy". A high discrepancy means that there are a lot of variations accross the sequences. The range of the discrepancy is [0, maximum possible distance] and there is thus no threashold values. But you can compare some values.
The Levene test (which seems to be non-significant in your case, see the image) test the significativity of the difference in discrepancies. This test can be run with the dissassoc function. In the tree, the Levene test the equality of discrepancy in the terminal nodes (again, here differencies seems non significant).
Question 2: In the printed output, the sequence in square brackets [] is the centroid. This is the most central sequence of the subgroup.
Question 3: see answer to question 1.
Hope this helps.

Related

Formal quotation of smooth random terms in mgcv::gam mixed model

I have a mgcv::gam mixed model of the form:
m1 <- gam(Y ~ A + s(B, bs = "re"), data = dataframe, family = gaussian,
method = "REML")
The random term s(B, bs = "re") is quoted in summary(m1) as, for example,
Approximate significance of smooth terms:
# edf Ref.df F p-value
s(B) 4.486 5 97.195 6.7e-08 ***
My question is, how would I quote this result (statistic and P value) in a formal document, for example a technical report or paper?
For example, one possibility is
F[4.486,5] = 97.195, P = 6.7e-08
However, arguing against this idea, “reverse engineering” of the result using
pf(q= 97.195, df1= 4.486, df2= 5, lower.tail=FALSE)
gives an incorrect p value:
[1] 5.931567e-05
I would be very grateful for your advice. Many thanks for your help!
The F statistic in question doesn't actually follow an F with the degrees of freedom you have identified. The Ref df one is related to the test, but you'd need to read and understand Wood (2013) to fully grep how the degrees of freedom for the test are derived.
I would simply quote the statistic and the p-value and then cite Simon's paper if anyone wants to know how they were computed. I don't think you can easily get at the degrees of freedom that actually get used. (well, not without debugging the summary.gam() code and seeing how they are computed.)
References
Wood, S. N. 2013. A simple test for random effects in regression models. Biometrika 100: 1005–1010. doi:10.1093/biomet/ast038

Simplifying a 9 variable boolean expression

I am trying to create a tic-tac-toe program as a mental exercise and I have the board states stored as booleans like so:
http://i.imgur.com/xBiuoAO.png
I would like to simplify this boolean expression...
(a&b&c) | (d&e&f) | (g&h&i) | (a&d&g) | (b&e&h) | (c&f&i) | (a&e&i) | (g&e&c)
My first thoughts were to use a Karnaugh Map but there were no solvers online that supported 9 variables.
and heres the question:
First of all, how would I know if a boolean condition is already as simple as possible?
and second: What is the above boolean condition simplified?
2. Simplified condition:
The original expression
a&b&c|d&e&f|g&h&i|a&d&g|b&e&h|c&f&i|a&e&i|g&e&c
can be simplified to the following, knowing that & is more prioritary than |
e&(d&f|b&h|a&i|g&c)|a&(b&c|d&g)|i&(g&h|c&f)
which is 4 chars shorter, performs in the worst case 18 & and | evaluations (the original one counted 23)
There is no shorter boolean formula (see point below). If you switch to matrices, maybe you can find another solution.
1. Making sure we got the smallest formula
Normally, it is very hard to find the smallest formula. See this recent paper if you are more interested. But in our case, there is a simple proof.
We will reason about a formula being the smallest with respect to the formula size, where for a variable a, size(a)=1, for a boolean operation size(A&B) = size(A|B) = size(A) + 1 + size(B), and for negation size(!A) = size(A) (thus we can suppose that we have Negation Normal Form at no cost).
With respect to that size, our formula has size 37.
The proof that you cannot do better consists in first remarking that there are 8 rows to check, and that there is always a pair of letter distinguishing 2 different rows. Since we can regroup these 8 checks in no less than 3 conjuncts with the remaining variable, the number of variables in the final formula should be at least 8*2+3 = 19, from which we can deduce the minimal tree size.
Detailed proof
Let us suppose that a given formula F is the smallest and in NNF format.
F cannot contain negated variables like !a. For that, remark that F should be monotonic, that is, if it returns "true" (there is a winning row), then changing one of the variables from false to true should not change that result. According to Wikipedia, F can be written without negation. Even better, we can prove that we can remove the negation. Following this answer, we could convert back and from DNF format, removing negated variables in the middle or replacing them by true.
F cannot contain a sub-tree like a disjunction of two variables a|b.
For this formula to be useful and not exchangeable with either a or b, it would mean that there are contradicting assignments such that for example
F[a|b] = true and F[a] = false, therefore that a = false and b = true because of monotonicity. Also, in this case, turning b to false makes the whole formula false because false = F[a] = F[a|false] >= F[a|b](b = false).
Therefore there is a row passing by b which is the cause of the truth, and it cannot go through a, hence for example e = true and h = true.
And the checking of this row passes by the expression a|b for testing b. However, it means that with a,e,h being true and all other set to false, F is still true, which contradicts the purpose of the formula.
Every subtree looking like a&b checks a unique row. So the last letter should appear just above the corresponding disjunction (a&b|...)&{c somewhere for sure here}, or this leaf is useless and either a or b can be removed safely. Indeed, suppose that c does not appear above, and the game is where a&b&c is true and all other variables are false. Then the expression where c is supposed to be above returns false, so a&b will be always useless. So there is a shorter expression by removing a&b.
There are 8 independent branches, so there is at least 8 subtrees of type a&b. We cannot regroup them using a disjunction of 2 conjunctions since a, f and h never share the same rows, so there must be 3 outer variables. 8*2+3 makes 19 variables appear in the final formula.
A tree with 19 variables cannot have less than 18 operators, so in total the size have to be at least 19+18 = 37.
You can have variants of the above formula.
QED.
One option is doing the Karnaugh map manually. Since you have 9 variables, that makes for a 2^4 by 2^5 grid, which is rather large, and by the looks of the equation, probably not very interesting either.
By inspection, it doesn't look like a Karnaugh map will give you any useful information (Karnaugh maps basically reduce expressions such as ((!a)&b) | (a&b) into b), so in that sense of simplification, your expression is already as simple as it can get. But if you want to reduce the number of computations, you can factor out a few variables using the distributivity of the AND operators over ORs.
The best way to think of this is how a person would think of it. No person would say to themselves, "a and b and c, or if d and e and f," etc. They would say "Any three in a row, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally."
Also, instead of doing eight checks (3 rows, 3 columns, and 2 diagonals), you can do just four checks (three rows and one diagonal), then rotate the board 90 degrees, then do the same checks again.
Here's what you end up with. These functions all assume that the board is a three-by-three matrix of booleans, where true represents a winning symbol, and false represents a not-winning symbol.
def win?(board)
winning_row_or_diagonal?(board) ||
winning_row_or_diagonal?(rotate_90(board))
end
def winning_row_or_diagonal?(board)
winning_row?(board) || winning_diagonal?(board)
end
def winning_row?(board)
3.times.any? do |row_number|
three_in_a_row?(board, row_number, 0, 1, 0)
end
end
def winning_diagonal?(board)
three_in_a_row?(board, 0, 0, 1, 1)
end
def three_in_a_row?(board, x, y, delta_x, delta_y)
3.times.all? do |i|
board[x + i * delta_x][y + i * deltay]
end
end
def rotate_90(board)
board.transpose.map(&:reverse)
end
The matrix rotate is from here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3571501/238886
Although this code is quite a bit more verbose, each function is clear in its intent. Rather than a long boolean expresion, the code now expresses the rules of tic-tac-toe.
You know it's a simple as possible when there are no common sub-terms to extract (e.g. if you had "a&b" in two different trios).
You know your tic tac toe solution must already be as simple as possible because any pair of boxes can belong to at most only one winning line (only one straight line can pass through two given points), so (a & b) can't be reused in any other win you're checking for.
(Also, "simple" can mean a lot of things; specifying what you mean may help you answer your own question. )

How to visualize binary data?

I have a dataset 6x1000 of binary data (6 data points, 1000 boolean dimensions).
I perform cluster analysis on it
[idx, ctrs] = kmeans(x, 3, 'distance', 'hamming');
And I get the three clusters. How can I visualize my result?
I have 6 rows of data each having 1000 attributes; 3 of them should be alike or similar in a way. Applying clustering will reveal the clusters. Since I know the number of clusters
I only need to find similar rows. Hamming distance tell us the similarity between rows and the result is correct that there are 3 clusters.
[EDIT: for any reasonable data, kmeans will always finds asked number
of clusters]
I want to take that knowledge
and make it easily observable and understandable without having to write huge explanations.
Matlab's example is not suitable since it deals with numerical 2D data while my questions concerns n-dimensional categorical data.
The dataset is here http://pastebin.com/cEWJfrAR
[EDIT1: how to check if clusters are significant?]
For more information please visit the following link:
https://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/32090/discussion-between-oleg-komarov-and-justcurious
If the question is not clear ask, for anything you are missing.
For representing the differences between high-dimensional vectors or clusters, I have used Matlab's dendrogram function. For instance, after loading your dataset into the matrix x I ran the following code:
l = linkage(a, 'average');
dendrogram(l);
and got the following plot:
The height of the bar that connects two groups of nodes represents the average distance between members of those two groups. In this case it looks like (5 and 6), (1 and 2), and (3 and 4) are clustered.
If you would rather use the hamming distance rather than the euclidian distance (which linkage does by default), then you can just do
l = linkage(x, 'average', {'hamming'});
although it makes little difference to the plot.
You can start by visualizing your data with a 'barcode' plot and then labeling rows with the cluster group they belong:
% Create figure
figure('pos',[100,300,640,150])
% Calculate patch xy coordinates
[r,c] = find(A);
Y = bsxfun(#minus,r,[.5,-.5,-.5, .5])';
X = bsxfun(#minus,c,[.5, .5,-.5,-.5])';
% plot patch
patch(X,Y,ones(size(X)),'EdgeColor','none','FaceColor','k');
% Set axis prop
set(gca,'pos',[0.05,0.05,.9,.9],'ylim',[0.5 6.5],'xlim',[0.5 1000.5],'xtick',[],'ytick',1:6,'ydir','reverse')
% Cluster
c = kmeans(A,3,'distance','hamming');
% Add lateral labeling of the clusters
nc = numel(c);
h = text(repmat(1010,nc,1),1:nc,reshape(sprintf('%3d',c),3,numel(c))');
cmap = hsv(max(c));
set(h,{'Background'},num2cell(cmap(c,:),2))
Definition
The Hamming distance for binary strings a and b the Hamming distance is equal to the number of ones (population count) in a XOR b (see Hamming distance).
Solution
Since you have six data strings, so you could create a 6 by 6 matrix filled with the Hamming distance. The matrix would be symetric (distance from a to b is the same as distance from b to a) and the diagonal is 0 (distance for a to itself is nul).
For example, the Hamming distance between your first and second string is:
hamming_dist12 = sum(xor(x(1,:),x(2,:)));
Loop that and fill your matrix:
hamming_dist = zeros(6);
for i=1:6,
for j=1:6,
hamming_dist(i,j) = sum(xor(x(i,:),x(j,:)));
end
end
(And yes this code is a redundant given the symmetry and zero diagonal, but the computation is minimal and optimizing not worth the effort).
Print your matrix as a spreadsheet in text format, and let the reader find which data string is similar to which.
This does not use your "kmeans" approach, but your added description regarding the problem helped shaping this out-of-the-box answer. I hope it helps.
Results
0 182 481 495 490 500
182 0 479 489 492 488
481 479 0 180 497 517
495 489 180 0 503 515
490 492 497 503 0 174
500 488 517 515 174 0
Edit 1:
How to read the table? The table is a simple distance table. Each row and each column represent a series of data (herein a binary string). The value at the intersection of row 1 and column 2 is the Hamming distance between string 1 and string 2, which is 182. The distance between string 1 and 2 is the same as between string 2 and 1, this is why the matrix is symmetric.
Data analysis
Three clusters can readily be identified: 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6, whose Hamming distance are, respectively, 182, 180, and 174.
Within a cluster, the data has ~18% dissimilarity. By contrast, data not part of a cluster has ~50% dissimilarity (which is random given binary data).
Presentation
I recommend Kohonen network or similar technique to present your data in, say, 2 dimensions. In general this area is called Dimensionality reduction.
I you can also go simpler way, e.g. Principal Component Analysis, but there's no quarantee you can effectively remove 9998 dimensions :P
scikit-learn is a good Python package to get you started, similar exist in matlab, java, ect. I can assure you it's rather easy to implement some of these algorithms yourself.
Concerns
I have a concern over your data set though. 6 data points is really a small number. moreover your attributes seem boolean at first glance, if that's the case, manhattan distance if what you should use. I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) Hamming distance only makes sense if your attributes are somehow related, e.g. if attributes are actually a 1000-bit long binary string rather than 1000 independent 1-bit attributes.
Moreover, with 6 data points, you have only 2 ** 6 combinations, that means 936 out of 1000 attributes you have are either truly redundant or indistinguishable from redundant.
K-means almost always finds as many clusters as you ask for. To test significance of your clusters, run K-means several times with different initial conditions and check if you get same clusters. If you get different clusters every time or even from time to time, you cannot really trust your result.
I used a barcode type visualization for my data. The code which was posted here earlier by Oleg was too heavy for my solution (image files were over 500 kb) so I used image() to make the figures
function barcode(A)
B = (A+1)*2;
image(B);
colormap flag;
set(gca,'Ydir','Normal')
axis([0 size(B,2) 0 size(B,1)]);
ax = gca;
ax.TickDir = 'out'
end

Dot Product: * Command vs. Loop gives different results

I have two vectors in Matlab, z and beta. Vector z is a 1x17:
1 0.430742139435890 0.257372971229541 0.0965909090909091 0.694329541928697 0 0.394960106863064 0 0.100000000000000 1 0.264704325268675 0.387774594078319 0.269207605609567 0.472226643323253 0.750000000000000 0.513121013402805 0.697062571025173
... and beta is a 17x1:
6.55269487769363e+26
0
0
-56.3867588816768
-2.21310778926413
0
57.0726052009847
0
3.47223691057151e+27
-1.00249317882651e+27
3.38202232046686
1.16425987969027
0.229504956512063
-0.314243264212449
-0.257394312588330
0.498644243389556
-0.852510642195370
I'm dealing with some singularity issues, and I noticed that if I want to compute the dot product of z*beta, I potentially get 2 different solutions. If I use the * command, z*beta = 18.5045. If I write a loop to compute the dot product (below), I get a solution of 0.7287.
summation=0;
for i=1:17
addition=z(1,i)*beta(i);
summation=summation+addition;
end
Any idea what's going on here?
Here's a link to the data: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16594701/data.zip
The problem here is that addition of floating point numbers is not associative. When summing a sequence of numbers of comparable magnitude, this is not usually a problem. However, in your sequence, most numbers are around 1 or 10, while several entries have magnitude 10^26 or 10^27. Numerical problems are almost unavoidable in this situation.
The wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Accuracy_problems shows a worked example where (a + b) + c is not equal to a + (b + c), i.e. demonstrating that the order in which you add up floating point numbers does matter.
I would guess that this is a homework assignment designed to illustrate these exact issues. If not, I'd ask what the data represents to suss out the appropriate approach. It would probably be much more productive to find out why such large numbers are being produced in the first place than trying to make sense of the dot product that includes them.

Why does crossvalind fail?

I am using cross valind function on a very small data... However I observe that it gives me incorrect results for the same. Is this supposed to happen ?
I have Matlab R2012a and here is my output
crossvalind('KFold',1:1:11,5)
ans =
2
5
1
3
2
1
5
3
5
1
5
Notice the absence of set 4.. Is this a bug ? I expected atleast 2 elements per set but it gives me 0 in one... and it happens a lot that is the values are not uniformly distributed in the sets.
The help for crossvalind says that the form you are using is: crossvalind(METHOD, GROUP, ...). In this case, GROUP is the e.g. the class labels of your data. So 1:11 as the second argument is confusing here, because it suggests no two examples have the same label. I think this is sufficiently unusual that you shouldn't be surprised if the function does something strange.
I tried doing:
numel(unique(crossvalind('KFold', rand(11, 1) > 0.5, 5)))
and it reliably gave 5 as a result, which is what I would expect; my example would correspond to a two-class problem (I would guess that, as a general rule, you'd want something like numel(unique(group)) <= numel(group) / folds) - my hypothesis would be that it tries to have one example of each class in the Kth fold, and at least 2 examples in every other, with a difference between fold sizes of no more than 1 - but I haven't looked in the code to verify this.
It is possible that you mean to do:
crossvalind('KFold', 11, 5);
which would compute 5 folds for 11 data points - this doesn't attempt to do anything clever with labels, so you would be sure that there will be K folds.
However, in your problem, if you really have very few data points, then it is probably better to do leave-one-out cross validation, which you could do with:
crossvalind('LeaveMOut', 11, 1);
although a better method would be:
for leave_out=1:11
fold_number = (1:11) ~= leave_out;
<code here; where fold_number is 0, this is the leave-one-out example. fold_number = 1 means that the example is in the main fold.>
end