I have all the data and an ODE system of three equations which has 9 unknown coefficients (a1, a2,..., a9).
dS/dt = a1*S+a2*D+a3*F
dD/dt = a4*S+a5*D+a6*F
dF/dt = a7*S+a8*D+a9*F
t = [1 2 3 4 5]
S = [17710 18445 20298 22369 24221]
D = [1357.33 1431.92 1448.94 1388.33 1468.95]
F = [104188 104792 112097 123492 140051]
How to find these coefficients (a1,..., a9) of an ODE using Matlab?
I can't spend too much time on this, but basically you need to use math to reduce the equation to something more meaningful:
your equation is of the order
dx/dt = A*x
ergo the solution is
x(t-t0) = exp(A*(t-t0)) * x(t0)
Thus
exp(A*(t-t0)) = x(t-t0) * Pseudo(x(t0))
Pseudo is the Moore-Penrose Pseudo-Inverse.
EDIT: Had a second look at my solution, and I didn't calculate the pseudo-inverse properly.
Basically, Pseudo(x(t0)) = x(t0)'*inv(x(t0)*x(t0)'), as x(t0) * Pseudo(x(t0)) equals the identity matrix
Now what you need to do is assume each time step (1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4) is an experiment (therefore t-t0=1), so the solution would be to:
1- Build your pseudo inverse:
xt = [S;D;F];
xt0 = xt(:,1:4);
xInv = xt0'*inv(xt0*xt0');
2- Get exponential result
xt1 = xt(:,2:5);
expA = xt1 * xInv;
3- Get the logarithm of the matrix:
A = logm(expA);
And since t-t0= 1, A is our solution.
And a simple proof to check
[t, y] = ode45(#(t,x) A*x,[1 5], xt(1:3,1));
plot (t,y,1:5, xt,'x')
You have a linear, coupled system of ordinary differential equations,
y' = Ay with y = [S(t); D(t); F(t)]
and you're trying to solve the inverse problem,
A = unknown
Interesting!
First line of attack
For given A, it is possible to solve such systems analytically (read the wiki for example).
The general solution for 3x3 design matrices A take the form
[S(t) D(t) T(t)].' = c1*V1*exp(r1*t) + c2*V2*exp(r2*t) + c3*V3*exp(r3*t)
with V and r the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of A, respectively, and c scalars that are usually determined by the problem's initial values.
Therefore, there would seem to be two steps to solve this problem:
Find vectors c*V and scalars r that best-fit your data
reconstruct A from the eigenvalues and eigenvectors.
However, going down this road is treaturous. You'd have to solve the non-linear least-squares problem for the sum-of-exponentials equation you have (using lsqcurvefit, for example). That would give you vectors c*V and scalars r. You'd then have to unravel the constants c somehow, and reconstruct the matrix A with V and r.
So, you'd have to solve for c (3 values), V (9 values), and r (3 values) to build the 3x3 matrix A (9 values) -- that seems too complicated to me.
Simpler method
There is a simpler way; use brute-force:
function test
% find
[A, fval] = fminsearch(#objFcn, 10*randn(3))
end
function objVal = objFcn(A)
% time span to be integrated over
tspan = [1 2 3 4 5];
% your desired data
S = [17710 18445 20298 22369 24221 ];
D = [1357.33 1431.92 1448.94 1388.33 1468.95 ];
F = [104188 104792 112097 123492 140051 ];
y_desired = [S; D; F].';
% solve the ODE
y0 = y_desired(1,:);
[~,y_real] = ode45(#(~,y) A*y, tspan, y0);
% objective function value: sum of squared quotients
objVal = sum((1 - y_real(:)./y_desired(:)).^2);
end
So far so good.
However, I tried both the complicated way and the brute-force approach above, but I found it very difficult to get the squared error anywhere near satisfyingly small.
The best solution I could find, after numerous attempts:
A =
1.216731997197118e+000 2.298119167536851e-001 -2.050312097914556e-001
-1.357306715497143e-001 -1.395572220988427e-001 2.607184719979916e-002
5.837808840775175e+000 -2.885686207763313e+001 -6.048741083713445e-001
fval =
3.868360951628554e-004
Which isn't bad at all :) But I would've liked a solution that was less difficult to find...
Related
How do I solve the following system of equations on MATLAB when one of the elements of the variable vector is a constant? Please do give the code if possible.
More generally, if the solution is to use symbolic math, how will I go about generating large number of variables, say 12 (rather than just two) even before solving them?
For example, create a number of symbolic variables using syms, and then make the system of equations like below.
syms a1 a2
A = [matrix]
x = [1;a1;a2];
y = [1;0;0];
eqs = A*x == y
sol = solve(eqs,[a1, a2])
sol.a1
sol.a2
In case you have a system with many variables, you could define all the symbols using syms, and solve it like above.
You could also perform a parameter optimization with fminsearch. First you have to define a cost function, in a separate function file, in this example called cost_fcn.m.
function J = cost_fcn(p)
% make sure p is a vector
p = reshape(p, [length(p) 1]);
% system of equations, can be linear or nonlinear
A = magic(12); % your system, I took some arbitrary matrix
sol = A*p;
% the goal of the system of equations to reach, can be zero, or some other
% vector
goal = zeros(12,1);
% calculate the error
error = goal - sol;
% Use a cost criterion, e.g. sum of squares
J = sum(error.^2);
end
This cost function will contain your system of equations, and goal solution. This can be any kind of system. The vector p will contain the parameters that are being estimated, which will be optimized, starting from some initial guess. To do the optimization, you will have to create a script:
% initial guess, can be zeros, or some other starting point
p0 = zeros(12,1);
% do the parameter optimization
p = fminsearch(#cost_fcn, p0);
In this case p0 is the initial guess, which you provide to fminsearch. Then the values of this initial guess will be incremented, until a minimum to the cost function is found. When the parameter optimization is finished, p will contain the parameters that will result in the lowest error for your system of equations. It is however possible that this is a local minimum, if there is no exact solution to the problem.
Your system is over-constrained, meaning you have more equations than unknown, so you can't solve it. What you can do is find a least square solution, using mldivide. First re-arrange your equations so that you have all the constant terms on the right side of the equal sign, then use mldivide:
>> A = [0.0297 -1.7796; 2.2749 0.0297; 0.0297 2.2749]
A =
0.029700 -1.779600
2.274900 0.029700
0.029700 2.274900
>> b = [1-2.2749; -0.0297; 1.7796]
b =
-1.274900
-0.029700
1.779600
>> A\b
ans =
-0.022191
0.757299
I have a 30x30 matrix as a base matrix (OD_b1), I also have two base vectors (bg and Ag). My aim is to optimize a matrix (X) who's dimensions are 30X30 such that:
1) the squared difference between vector (bg) and vector of sum of all the columns is minimized.
2)the squared difference between vector (Ag) and vector of sum of all rows is minimized.
3)the squared difference between the elements of matrix (X) and matrix (OD_b1) is minimized.
The mathematical form of the equation is as follows:
I have tried this:
fun=#(X)transpose(bg-sum(X,2))*(bg-sum(X,2))+ (Ag-sum(X,1))*transpose(Ag-sum(X,1))+sumsqr(X_b-X);
[val,X]=fmincon(fun,OD_b1,AA,BB,Aeq,beq,LB,UB)
I don't get errors but it seems like it's stuck.
Is it because I have too many variables or is there another reason?
Thanks in advance
This is a simple, unconstrained least squares problem and hence has a simple solution that can be expressed as the solution to a linear system.
I will show you (1) the precise and efficient way to solve this and (2) how to solve with fmincon.
The precise, efficient solution:
Problem setup
Just so we're on the same page, I initialize the variables as follows:
n = 30;
Ag = randn(n, 1); % observe the dimensions
X_b = randn(n, n);
bg = randn(n, 1);
The code:
A1 = kron(ones(1,n), eye(n));
A2 = kron(eye(n), ones(1,n));
A = (A1'*A1 + A2'*A2 + eye(n^2));
b = A1'*bg + A2'*Ag + X_b(:);
x = A \ b; % solves A*x = b
Xstar = reshape(x, n, n);
Why it works:
I first reformulated your problem so the objective is a vector x, not a matrix X. Observe that z = bg - sum(X,2) is equivalent to:
x = X(:) % vectorize X
A1 = kron(ones(1,n), eye(n)); % creates a special matrix that sums up
% stuff appropriately
z = A1*x;
Similarly, A2 is setup so that A2*x is equivalent to Ag'-sum(X,1). Your problem is then equivalent to:
minimize (over x) (bg - A1*x)'*(bg - A1*x) + (Ag - A2*x)'*(Ag - A2*x) + (y - x)'*(y-x) where y = Xb(:). That is, y is a vectorized version of Xb.
This problem is convex and the first order condition is a necessary and sufficient condition for the optimum. Take the derivative with respect to x and that equation will define your solution! Sample example math for almost equivalent (but slightly simpler problem is below):
minimize(over x) (b - A*x)'*(b - A*x) + (y - x)' * (y - x)
rewriting the objective:
b'b- b'Ax - x'A'b + x'A'Ax +y'y - 2y'x+x'x
Is equivalent to:
minimize(over x) (-2 b'A - 2y'*I) x + x' ( A'A + I) * x
the first order condition is:
(A'A+I+(A'A+I)')x -2A'b-2I'y = 0
(A'A+I) x = A'b+I'y
Your problem is essentially the same. It has the first order condition:
(A1'*A1 + A2'*A2 + I)*x = A1'*bg + A2'*Ag + y
How to solve with fmincon
You can do the following:
f = #(X) transpose(bg-sum(X,2))*(bg-sum(X,2)) + (Ag'-sum(X,1))*transpose(Ag'-sum(X,1))+sum(sum((X_b-X).^2));
o = optimoptions('fmincon');%MaxFunEvals',30000);
o.MaxFunEvals = 30000;
Xstar2 = fmincon(f,zeros(n,n),[],[],[],[],[],[],[],o);
You can then check the answers are about the same with:
normdif = norm(Xstar - Xstar2)
And you can see that gap is small, but that the linear algebra based solution is somewhat more precise:
gap = f(Xstar2) - f(Xstar)
If the fmincon approach hangs, try it with a smaller n just to gain confidence that my linear algebra based solution is more precise, way way faster etc... n = 30 is solving a 30^2 = 900 variable optimization problem: not easy. With the linear algebra approach, you can go up to n = 100 (i.e. 10000 variable problem) or even larger.
I would probably solve this as a QP using quadprog using the following reformulation (keeping the objective as simple as possible to make the problem "less nonlinear"):
min sum(i,v(i)^2)+sum(i,w(i)^2)+sum((i,j),z(i,j)^2)
v = bg - sum(c,x)
w = ag - sum(r,x)
Z = xbase-x
The QP solver is more precise (no gradients using finite differences). This approach also allows you to add additional bounds and linear equality and inequality constraints.
The other suggestion to form the first order conditions explicitly is also a good one: it also has no issue with imprecise gradients (the first order conditions are linear). I usually prefer a quadratic model because of its flexibility.
I asked this question in Math Stackexchange, but it seems it didn't get enough attention there so I am asking it here. https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1729946/why-do-we-say-svd-can-handle-singular-matrx-when-doing-least-square-comparison?noredirect=1#comment3530971_1729946
I learned from some tutorials that SVD should be more stable than QR decomposition when solving Least Square problem, and it is able to handle singular matrix. But the following example I wrote in matlab seems to support the opposite conclusion. I don't have a deep understanding of SVD, so if you could look at my questions in the old post in Math StackExchange and explain it to me, I would appreciate a lot.
I use a matrix that have a large condition number(e+13). The result shows SVD get a much larger error(0.8) than QR(e-27)
% we do a linear regression between Y and X
data= [
47.667483331 -122.1070832;
47.667483331001 -122.1070832
];
X = data(:,1);
Y = data(:,2);
X_1 = [ones(length(X),1),X];
%%
%SVD method
[U,D,V] = svd(X_1,'econ');
beta_svd = V*diag(1./diag(D))*U'*Y;
%% QR method(here one can also use "\" operator, which will get the same result as I tested. I just wrote down backward substitution to educate myself)
[Q,R] = qr(X_1)
%now do backward substitution
[nr nc] = size(R)
beta_qr=[]
Y_1 = Q'*Y
for i = nc:-1:1
s = Y_1(i)
for j = m:-1:i+1
s = s - R(i,j)*beta_qr(j)
end
beta_qr(i) = s/R(i,i)
end
svd_error = 0;
qr_error = 0;
for i=1:length(X)
svd_error = svd_error + (Y(i) - beta_svd(1) - beta_svd(2) * X(i))^2;
qr_error = qr_error + (Y(i) - beta_qr(1) - beta_qr(2) * X(i))^2;
end
You SVD-based approach is basically the same as the pinv function in MATLAB (see Pseudo-inverse and SVD). What you are missing though (for numerical reasons) is using a tolerance value such that any singular values less than this tolerance are treated as zero.
If you refer to edit pinv.m, you can see something like the following (I won't post the exact code here because the file is copyrighted to MathWorks):
[U,S,V] = svd(A,'econ');
s = diag(S);
tol = max(size(A)) * eps(norm(s,inf));
% .. use above tolerance to truncate singular values
invS = diag(1./s);
out = V*invS*U';
In fact pinv has a second syntax where you can explicitly specify the tolerance value pinv(A,tol) if the default one is not suitable...
So when solving a least-squares problem of the form minimize norm(A*x-b), you should understand that the pinv and mldivide solutions have different properties:
x = pinv(A)*b is characterized by the fact that norm(x) is smaller than the norm of any other solution.
x = A\b has the fewest possible nonzero components (i.e sparse).
Using your example (note that rcond(A) is very small near machine epsilon):
data = [
47.667483331 -122.1070832;
47.667483331001 -122.1070832
];
A = [ones(size(data,1),1), data(:,1)];
b = data(:,2);
Let's compare the two solutions:
x1 = A\b;
x2 = pinv(A)*b;
First you can see how mldivide returns a solution x1 with one zero component (this is obviously a valid solution because you can solve both equations by multiplying by zero as in b + a*0 = b):
>> sol = [x1 x2]
sol =
-122.1071 -0.0537
0 -2.5605
Next you see how pinv returns a solution x2 with a smaller norm:
>> nrm = [norm(x1) norm(x2)]
nrm =
122.1071 2.5611
Here is the error of both solutions which is acceptably very small:
>> err = [norm(A*x1-b) norm(A*x2-b)]
err =
1.0e-11 *
0 0.1819
Note that use mldivide, linsolve, or qr will give pretty much same results:
>> x3 = linsolve(A,b)
Warning: Matrix is close to singular or badly scaled. Results may be inaccurate. RCOND = 2.159326e-16.
x3 =
-122.1071
0
>> [Q,R] = qr(A); x4 = R\(Q'*b)
x4 =
-122.1071
0
SVD can handle rank-deficiency. The diagonal matrix D has a near-zero element in your code and you need use pseudoinverse for SVD, i.e. set the 2nd element of 1./diag(D) to 0 other than the huge value (10^14). You should find SVD and QR have equally good accuracy in your example. For more information, see this document http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall11/cos323/notes/cos323_f11_lecture09_svd.pdf
Try this SVD version called block SVD - you just set the iterations equal to the accuracy you want - usually 1 is enough. If you want all the factors (this has a default # selected for factor reduction) then edit the line k= to the size(matrix) if I recall my MATLAB correctly
A= randn(100,5000);
A=corr(A);
% A is your correlation matrix
tic
k = 1000; % number of factors to extract
bsize = k +50;
block = randn(size(A,2),bsize);
iter = 2; % could set via tolerance
[block,R] = qr(A*block,0);
for i=1:iter
[block,R] = qr(A*(A'*block),0);
end
M = block'*A;
% Economy size dense SVD.
[U,S] = svd(M,0);
U = block*U(:,1:k);
S = S(1:k,1:k);
% Note SVD of a symmetric matrix is:
% A = U*S*U' since V=U in this case, S=eigenvalues, U=eigenvectors
V=real(U*sqrt(S)); %scaling matrix for simulation
toc
% reduced randomized matrix for simulation
sims = 2000;
randnums = randn(k,sims);
corrrandnums = V*randnums;
est_corr_matrix = corr(corrrandnums');
total_corrmatrix_difference =sum(sum(est_corr_matrix-A))
Summary: This question deals with the improvement of an algorithm for the computation of linear regression.
I have a 3D (dlMAT) array representing monochrome photographs of the same scene taken at different exposure times (the vector IT) . Mathematically, every vector along the 3rd dimension of dlMAT represents a separate linear regression problem that needs to be solved. The equation whose coefficients need to be estimated is of the form:
DL = R*IT^P, where DL and IT are obtained experimentally and R and P must be estimated.
The above equation can be transformed into a simple linear model after applying a logarithm:
log(DL) = log(R) + P*log(IT) => y = a + b*x
Presented below is the most "naive" way to solve this system of equations, which essentially involves iterating over all "3rd dimension vectors" and fitting a polynomial of order 1 to (IT,DL(ind1,ind2,:):
%// Define some nominal values:
R = 0.3;
IT = 600:600:3000;
P = 0.97;
%// Impose some believable spatial variations:
pMAT = 0.01*randn(3)+P;
rMAT = 0.1*randn(3)+R;
%// Generate "fake" observation data:
dlMAT = bsxfun(#times,rMAT,bsxfun(#power,permute(IT,[3,1,2]),pMAT));
%// Regression:
sol = cell(size(rMAT)); %// preallocation
for ind1 = 1:size(dlMAT,1)
for ind2 = 1:size(dlMAT,2)
sol{ind1,ind2} = polyfit(log(IT(:)),log(squeeze(dlMAT(ind1,ind2,:))),1);
end
end
fittedP = cellfun(#(x)x(1),sol); %// Estimate of pMAT
fittedR = cellfun(#(x)exp(x(2)),sol); %// Estimate of rMAT
The above approach seems like a good candidate for vectorization, since it does not utilize MATLAB's main strength that is MATrix operations. For this reason, it does not scale very well and takes much longer to execute than I think it should.
There exist alternative ways to perform this computation based on matrix division, as demonstrated here and here, which involve something like this:
sol = [ones(size(x)),log(x)]\log(y);
That is, appending a vector of 1s to the observations, followed by mldivide to solve the equation system.
The main challenge I'm facing is how to adapt my data to the algorithm (or vice versa).
Question #1: How can the matrix-division-based solution be extended to solve the problem presented above (and potentially replace the loops I am using)?
Question #2 (bonus): What is the principle behind this matrix-division-based solution?
The secret ingredient behind the solution that includes matrix division is the Vandermonde matrix. The question discusses a linear problem (linear regression), and those can always be formulated as a matrix problem, which \ (mldivide) can solve in a mean-square error sense‡. Such an algorithm, solving a similar problem, is demonstrated and explained in this answer.
Below is benchmarking code that compares the original solution with two alternatives suggested in chat1, 2 :
function regressionBenchmark(numEl)
clc
if nargin<1, numEl=10; end
%// Define some nominal values:
R = 5;
IT = 600:600:3000;
P = 0.97;
%// Impose some believable spatial variations:
pMAT = 0.01*randn(numEl)+P;
rMAT = 0.1*randn(numEl)+R;
%// Generate "fake" measurement data using the relation "DL = R*IT.^P"
dlMAT = bsxfun(#times,rMAT,bsxfun(#power,permute(IT,[3,1,2]),pMAT));
%% // Method1: loops + polyval
disp('-------------------------------Method 1: loops + polyval')
tic; [fR,fP] = method1(IT,dlMAT); toc;
fprintf(1,'Regression performance:\nR: %d\nP: %d\n',norm(fR-rMAT,1),norm(fP-pMAT,1));
%% // Method2: loops + Vandermonde
disp('-------------------------------Method 2: loops + Vandermonde')
tic; [fR,fP] = method2(IT,dlMAT); toc;
fprintf(1,'Regression performance:\nR: %d\nP: %d\n',norm(fR-rMAT,1),norm(fP-pMAT,1));
%% // Method3: vectorized Vandermonde
disp('-------------------------------Method 3: vectorized Vandermonde')
tic; [fR,fP] = method3(IT,dlMAT); toc;
fprintf(1,'Regression performance:\nR: %d\nP: %d\n',norm(fR-rMAT,1),norm(fP-pMAT,1));
function [fittedR,fittedP] = method1(IT,dlMAT)
sol = cell(size(dlMAT,1),size(dlMAT,2));
for ind1 = 1:size(dlMAT,1)
for ind2 = 1:size(dlMAT,2)
sol{ind1,ind2} = polyfit(log(IT(:)),log(squeeze(dlMAT(ind1,ind2,:))),1);
end
end
fittedR = cellfun(#(x)exp(x(2)),sol);
fittedP = cellfun(#(x)x(1),sol);
function [fittedR,fittedP] = method2(IT,dlMAT)
sol = cell(size(dlMAT,1),size(dlMAT,2));
for ind1 = 1:size(dlMAT,1)
for ind2 = 1:size(dlMAT,2)
sol{ind1,ind2} = flipud([ones(numel(IT),1) log(IT(:))]\log(squeeze(dlMAT(ind1,ind2,:)))).'; %'
end
end
fittedR = cellfun(#(x)exp(x(2)),sol);
fittedP = cellfun(#(x)x(1),sol);
function [fittedR,fittedP] = method3(IT,dlMAT)
N = 1; %// Degree of polynomial
VM = bsxfun(#power, log(IT(:)), 0:N); %// Vandermonde matrix
result = fliplr((VM\log(reshape(dlMAT,[],size(dlMAT,3)).')).');
%// Compressed version:
%// result = fliplr(([ones(numel(IT),1) log(IT(:))]\log(reshape(dlMAT,[],size(dlMAT,3)).')).');
fittedR = exp(real(reshape(result(:,2),size(dlMAT,1),size(dlMAT,2))));
fittedP = real(reshape(result(:,1),size(dlMAT,1),size(dlMAT,2)));
The reason why method 2 can be vectorized into method 3 is essentially that matrix multiplication can be separated by the columns of the second matrix. If A*B produces matrix X, then by definition A*B(:,n) gives X(:,n) for any n. Moving A to the right-hand side with mldivide, this means that the divisions A\X(:,n) can be done in one go for all n with A\X. The same holds for an overdetermined system (linear regression problem), in which there is no exact solution in general, and mldivide finds the matrix that minimizes the mean-square error. In this case too, the operations A\X(:,n) (method 2) can be done in one go for all n with A\X (method 3).
The implications of improving the algorithm when increasing the size of dlMAT can be seen below:
For the case of 500*500 (or 2.5E5) elements, the speedup from Method 1 to Method 3 is about x3500!
It is also interesting to observe the output of profile (here, for the case of 500*500):
Method 1
Method 2
Method 3
From the above it is seen that rearranging the elements via squeeze and flipud takes up about half (!) of the runtime of Method 2. It is also seen that some time is lost on the conversion of the solution from cells to matrices.
Since the 3rd solution avoids all of these pitfalls, as well as the loops altogether (which mostly means re-evaluation of the script on every iteration) - it unsurprisingly results in a considerable speedup.
Notes:
There was very little difference between the "compressed" and the "explicit" versions of Method 3 in favor of the "explicit" version. For this reason it was not included in the comparison.
A solution was attempted where the inputs to Method 3 were gpuArray-ed. This did not provide improved performance (and even somewhat degradaed them), possibly due to wrong implementation, or the overhead associated with copying matrices back and forth between RAM and VRAM.
We have an equation similar to the Fredholm integral equation of second kind.
To solve this equation we have been given an iterative solution that is guaranteed to converge for our specific equation. Now our only problem consists in implementing this iterative prodedure in MATLAB.
For now, the problematic part of our code looks like this:
function delta = delta(x,a,P,H,E,c,c0,w)
delt = #(x)delta_a(x,a,P,H,E,c0,w);
for i=1:500
delt = #(x)delt(x) - 1/E.*integral(#(xi)((c(1)-c(2)*delt(xi))*ms(xi,x,a,P,H,w)),0,a-0.001);
end
delta=delt;
end
delta_a is a function of x, and represent the initial value of the iteration. ms is a function of x and xi.
As you might see we want delt to depend on both x (before the integral) and xi (inside of the integral) in the iteration. Unfortunately this way of writing the code (with the function handle) does not give us a numerical value, as we wish. We can't either write delt as two different functions, one of x and one of xi, since xi is not defined (until integral defines it). So, how can we make sure that delt depends on xi inside of the integral, and still get a numerical value out of the iteration?
Do any of you have any suggestions to how we might solve this?
Using numerical integration
Explanation of the input parameters: x is a vector of numerical values, all the rest are constants. A problem with my code is that the input parameter x is not being used (I guess this means that x is being treated as a symbol).
It looks like you can do a nesting of anonymous functions in MATLAB:
f =
#(x)2*x
>> ff = #(x) f(f(x))
ff =
#(x)f(f(x))
>> ff(2)
ans =
8
>> f = ff;
>> f(2)
ans =
8
Also it is possible to rebind the pointers to the functions.
Thus, you can set up your iteration like
delta_old = #(x) delta_a(x)
for i=1:500
delta_new = #(x) delta_old(x) - integral(#(xi),delta_old(xi))
delta_old = delta_new
end
plus the inclusion of your parameters...
You may want to consider to solve a discretized version of your problem.
Let K be the matrix which discretizes your Fredholm kernel k(t,s), e.g.
K(i,j) = int_a^b K(x_i, s) l_j(s) ds
where l_j(s) is, for instance, the j-th lagrange interpolant associated to the interpolation nodes (x_i) = x_1,x_2,...,x_n.
Then, solving your Picard iterations is as simple as doing
phi_n+1 = f + K*phi_n
i.e.
for i = 1:N
phi = f + K*phi
end
where phi_n and f are the nodal values of phi and f on the (x_i).