Gaining intuition from gradient descent update rule - machine-learning

Gradient descent update rule :
Using these values for this rule :
x = [10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100]
y = [4
7
8
4
5
6
7
5
3
4]
After two iterations using a learning rate of 0.07 outputs a value theta of
-73.396
-5150.803
After three iterations theta is :
1.9763e+04
1.3833e+06
So it appears theta gets larger after the second iteration which suggests the learning rate is too large.
So I set :
iterations = 300;
alpha = 0.000007;
theta is now :
0.0038504
0.0713561
Should these theta values allow me to draw a straight line the data, if so how ? I've just begun trying to understand gradient descent so please point out any errors in my logic.
source :
x = [10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100]
y = [4
7
8
4
5
6
7
5
3
4]
m = length(y)
x = [ones(m , 1) , x]
theta = zeros(2, 1);
iterations = 300;
alpha = 0.000007;
for iter = 1:iterations
theta = theta - ((1/m) * ((x * theta) - y)' * x)' * alpha;
theta
end
plot(x, y, 'o');
ylabel('Response Time')
xlabel('Time since 0')
Update :
So the product for each x value multiplied by theta plots a straight line :
plot(x(:,2), x*theta, '-')
Update 2 :
How does this relate to the linear regression model :
As the model also outputs a prediction value ?

Yes, you should be able to draw a straight line. In regression, gradient descent is an algorithm used to minimize the cost(error) function of your linear regression model. You use the gradient as a track to travel to the minimum of your cost function and the learning rate determines how quickly you travel down the path. Go too fast and you might pass the global minimum up. When you reached the desired minimum, plug those values of theta into your model to obtain your estimated model. In the one dimensional case, this is a straight line.
Check out this article, which gives a nice introduction to gradient descent.

Related

Cost function for logistic regression: weird/oscillating cost history

Background and my thought process:
I wanted to see if I could utilize logistic regression to create a hypothesis function that could predict recessions in the US economy by looking at a date and its corresponding leading economic indicators. Leading economic indicators are known to be good predictors of the economy.
To do this, I got data from OECD on the composite leading (economic) indicators from January, 1970 to July, 2021 in addition to finding when recessions occurred from 1970 to 2021. The formatted data that I use for training can be found further below.
Knowing the relationship between a recession and the Date/LEI wouldn't be a simple linear relationship, I decided to make more parameters for each datapoint so I could fit a polynominal equation to the data. Thus, each datapoint has the following parameters: Date, LEI, LEI^2, LEI^3, LEI^4, and LEI^5.
The Problem:
When I attempt to train my hypothesis function, I get a very strange cost history that seems to indicate that I either did not implement my cost function correctly or that my gradient descent was implemented incorrectly. Below is the imagine of my cost history:
I have tried implementing the suggestions from this post to fix my cost history, as originally I had the same NaN and Inf issues described in the post. While the suggestions helped me fix the NaN and Inf issues, I couldn't find anything to help me fix my cost function once it started oscillating. Some of the other fixes I've tried are adjusting the learning rate, double checking my cost and gradient descent, and introducing more parameters for datapoints (to see if a higher-degree polynominal equation would help).
My Code
The main file is predictor.m.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Program: Predictor.m
% Author: Hasec Rainn
% Desc: Predictor.m uses logistic regression
% to predict when economic recessions will occur
% in the United States. The data it uses is from the past 50 years.
%
% In particular, it uses dates and their corresponding economic leading
% indicators to learn a non-linear hypothesis function to fit to the data.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
LI_Data = dlmread("leading_indicators_formatted.csv"); %Get LI data
RD_Data = dlmread("recession_dates_formatted.csv"); %Get RD data
%our datapoints of interest: Dates and their corresponding
%leading Indicator values.
%We are going to increase the number of parameters per datapoint to allow
%for a non-linear hypothesis function. Specifically, let the 3rd, 4th
%5th, and 6th columns represent LI^2, LI^3, LI^4, and LI^5 respectively
X = LI_Data; %datapoints of interest (row = 1 datapoint)
X = [X, X(:,2).^2]; %Adding LI^2
X = [X, X(:,2).^3]; %Adding LI^3
X = [X, X(:,2).^4]; %Adding LI^4
X = [X, X(:,2).^5]; %Adding LI^5
%normalize data
X(:,1) = normalize( X(:,1) );
X(:,2) = normalize( X(:,2) );
X(:,3) = normalize( X(:,3) );
X(:,4) = normalize( X(:,4) );
X(:,5) = normalize( X(:,5) );
X(:,6) = normalize( X(:,6) );
%What we want to predict: if a recession happens or doesn't happen
%for a corresponding year
Y = RD_Data(:,2); %row = 1 datapoint
%defining a few useful variables:
nIter = 4000; %how many iterations we want to run gradient descent for
ndp = size(X, 1); %number of data points we have to work with
nPara = size(X,2); %number of parameters per data point
alpha = 1; %set the learning rate to 1
%Defining Theta
Theta = ones(1, nPara); %initialize the weights of Theta to 1
%Make a cost history so we can see if gradient descent is implemented
%correctly
costHist = zeros(nIter, 1);
for i = 1:nIter
costHist(i, 1) = cost(Theta, Y, X);
Theta = Theta - (sum((sigmoid(X * Theta') - Y) .* X));
end
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Function: Cost
% Author: Hasec Rainn
% Parameters: Theta (vector), Y (vector), X (matrix)
% Desc: Uses Theta, Y, and X to determine the cost of our current
% hypothesis function H_theta(X). Uses manual loop approach to
% avoid errors that arrise from log(0).
% Additionally, limits the range of H_Theta to prevent Inf
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
function expense = cost(Theta, Y, X)
m = size(X, 1); %number of data points
hTheta = sigmoid(X*Theta'); %hypothesis function
%limit the range of hTheta to [10^-50, 0.9999999999999]
for i=1:size(hTheta, 1)
if (hTheta(i) <= 10^(-50))
hTheta(i) = 10^(-50);
endif
if (hTheta(i) >= 0.9999999999999)
hTheta(i) = 0.9999999999999;
endif
endfor
expense = 0;
for i = 1:m
if Y(i) == 1
expense = expense + -log(hTheta(i));
endif
if Y(i) == 0
expense = expense + -log(1-hTheta(i));
endif
endfor
endfunction
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Function: normalization
% Author: Hasec Rainn
% Parameters: vector
% Desc: Takes in an input and normalizes its value(s)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
function n = normalize(data)
dMean = mean(data);
dStd = std(data);
n = (data - dMean) ./ dStd;
endfunction
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Function: Sigmoid
% Author: Hasec Rainn
% Parameters: scalar, vector, or matrix
% Desc: Takes an input and forces its value(s) to be between
% 0 and 1. If a matrix or vector, sigmoid is applied to
% each element.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
function result = sigmoid(z)
result = 1 ./ ( 1 + e .^(-z) );
endfunction
The data I used for my learning process can be found here: formatted LI data and recession dates data.
The problem you're running into here is your gradient descent function.
In particular, while you correctly calculate the cost portion (aka, (hTheta - Y) or (sigmoid(X * Theta') - Y) ), you do not calculate the derivative of the cost correctly; in Theta = Theta - (sum((sigmoid(X * Theta') - Y) .* X)), the .*X is not correct.
The derivative is equivalent to the cost of each datapoint (found in the vector hTheta - Y) multiplied by their corresponding parameter j, for every parameter. For more information, check out this article.

Gradient Descent failing for multiple variables, results in NaN

I am trying to implement gradient descent algorithm to minimize a cost function for multiple linear algorithm. I am using the concepts explained in the machine learning class by Andrew Ng. I am using Octave. However when I try to execute the code it seems to fail to provide the solution as my theta values computes to "NaN". I have attached the cost function code and the gradient descent code. Can someone please help.
Cost function :
function J = computeCostMulti(X, y, theta)
m = length(y); % number of training examples
J = 0;
h=(X*theta);
s= sum((h-y).^2);
J= s/(2*m);
Gradient Descent Code:
function [theta, J_history] = gradientDescentMulti(X, y, theta, alpha, num_iters)
m = length(y); % number of training examples
J_history = zeros(num_iters, 1);
for iter = 1:num_iters
a= X*theta -y;
b = alpha*(X'*a);
theta = theta - (b/m);
J_history(iter) = computeCostMulti(X, y, theta);
end
I implemented this algorithm in GNU Octave and I separated this into 2 different functions, first you need to define a gradient function
function [thetaNew] = compute_gradient (X, y, theta, m)
thetaNew = (X'*(X*theta'-y))*1/m;
end
then to compute the gradient descent algorithm use a different function
function [theta] = gd (X, y, alpha, num_iters)
theta = zeros(1,columns(X));
for iter = 1:num_iters,
theta = theta - alpha*compute_gradient(X,y,theta,rows(y))';
end
end
Edit 1
This algorithm works for both multiple linear regression (multiple independent variable) and linear regression of 1 independent variable, I tested this with this dataset
age height weight
41 62 115
21 62 140
31 62 125
21 64 125
31 64 145
41 64 135
41 72 165
31 72 190
21 72 175
31 66 150
31 66 155
21 64 140
For this example we want to predict
predicted weight = theta0 + theta1*age + theta2*height
I used these input values for alpha and num_iters
alpha=0.00037
num_iters=3000000
The output of runing gradient descent for this experiment is as follows:
theta =
-170.10392 -0.40601 4.99799
So the equation is
predicted weight = -170.10392 - .406*age + 4.997*height
This is almost absolute minimum of the gradient, since the true results for
this problem if using PSPP (open source alternative of SPSS) are
predicted weight = -175.17 - .40*age + 5.07*height
Hope this helps to confirm the gradient descent algorithm works same for multiple linear regression and standard linear regression
I did found the bug and it was not either in the logic of the cost function or gradient descent function. But indeed in the feature normilization logic and I was accidentally returning the wrong varible and hence it was cauing the output to be "NaN"
It is dumb mistake :
What I was doing previously
mu= mean(a);
sigma = std(a);
b=(X.-mu);
X= b./sigma;
Instead what I shoul be doing
function [X_norm, mu, sigma] = featureNormalize(X)
%FEATURENORMALIZE Normalizes the features in X
% FEATURENORMALIZE(X) returns a normalized version of X where
% the mean value of each feature is 0 and the standard deviation
% is 1. This is often a good preprocessing step to do when
% working with learning algorithms.
% You need to set these values correctly
X_norm = X;
mu = zeros(1, size(X, 2));
sigma = zeros(1, size(X, 2));
% ====================== YOUR CODE HERE ======================
mu= mean(X);
sigma = std(X);
a=(X.-mu);
X_norm= a./sigma;
% ============================================================
end
So clearly I should be using X_norm insated of X and that is what cauing the code to give wrong output

Understanding code wrt Logistic Regression using gradient descent

I was following Siraj Raval's videos on logistic regression using gradient descent :
1) Link to longer video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdM6ER7zTLk&t=2686s
2) Link to shorter video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRJCOz3AfYY&list=PL2-dafEMk2A7mu0bSksCGMJEmeddU_H4D
In the videos he talks about using gradient descent to reduce the error for a set number of iterations so that the function converges(slope becomes zero).
He also illustrates the process via code. The following are the two main functions from the code :
def step_gradient(b_current, m_current, points, learningRate):
b_gradient = 0
m_gradient = 0
N = float(len(points))
for i in range(0, len(points)):
x = points[i, 0]
y = points[i, 1]
b_gradient += -(2/N) * (y - ((m_current * x) + b_current))
m_gradient += -(2/N) * x * (y - ((m_current * x) + b_current))
new_b = b_current - (learningRate * b_gradient)
new_m = m_current - (learningRate * m_gradient)
return [new_b, new_m]
def gradient_descent_runner(points, starting_b, starting_m, learning_rate, num_iterations):
b = starting_b
m = starting_m
for i in range(num_iterations):
b, m = step_gradient(b, m, array(points), learning_rate)
return [b, m]
#The above functions are called below:
learning_rate = 0.0001
initial_b = 0 # initial y-intercept guess
initial_m = 0 # initial slope guess
num_iterations = 1000
[b, m] = gradient_descent_runner(points, initial_b, initial_m, learning_rate, num_iterations)
# code taken from Siraj Raval's github page
Why does the value of b & m continue to update for all the iterations? After a certain number of iterations, the function will converge, when we find the values of b & m that give slope = 0.
So why do we continue iteration after that point and continue updating b & m ?
This way, aren't we losing the 'correct' b & m values? How is learning rate helping the convergence process if we continue to update values after converging? Thus, why is there no check for convergence, and so how is this actually working?
In practice, most likely you will not reach to slope 0 exactly. Thinking of your loss function as a bowl. If your learning rate is too high, it is possible to overshoot over the lowest point of the bowl. On the contrary, if the learning rate is too low, your learning will become too slow and won't reach the lowest point of the bowl before all iterations are done.
That's why in machine learning, the learning rate is an important hyperparameter to tune.
Actually, once we reach a slope 0; b_gradient and m_gradient will become 0;
thus, for :
new_b = b_current - (learningRate * b_gradient)
new_m = m_current - (learningRate * m_gradient)
new_b and new_m will remain the old correct values; as nothing will be subtracted from them.

Gaussian filter in scipy

I want to apply a Gaussian filter of dimension 5x5 pixels on an image of 512x512 pixels. I found a scipy function to do that:
scipy.ndimage.filters.gaussian_filter(input, sigma, truncate=3.0)
How I choose the parameter of sigma to make sure that my Gaussian window is 5x5 pixels?
Check out the source code here: https://github.com/scipy/scipy/blob/master/scipy/ndimage/filters.py
You'll see that gaussian_filter calls gaussian_filter1d for each axis. In gaussian_filter1d, the width of the filter is determined implicitly by the values of sigma and truncate. In effect, the width w is
w = 2*int(truncate*sigma + 0.5) + 1
So
(w - 1)/2 = int(truncate*sigma + 0.5)
For w = 5, the left side is 2. The right side is 2 if
2 <= truncate*sigma + 0.5 < 3
or
1.5 <= truncate*sigma < 2.5
If you choose truncate = 3 (overriding the default of 4), you get
0.5 <= sigma < 0.83333...
We can check this by filtering an input that is all 0 except for a single 1 (i.e. find the impulse response of the filter) and counting the number of nonzero values in the filtered output. (In the following, np is numpy.)
First create an input with a single 1:
In [248]: x = np.zeros(9)
In [249]: x[4] = 1
Check the change in the size at sigma = 0.5...
In [250]: np.count_nonzero(gaussian_filter1d(x, 0.49, truncate=3))
Out[250]: 3
In [251]: np.count_nonzero(gaussian_filter1d(x, 0.5, truncate=3))
Out[251]: 5
... and at sigma = 0.8333...:
In [252]: np.count_nonzero(gaussian_filter1d(x, 0.8333, truncate=3))
Out[252]: 5
In [253]: np.count_nonzero(gaussian_filter1d(x, 0.8334, truncate=3))
Out[253]: 7
Following the excellent previous answer:
set sigma s = 2
set window size w = 5
evaluate the 'truncate' value: t = (((w - 1)/2)-0.5)/s
filtering: filtered_data = scipy.ndimage.filters.gaussian_filter(data, sigma=s, truncate=t)

logistic regression with gradient descent error

I am trying to implement logistic regression with gradient descent,
I get my Cost function j_theta for the number of iterations and fortunately my j_theta is decreasing when plotted j_theta against the number of iteration.
The data set I use is given below:
x=
1 20 30
1 40 60
1 70 30
1 50 50
1 50 40
1 60 40
1 30 40
1 40 50
1 10 20
1 30 40
1 70 70
y= 0
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
The code that I managed to write for logistic regression using Gradient descent is:
%1. The below code would load the data present in your desktop to the octave memory
x=load('stud_marks.dat');
%y=load('ex4y.dat');
y=x(:,3);
x=x(:,1:2);
%2. Now we want to add a column x0 with all the rows as value 1 into the matrix.
%First take the length
[m,n]=size(x);
x=[ones(m,1),x];
X=x;
% Now we limit the x1 and x2 we need to leave or skip the first column x0 because they should stay as 1.
mn = mean(x);
sd = std(x);
x(:,2) = (x(:,2) - mn(2))./ sd(2);
x(:,3) = (x(:,3) - mn(3))./ sd(3);
% We will not use vectorized technique, Because its hard to debug, We shall try using many for loops rather
max_iter=50;
theta = zeros(size(x(1,:)))';
j_theta=zeros(max_iter,1);
for num_iter=1:max_iter
% We calculate the cost Function
j_cost_each=0;
alpha=1;
theta
for i=1:m
z=0;
for j=1:n+1
% theta(j)
z=z+(theta(j)*x(i,j));
z
end
h= 1.0 ./(1.0 + exp(-z));
j_cost_each=j_cost_each + ( (-y(i) * log(h)) - ((1-y(i)) * log(1-h)) );
% j_cost_each
end
j_theta(num_iter)=(1/m) * j_cost_each;
for j=1:n+1
grad(j) = 0;
for i=1:m
z=(x(i,:)*theta);
z
h=1.0 ./ (1.0 + exp(-z));
h
grad(j) += (h-y(i)) * x(i,j);
end
grad(j)=grad(j)/m;
grad(j)
theta(j)=theta(j)- alpha * grad(j);
end
end
figure
plot(0:1999, j_theta(1:2000), 'b', 'LineWidth', 2)
hold off
figure
%3. In this step we will plot the graph for the given input data set just to see how is the distribution of the two class.
pos = find(y == 1); % This will take the postion or array number from y for all the class that has value 1
neg = find(y == 0); % Similarly this will take the position or array number from y for all class that has value 0
% Now we plot the graph column x1 Vs x2 for y=1 and y=0
plot(x(pos, 2), x(pos,3), '+');
hold on
plot(x(neg, 2), x(neg, 3), 'o');
xlabel('x1 marks in subject 1')
ylabel('y1 marks in subject 2')
legend('pass', 'Failed')
plot_x = [min(x(:,2))-2, max(x(:,2))+2]; % This min and max decides the length of the decision graph.
% Calculate the decision boundary line
plot_y = (-1./theta(3)).*(theta(2).*plot_x +theta(1));
plot(plot_x, plot_y)
hold off
%%%%%%% The only difference is In the last plot I used X where as now I use x whose attributes or features are featured scaled %%%%%%%%%%%
If you view the graph of x1 vs x2 the graph would look like,
After I run my code I create a decision boundary. The shape of the decision line seems to be okay but it is a bit displaced. The graph of the x1 vs x2 with decision boundary is given below:
![enter image description here][2]
Please suggest me where am I going wrong ....
Thanks:)
The New Graph::::
![enter image description here][1]
If you see the new graph the coordinated of x axis have changed ..... Thats because I use x(feature scalled) instead of X.
The problem lies in your cost function calculation and/or gradient calculation, your plotting function is fine. I ran your dataset on the algorithm I implemented for logistic regression but using the vectorized technique because in my opinion it is easier to debug.
The final values I got for theta were
theta =
[-76.4242,
0.8214,
0.7948]
I also used alpha = 0.3
I plotted the decision boundary and it looks fine, I would recommend using the vectorized form as it is easier to implement and to debug in my opinion.
I also think your implementation of gradient descent is not quite correct. 50 iterations is just not enough and the cost at the last iteration is not good enough. Maybe you should try to run it for more iterations with a stopping condition.
Also check this lecture for optimization techniques.
https://class.coursera.org/ml-006/lecture/37

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