Setting up target values for Deep Q-Learning - machine-learning

For standard Q-Learning combined with a neural network things are more or less easy.
One stores (s,a,r,s’) during interaction with the environment and use
target = Qnew(s,a) = (1 - alpha) * Qold(s,a) + alpha * ( r + gamma * max_{a’} Qold(s’, a’) )
as target values for the neural network approximation the Q-function. So the input of the ANN is (s,a) and the output is the scalar Qnew(s,a). Deep Q-Learning papers/tutorials change the structure of the Q-function. Instead of providing a single Q-value for the pair (s,a) it should now provide the Q-Values of all possible actions for a state s, so it is Q(s) instead of Q(s,a).
There comes my problem. The data base filled with (s,a,r,s’) does for a specific state s does not contain the reward for all actions. Only for some, maybe just one action. So how to setup the target values for the network Q(s) = [Q(a_1), …. , Q(a_n) ] without having all rewards for the state s in the database? I have seen different loss functions/target values but all contain the reward.
As you see; I am puzzled. Does someone help me? There are a lot of tutorials on the web but this step is in general poorly descried and even less motivated looking at the theory…

You just get the target value corresponding to the action which exists on the observation s,a,r,s'. Basically you get the target value for all actions, and then choose the maximum of them as you wrote yourself: max_{a'} Qold(s', a'). Then, it is added to the r(s,a) and the result is the target value. For example, assume you have 10 actions, and observation is (s_0, a=5, r(s_0,a=5)=123, s_1). Then, the target value is r(s_0,a=5)+ \gamma* \max_{a'} Q_target(s_1,a'). For example, with tensorflow it could be something like:
Q_Action = tf.reduce_sum(tf.multiply(Q_values,tf.one_hot(action,output_dim)), axis = 1) # dim: [batchSize , ]
in which Q_values is of size batchSize, output_dim. So, the output is a vector of size batchSize, and then there exists a vector of same size obtained as the target value. The loss is the square of the differences of them.
When you calculate loss value, also you only run the backward on the existing action and the gradient from the other action is just zero.
So, you only need the reward of the existing action.

Related

setting state covariance matrix in statsmodel.tsa.UnobservedComponents

I am trying to impose smoothness on the state covariance matrix, while using frequency domain seasonal components. I initiate my model as follows with a local level component and a particular frequency and harmonics specified.
model = sm.tsa.UnobservedComponents(df, level='llevel',
freq_seasonal=[{'period':130.51, 'harmonics':2}],
stochastic_freq_seasonal=[True])
res = model.fit()
>>>
sigma2.irregular 0.730561
sigma2.level 0.187833
sigma2.freq_seasonal_130.51(2) 0.003718
This will generate some parameter values as noted above. Now Since I am using 2 harmonics there are in fact 4 error variance and I want to set them as follows
model.ssm.state_cov[1,1,0] = 17.65
model.ssm.state_cov[2,2,0] = 0.3102
model.ssm.state_cov[3,3,0] = 17.65
model.ssm.state_cov[4,4,0] = 0.3102
And then get a 'smooth' and 'filter' object and see how they do. I know i can set the parameters under res.params, but these 4 do no appear in the parameter list. Is there a way to do it in this library?
The implementation in Statsmodels assumes a single common error variance parameter across all of the seasonal harmonic error terms, as in Harvey (1989, "Forecasting, Structural Time Series, and the Kalman Filter") section 2.3.4.
As a result, it's not particularly easy to set those parameters as you have suggested and then estimate the remaining parameters.
However, it is possible. For this specific case, you can set the variance parameters to 1 and then put the square root of the variance terms you actually want into the diagonals of the selection matrix, as follows:
model = sm.tsa.UnobservedComponents(df, level='llevel',
freq_seasonal=[{'period':130.51, 'harmonics':2}],
stochastic_freq_seasonal=[True])
model['selection', 1:, 1:] = np.diag([17.65, 0.3102, 17.65, 0.3102])**0.5
with model.fix_params({'sigma2.freq_seasonal_130.51(2)': 1}):
res = model.fit()

How to use DeepQLearning in Julia for very large states?

I would like to use the DeepQLearning.jl package from https://github.com/JuliaPOMDP/DeepQLearning.jl. In order to do so, we have to do something similar to
using DeepQLearning
using POMDPs
using Flux
using POMDPModels
using POMDPSimulators
using POMDPPolicies
# load MDP model from POMDPModels or define your own!
mdp = SimpleGridWorld();
# Define the Q network (see Flux.jl documentation)
# the gridworld state is represented by a 2 dimensional vector.
model = Chain(Dense(2, 32), Dense(32, length(actions(mdp))))
exploration = EpsGreedyPolicy(mdp, LinearDecaySchedule(start=1.0, stop=0.01, steps=10000/2))
solver = DeepQLearningSolver(qnetwork = model, max_steps=10000,
exploration_policy = exploration,
learning_rate=0.005,log_freq=500,
recurrence=false,double_q=true, dueling=true, prioritized_replay=true)
policy = solve(solver, mdp)
sim = RolloutSimulator(max_steps=30)
r_tot = simulate(sim, mdp, policy)
println("Total discounted reward for 1 simulation: $r_tot")
In the line mdp = SimpleGridWorld(), we create the MDP. When I was trying to create the MDP, I had the problem of very large state space. A state in my MDP is a vector in {1,2,...,m}^n for some m and n. So, when defining the function POMDPs.states(mdp::myMDP), I realized that I must iterate over all the states which are very large, i.e., m^n.
Am I using the package in the wrong way? Or we must iterate the states even if there are exponentially many? If the latter, then what is the point of using Deep Q Learning? I thought, Deep Q Learning can help when the action and state spaces are very large.
DeepQLearning does not require to enumerate the state space and can handle continuous space problems.
DeepQLearning.jl only uses the generative interface of POMDPs.jl. As such, you do not need to implement the states function but just gen and initialstate (see the link on how to implement the generative interface).
However, due to the discrete action nature of DQN you also need POMDPs.actions(mdp::YourMDP) which should return an iterator over the action space.
By making those modifications to your implementation you should be able to use the solver.
The neural network in DQN takes as input a vector representation of the state. If your state is a m dimensional vector, the neural network input will be of size m. The output size of the network will be equal to the number of actions in your model.
In the case of the grid world example, the input size of the Flux model is 2 (x, y positions) and the output size is length(actions(mdp))=4.

Does Q-Learning apply here?

Let's say that we have an algorithm that given a dataset point, it runs some analysis on it and returns the results. The algorithm has a user-defined parameter X that affects the run-time of the algorithm (result of the algorithm is always constant for the same input point). Also, we already know that there's a relation between dataset point and the parameter X. For instance, if two dataset points are close to each other, their parameter X will also be the same.
Can we say that in this example we have the following and thus can use Q-Learning to find the best parameter X given any dataset point?
Initial state: dataset point, current value of X (for initial state = 0)
Terminal state: dataset point, current value of X (the value chosen based on action)
Actions: Different values that X can have
Reward: -1 if execution time decreases, +1 if it increases, 0 if it stays the same
Is it correct if we define different input dataset points as episodes and different values of X as the steps in each episode (where in each step, an action is chosen either randomly or via the network)? In this case, what would be the input to the neural network?
Since all of the examples and implementations I've seen so far are containing several states where each state is dependent on the previous one, I'm confused with my scenario where I only have two states.

Are data dependencies relevant when preparing data for neural network?

Data: When I have N rows of data like this: (x,y,z) where logically f(x,y)=z, that is z is dependent on x and y, like in my case (setting1, setting2 ,signal) . Different x's and y's can lead to the same z, but the z's wouldn't mean the same thing.
There are 30 unique setting1, 30 setting2 and 1 signal for each (setting1, setting2)-pairing, hence 900 signal values.
Data set: These [900,3] data points are considered 1 data set. I have many samples of these data sets.
I want to make a classification based on these data sets, but I need to flatten the data (make them all into one row). If I flatten it, I will duplicate all the setting values (setting1 and setting2) 30 times, i.e. I will have a row with 3x900 columns.
Question:
Is it correct to keep all the duplicate setting1,setting2 values in the data set? Or should I remove them and only include the unique values a single time?, i.e. have a row with 30 + 30 + 900 columns. I'm worried, that the logical dependency of the signal to the settings will be lost this way. Is this relevant? Or shouldn't I bother including the settings at all (e.g. due to correlations)?
If I understand correctly, you are training NN on a sample where each observation is [900,3].
You are flatning it and getting an input layer of 3*900.
Some of those values are a result of a function on others.
It is important which function, as if it is a liniar function, NN might not work:
From here:
"If inputs are linearly dependent then you are in effect introducing
the same variable as multiple inputs. By doing so you've introduced a
new problem for the network, finding the dependency so that the
duplicated inputs are treated as a single input and a single new
dimension in the data. For some dependencies, finding appropriate
weights for the duplicate inputs is not possible."
Also, if you add dependent variables you risk the NN being biased towards said variables.
E.g. If you are running LMS on [x1,x2,x3,average(x1,x2)] to predict y, you basically assign a higher weight to the x1 and x2 variables.
Unless you have a reason to believe that those weights should be higher, don't include their function.
I was not able to find any link to support, but my intuition is that you might want to decrease your input layer in addition to omitting the dependent values:
From professor A. Ng's ML Course I remember that the input should be the minimum amount of values that are 'reasonable' to make the prediction.
Reasonable is vague, but I understand it so: If you try to predict the price of a house include footage, area quality, distance from major hub, do not include average sun spot activity during the open home day even though you got that data.
I would remove the duplicates, I would also look for any other data that can be omitted, maybe run PCA over the full set of Nx[3,900].

What is the role of the bias in neural networks? [closed]

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I'm aware of the gradient descent and the back-propagation algorithm. What I don't get is: when is using a bias important and how do you use it?
For example, when mapping the AND function, when I use two inputs and one output, it does not give the correct weights. However, when I use three inputs (one of which is a bias), it gives the correct weights.
I think that biases are almost always helpful. In effect, a bias value allows you to shift the activation function to the left or right, which may be critical for successful learning.
It might help to look at a simple example. Consider this 1-input, 1-output network that has no bias:
The output of the network is computed by multiplying the input (x) by the weight (w0) and passing the result through some kind of activation function (e.g. a sigmoid function.)
Here is the function that this network computes, for various values of w0:
Changing the weight w0 essentially changes the "steepness" of the sigmoid. That's useful, but what if you wanted the network to output 0 when x is 2? Just changing the steepness of the sigmoid won't really work -- you want to be able to shift the entire curve to the right.
That's exactly what the bias allows you to do. If we add a bias to that network, like so:
...then the output of the network becomes sig(w0*x + w1*1.0). Here is what the output of the network looks like for various values of w1:
Having a weight of -5 for w1 shifts the curve to the right, which allows us to have a network that outputs 0 when x is 2.
A simpler way to understand what the bias is: it is somehow similar to the constant b of a linear function
y = ax + b
It allows you to move the line up and down to fit the prediction with the data better.
Without b, the line always goes through the origin (0, 0) and you may get a poorer fit.
Here are some further illustrations showing the result of a simple 2-layer feed forward neural network with and without bias units on a two-variable regression problem. Weights are initialized randomly and standard ReLU activation is used. As the answers before me concluded, without the bias the ReLU-network is not able to deviate from zero at (0,0).
Two different kinds of parameters can
be adjusted during the training of an
ANN, the weights and the value in the
activation functions. This is
impractical and it would be easier if
only one of the parameters should be
adjusted. To cope with this problem a
bias neuron is invented. The bias
neuron lies in one layer, is connected
to all the neurons in the next layer,
but none in the previous layer and it
always emits 1. Since the bias neuron
emits 1 the weights, connected to the
bias neuron, are added directly to the
combined sum of the other weights
(equation 2.1), just like the t value
in the activation functions.1
The reason it's impractical is because you're simultaneously adjusting the weight and the value, so any change to the weight can neutralize the change to the value that was useful for a previous data instance... adding a bias neuron without a changing value allows you to control the behavior of the layer.
Furthermore the bias allows you to use a single neural net to represent similar cases. Consider the AND boolean function represented by the following neural network:
(source: aihorizon.com)
w0 corresponds to b.
w1 corresponds to x1.
w2 corresponds to x2.
A single perceptron can be used to
represent many boolean functions.
For example, if we assume boolean values
of 1 (true) and -1 (false), then one
way to use a two-input perceptron to
implement the AND function is to set
the weights w0 = -3, and w1 = w2 = .5.
This perceptron can be made to
represent the OR function instead by
altering the threshold to w0 = -.3. In
fact, AND and OR can be viewed as
special cases of m-of-n functions:
that is, functions where at least m of
the n inputs to the perceptron must be
true. The OR function corresponds to
m = 1 and the AND function to m = n.
Any m-of-n function is easily
represented using a perceptron by
setting all input weights to the same
value (e.g., 0.5) and then setting the
threshold w0 accordingly.
Perceptrons can represent all of the
primitive boolean functions AND, OR,
NAND ( 1 AND), and NOR ( 1 OR). Machine Learning- Tom Mitchell)
The threshold is the bias and w0 is the weight associated with the bias/threshold neuron.
The bias is not an NN term. It's a generic algebra term to consider.
Y = M*X + C (straight line equation)
Now if C(Bias) = 0 then, the line will always pass through the origin, i.e. (0,0), and depends on only one parameter, i.e. M, which is the slope so we have less things to play with.
C, which is the bias takes any number and has the activity to shift the graph, and hence able to represent more complex situations.
In a logistic regression, the expected value of the target is transformed by a link function to restrict its value to the unit interval. In this way, model predictions can be viewed as primary outcome probabilities as shown:
Sigmoid function on Wikipedia
This is the final activation layer in the NN map that turns on and off the neuron. Here also bias has a role to play and it shifts the curve flexibly to help us map the model.
A layer in a neural network without a bias is nothing more than the multiplication of an input vector with a matrix. (The output vector might be passed through a sigmoid function for normalisation and for use in multi-layered ANN afterwards, but that’s not important.)
This means that you’re using a linear function and thus an input of all zeros will always be mapped to an output of all zeros. This might be a reasonable solution for some systems but in general it is too restrictive.
Using a bias, you’re effectively adding another dimension to your input space, which always takes the value one, so you’re avoiding an input vector of all zeros. You don’t lose any generality by this because your trained weight matrix needs not be surjective, so it still can map to all values previously possible.
2D ANN:
For a ANN mapping two dimensions to one dimension, as in reproducing the AND or the OR (or XOR) functions, you can think of a neuronal network as doing the following:
On the 2D plane mark all positions of input vectors. So, for boolean values, you’d want to mark (-1,-1), (1,1), (-1,1), (1,-1). What your ANN now does is drawing a straight line on the 2d plane, separating the positive output from the negative output values.
Without bias, this straight line has to go through zero, whereas with bias, you’re free to put it anywhere.
So, you’ll see that without bias you’re facing a problem with the AND function, since you can’t put both (1,-1) and (-1,1) to the negative side. (They are not allowed to be on the line.) The problem is equal for the OR function. With a bias, however, it’s easy to draw the line.
Note that the XOR function in that situation can’t be solved even with bias.
When you use ANNs, you rarely know about the internals of the systems you want to learn. Some things cannot be learned without a bias. E.g., have a look at the following data: (0, 1), (1, 1), (2, 1), basically a function that maps any x to 1.
If you have a one layered network (or a linear mapping), you cannot find a solution. However, if you have a bias it's trivial!
In an ideal setting, a bias could also map all points to the mean of the target points and let the hidden neurons model the differences from that point.
Modification of neuron WEIGHTS alone only serves to manipulate the shape/curvature of your transfer function, and not its equilibrium/zero crossing point.
The introduction of bias neurons allows you to shift the transfer function curve horizontally (left/right) along the input axis while leaving the shape/curvature unaltered.
This will allow the network to produce arbitrary outputs different from the defaults and hence you can customize/shift the input-to-output mapping to suit your particular needs.
See here for graphical explanation:
http://www.heatonresearch.com/wiki/Bias
In a couple of experiments in my masters thesis (e.g. page 59), I found that the bias might be important for the first layer(s), but especially at the fully connected layers at the end it seems not to play a big role.
This might be highly dependent on the network architecture / dataset.
If you're working with images, you might actually prefer to not use a bias at all. In theory, that way your network will be more independent of data magnitude, as in whether the picture is dark, or bright and vivid. And the net is going to learn to do it's job through studying relativity inside your data. Lots of modern neural networks utilize this.
For other data having biases might be critical. It depends on what type of data you're dealing with. If your information is magnitude-invariant --- if inputting [1,0,0.1] should lead to the same result as if inputting [100,0,10], you might be better off without a bias.
Bias determines how much angle your weight will rotate.
In a two-dimensional chart, weight and bias can help us to find the decision boundary of outputs.
Say we need to build a AND function, the input(p)-output(t) pair should be
{p=[0,0], t=0},{p=[1,0], t=0},{p=[0,1], t=0},{p=[1,1], t=1}
Now we need to find a decision boundary, and the ideal boundary should be:
See? W is perpendicular to our boundary. Thus, we say W decided the direction of boundary.
However, it is hard to find correct W at first time. Mostly, we choose original W value randomly. Thus, the first boundary may be this:
Now the boundary is parallel to the y axis.
We want to rotate the boundary. How?
By changing the W.
So, we use the learning rule function: W'=W+P:
W'=W+P is equivalent to W' = W + bP, while b=1.
Therefore, by changing the value of b(bias), you can decide the angle between W' and W. That is "the learning rule of ANN".
You could also read Neural Network Design by Martin T. Hagan / Howard B. Demuth / Mark H. Beale, chapter 4 "Perceptron Learning Rule"
In simpler terms, biases allow for more and more variations of weights to be learnt/stored... (side-note: sometimes given some threshold). Anyway, more variations mean that biases add richer representation of the input space to the model's learnt/stored weights. (Where better weights can enhance the neural net’s guessing power)
For example, in learning models, the hypothesis/guess is desirably bounded by y=0 or y=1 given some input, in maybe some classification task... i.e some y=0 for some x=(1,1) and some y=1 for some x=(0,1). (The condition on the hypothesis/outcome is the threshold I talked about above. Note that my examples setup inputs X to be each x=a double or 2 valued-vector, instead of Nate's single valued x inputs of some collection X).
If we ignore the bias, many inputs may end up being represented by a lot of the same weights (i.e. the learnt weights mostly occur close to the origin (0,0).
The model would then be limited to poorer quantities of good weights, instead of the many many more good weights it could better learn with bias. (Where poorly learnt weights lead to poorer guesses or a decrease in the neural net’s guessing power)
So, it is optimal that the model learns both close to the origin, but also, in as many places as possible inside the threshold/decision boundary. With the bias we can enable degrees of freedom close to the origin, but not limited to origin's immediate region.
In neural networks:
Each neuron has a bias
You can view bias as a threshold (generally opposite values of threshold)
Weighted sum from input layers + bias decides activation of a neuron
Bias increases the flexibility of the model.
In absence of bias, the neuron may not be activated by considering only the weighted sum from the input layer. If the neuron is not activated, the information from this neuron is not passed through rest of the neural network.
The value of bias is learnable.
Effectively, bias = — threshold. You can think of bias as how easy it is to get the neuron to output a 1 — with a really big bias, it’s very easy for the neuron to output a 1, but if the bias is very negative, then it’s difficult.
In summary: bias helps in controlling the value at which the activation function will trigger.
Follow this video for more details.
Few more useful links:
geeksforgeeks
towardsdatascience
Expanding on zfy's explanation:
The equation for one input, one neuron, one output should look:
y = a * x + b * 1 and out = f(y)
where x is the value from the input node and 1 is the value of the bias node;
y can be directly your output or be passed into a function, often a sigmoid function. Also note that the bias could be any constant, but to make everything simpler we always pick 1 (and probably that's so common that zfy did it without showing & explaining it).
Your network is trying to learn coefficients a and b to adapt to your data.
So you can see why adding the element b * 1 allows it to fit better to more data: now you can change both slope and intercept.
If you have more than one input your equation will look like:
y = a0 * x0 + a1 * x1 + ... + aN * 1
Note that the equation still describes a one neuron, one output network; if you have more neurons you just add one dimension to the coefficient matrix, to multiplex the inputs to all nodes and sum back each node contribution.
That you can write in vectorized format as
A = [a0, a1, .., aN] , X = [x0, x1, ..., 1]
Y = A . XT
i.e. putting coefficients in one array and (inputs + bias) in another you have your desired solution as the dot product of the two vectors (you need to transpose X for the shape to be correct, I wrote XT a 'X transposed')
So in the end you can also see your bias as is just one more input to represent the part of the output that is actually independent of your input.
To think in a simple way, if you have y=w1*x where y is your output and w1 is the weight, imagine a condition where x=0 then y=w1*x equals to 0.
If you want to update your weight you have to compute how much change by delw=target-y where target is your target output. In this case 'delw' will not change since y is computed as 0. So, suppose if you can add some extra value it will help y = w1x + w01, where bias=1 and weight can be adjusted to get a correct bias. Consider the example below.
In terms of line slope, intercept is a specific form of linear equations.
y = mx + b
Check the image
image
Here b is (0,2)
If you want to increase it to (0,3) how will you do it by changing the value of b the bias.
For all the ML books I studied, the W is always defined as the connectivity index between two neurons, which means the higher connectivity between two neurons.
The stronger the signals will be transmitted from the firing neuron to the target neuron or Y = w * X as a result to maintain the biological character of neurons, we need to keep the 1 >=W >= -1, but in the real regression, the W will end up with |W| >=1 which contradicts how the neurons are working.
As a result, I propose W = cos(theta), while 1 >= |cos(theta)|, and Y= a * X = W * X + b while a = b + W = b + cos(theta), b is an integer.
Bias acts as our anchor. It's a way for us to have some kind of baseline where we don't go below that. In terms of a graph, think of like y=mx+b it's like a y-intercept of this function.
output = input times the weight value and added a bias value and then apply an activation function.
The term bias is used to adjust the final output matrix as the y-intercept does. For instance, in the classic equation, y = mx + c, if c = 0, then the line will always pass through 0. Adding the bias term provides more flexibility and better generalisation to our neural network model.
The bias helps to get a better equation.
Imagine the input and output like a function y = ax + b and you need to put the right line between the input(x) and output(y) to minimise the global error between each point and the line, if you keep the equation like this y = ax, you will have one parameter for adaptation only, even if you find the best a minimising the global error it will be kind of far from the wanted value.
You can say the bias makes the equation more flexible to adapt to the best values

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