Regression modeling deals with the description of the sampling distribution of a given random variable \( y \) varies as function of another variable or a set of such variables \( \hat{x} =[x_0, x_1,\dots, x_p]^T \). The first variable is called the dependent, the outcome or the response variable while the set of variables \( \hat{x} \) is called the independent variable, or the predictor variable or the explanatory variable.
A regression model aims at finding a likelihood function \( p(y\vert \hat{x}) \), that is the conditional distribution for \( y \) with a given \( \hat{x} \). The estimation of \( p(y\vert \hat{x}) \) is made using a data set with
Before we proceed let us study a case from linear algebra where we aim at fitting a set of data \( \hat{y}=[y_0,y_1,\dots,y_{n-1}] \). We could think of these data as a result of an experiment or a complicated numerical experiment. These data are functions of a series of variables \( \hat{x}=[x_0,x_1,\dots,x_{n-1}] \), that is \( y_i = y(x_i) \) with \( i=0,1,2,\dots,n-1 \). The variables \( x_i \) could represent physical quantities like time, temperature, position etc. We assume that \( y(x) \) is a smooth function.
Since obtaining these data points may not be trivial, we want to use these data to fit a function which can allow us to make predictions for values of \( y \) which are not in the present set. The perhaps simplest approach is to assume we can parametrize our function in terms of a polynomial of degree \( n-1 \) with \( n \) points, that is $$ y=y(x) \rightarrow y(x_i)=\tilde{y}_i+\epsilon_i=\sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \beta_i x_i^j+\epsilon_i, $$ where \( \epsilon_i \) is the error in our approximation.
For every set of values \( y_i,x_i \) we have thus the corresponding set of equations $$ \begin{align*} y_0&=\beta_0+\beta_1x_0^1+\beta_2x_0^2+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_0^{n-1}+\epsilon_0\\ y_1&=\beta_0+\beta_1x_1^1+\beta_2x_1^2+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_1^{n-1}+\epsilon_1\\ y_2&=\beta_0+\beta_1x_2^1+\beta_2x_2^2+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_2^{n-1}+\epsilon_2\\ \dots & \dots \\ y_{n-1}&=\beta_0+\beta_1x_{n-1}^1+\beta_2x_{n-1}^2+\dots+\beta_1x_{n-1}^{n-1}+\epsilon_{n-1}.\\ \end{align*} $$
Defining the vectors $$ \hat{y} = [y_0,y_1, y_2,\dots, y_{n-1}]^T, $$ $$ \hat{\beta} = [\beta_0,\beta_1, \beta_2,\dots, \beta_{n-1}]^T, $$ $$ \hat{\epsilon} = [\epsilon_0,\epsilon_1, \epsilon_2,\dots, \epsilon_{n-1}]^T, $$ and the matrix $$ \hat{X}= \begin{bmatrix} 1& x_{0}^1 &x_{0}^2& \dots & \dots &x_{0}^{n-1}\\ 1& x_{1}^1 &x_{1}^2& \dots & \dots &x_{1}^{n-1}\\ 1& x_{2}^1 &x_{2}^2& \dots & \dots &x_{2}^{n-1}\\ \dots& \dots &\dots& \dots & \dots &\dots\\ 1& x_{n-1}^1 &x_{n-1}^2& \dots & \dots &x_{n-1}^{n-1}\\ \end{bmatrix} $$ we can rewrite our equations as $$ \hat{y} = \hat{X}\hat{\beta}+\hat{\epsilon}. $$
We are obviously not limited to the above polynomial. We could replace the various powers of \( x \) with elements of Fourier series, that is, instead of \( x_i^j \) we could have \( \cos{(j x_i)} \) or \( \sin{(j x_i)} \), or time series or other orthogonal functions. For every set of values \( y_i,x_i \) we can then generalize the equations to $$ \begin{align*} y_0&=\beta_0x_{00}+\beta_1x_{01}+\beta_2x_{02}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{0n-1}+\epsilon_0\\ y_1&=\beta_0x_{10}+\beta_1x_{11}+\beta_2x_{12}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{1n-1}+\epsilon_1\\ y_2&=\beta_0x_{20}+\beta_1x_{21}+\beta_2x_{22}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{2n-1}+\epsilon_2\\ \dots & \dots \\ y_{i}&=\beta_0x_{i0}+\beta_1x_{i1}+\beta_2x_{i2}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{in-1}+\epsilon_i\\ \dots & \dots \\ y_{n-1}&=\beta_0x_{n-1,0}+\beta_1x_{n-1,2}+\beta_2x_{n-1,2}+\dots+\beta_1x_{n-1,n-1}+\epsilon_{n-1}.\\ \end{align*} $$
We redefine in turn the matrix \( \hat{X} \) as $$ \hat{X}= \begin{bmatrix} x_{00}& x_{01} &x_{02}& \dots & \dots &x_{0,n-1}\\ x_{10}& x_{11} &x_{12}& \dots & \dots &x_{1,n-1}\\ x_{20}& x_{21} &x_{22}& \dots & \dots &x_{2,n-1}\\ \dots& \dots &\dots& \dots & \dots &\dots\\ x_{n-1,0}& x_{n-1,1} &x_{n-1,2}& \dots & \dots &x_{n-1,n-1}\\ \end{bmatrix} $$ and without loss of generality we rewrite again our equations as $$ \hat{y} = \hat{X}\hat{\beta}+\hat{\epsilon}. $$ The left-hand side of this equation forms know. Our error vector \( \hat{\epsilon} \) and the parameter vector \( \hat{\beta} \) are our unknow quantities. How can we obtain the optimal set of \( \beta_i \) values?
We have defined the matrix \( \hat{X} \) $$ \begin{align*} y_0&=\beta_0x_{00}+\beta_1x_{01}+\beta_2x_{02}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{0n-1}+\epsilon_0\\ y_1&=\beta_0x_{10}+\beta_1x_{11}+\beta_2x_{12}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{1n-1}+\epsilon_1\\ y_2&=\beta_0x_{20}+\beta_1x_{21}+\beta_2x_{22}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{2n-1}+\epsilon_1\\ \dots & \dots \\ y_{i}&=\beta_0x_{i0}+\beta_1x_{i1}+\beta_2x_{i2}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{in-1}+\epsilon_1\\ \dots & \dots \\ y_{n-1}&=\beta_0x_{n-1,0}+\beta_1x_{n-1,2}+\beta_2x_{n-1,2}+\dots+\beta_1x_{n-1,n-1}+\epsilon_{n-1}.\\ \end{align*} $$
We well use this matrix to define the approximation \( \hat{\tilde{y}} \) via the unknown quantity \( \hat{\beta} \) as $$ \hat{\tilde{y}}= \hat{X}\hat{\beta}, $$ and in order to find the optimal parameters \( \beta_i \) instead of solving the above linear algebra problem, we define a function which gives a measure of the spread between the values \( y_i \) (which represent hopefully the exact values) and the parametrized values \( \tilde{y}_i \), namely $$ Q(\hat{\beta})=\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}\left(y_i-\tilde{y}_i\right)^2=\left(\hat{y}-\hat{\tilde{y}}\right)^T\left(\hat{y}-\hat{\tilde{y}}\right), $$ or using the matrix \( \hat{X} \) as $$ Q(\hat{\beta})=\left(\hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right)^T\left(\hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right). $$
The function $$ Q(\hat{\beta})=\left(\hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right)^T\left(\hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right), $$ can be linked to the variance of the quantity \( y_i \) if we interpret the latter as the mean value of for example a numerical experiment. When linking below with the maximum likelihood approach below, we will indeed interpret \( y_i \) as a mean value $$ y_{i}=\langle y_i \rangle = \beta_0x_{i,0}+\beta_1x_{i,1}+\beta_2x_{i,2}+\dots+\beta_{n-1}x_{i,n-1}+\epsilon_i, $$ where \( \langle y_i \rangle \) is the mean value. Keep in mind also that till now we have treated \( y_i \) as the exact value. Normally, the response (dependent or outcome) variable \( y_i \) the outcome of a numerical experiment or another type of experiment and is thus only an approximation to the true value. It is then always accompanied by an error estimate, often limited to a statistical error estimate given by the standard deviation discussed earlier. In the discussion here we will treat \( y_i \) as our exact value for the response variable.
In order to find the parameters \( \beta_i \) we will then minimize the spread of \( Q(\hat{\beta}) \) by requiring $$ \frac{\partial Q(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \beta_j} = \frac{\partial }{\partial \beta_j}\left[ \sum_{i=0}^{n-1}\left(y_i-\beta_0x_{i,0}-\beta_1x_{i,1}-\beta_2x_{i,2}-\dots-\beta_{n-1}x_{i,n-1}\right)^2\right]=0, $$ which results in $$ \frac{\partial Q(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \beta_j} = -2\left[ \sum_{i=0}^{n-1}x_{ij}\left(y_i-\beta_0x_{i,0}-\beta_1x_{i,1}-\beta_2x_{i,2}-\dots-\beta_{n-1}x_{i,n-1}\right)\right]=0, $$ or in a matrix-vector form as $$ \frac{\partial Q(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \hat{\beta}} = 0 = \hat{X}^T\left( \hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right). $$
We can rewrite $$ \frac{\partial Q(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \hat{\beta}} = 0 = \hat{X}^T\left( \hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right), $$ as $$ \hat{X}^T\hat{y} = \hat{X}^T\hat{X}\hat{\beta}, $$ and if the matrix \( \hat{X}^T\hat{X} \) is invertible we have the solution $$ \hat{\beta} =\left(\hat{X}^T\hat{X}\right)^{-1}\hat{X}^T\hat{y}. $$
The residuals \( \hat{\epsilon} \) are in turn given by $$ \hat{\epsilon} = \hat{y}-\hat{\tilde{y}} = \hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}, $$ and with $$ \hat{X}^T\left( \hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right)= 0, $$ we have $$ \hat{X}^T\hat{\epsilon}=\hat{X}^T\left( \hat{y}-\hat{X}\hat{\beta}\right)= 0, $$ meaning that the solution for \( \hat{\beta} \) is the one which minimizes the residuals. Later we will link this with the maximum likelihood approach.
import numpy as np
print(np.c_[np.array([1,2,3]), np.array([4,5,6])])
print(np.c_[np.array([[1,2,3]]), 0, 0, np.array([[4,5,6]])])
# Importing various packages
from random import random, seed
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = 2*np.random.rand(100,1)
y = 4+3*x+np.random.randn(100,1)
xb = np.c_[np.ones((100,1)), x]
theta = np.linalg.inv(xb.T.dot(xb)).dot(xb.T).dot(y)
xnew = np.array([[0],[2]])
xbnew = np.c_[np.ones((2,1)), xnew]
ypredict = xbnew.dot(theta)
plt.plot(xnew, ypredict, "r-")
plt.plot(x, y ,'ro')
plt.axis([0,2.0,0, 15.0])
plt.xlabel(r'$x$')
plt.ylabel(r'$y$')
plt.title(r'Linear Regression')
plt.show()
We see that, as expected, a linear fit gives a seemingly (from the graph) good representation of the data.
We can repeat the above algorithm using scikit-learn as follows
# Importing various packages
from random import random, seed
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression
x = 2*np.random.rand(100,1)
y = 4+3*x+np.random.randn(100,1)
linreg = LinearRegression()
linreg.fit(x,y)
xnew = np.array([[0],[2]])
ypredict = linreg.predict(xnew)
plt.plot(xnew, ypredict, "r-")
plt.plot(x, y ,'ro')
plt.axis([0,2.0,0, 15.0])
plt.xlabel(r'$x$')
plt.ylabel(r'$y$')
plt.title(r'Random numbers ')
plt.show()
Another quantity is the autocorrelation function we discussed in our chapter on statistical analysis. Let us now try to assess the quality of our fit by studying various measures.
Normally, the response (dependent or outcome) variable \( y_i \) the outcome of a numerical experiment or another type of experiment and is thus only an approximation to the true value. It is then always accompanied by an error estimate, often limited to a statistical error estimate given by the standard deviation discussed earlier. In the discussion here we will treat \( y_i \) as our exact value for the response variable.
Introducing the standard deviation \( \sigma_i \) for each measurement \( y_i \), we define now the \( \chi^2 \) function as $$ \chi^2(\hat{\beta})=\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}\frac{\left(y_i-\tilde{y}_i\right)^2}{\sigma_i^2}=\left(\hat{y}-\hat{\tilde{y}}\right)^T\frac{1}{\hat{\Sigma^2}}\left(\hat{y}-\hat{\tilde{y}}\right), $$ where the matrix \( \hat{\Sigma} \) is a diagonal matrix with \( \sigma_i \) as matrix elements.
In order to find the parameters \( \beta_i \) we will then minimize the spread of \( \chi^2(\hat{\beta}) \) by requiring $$ \frac{\partial \chi^2(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \beta_j} = \frac{\partial }{\partial \beta_j}\left[ \sum_{i=0}^{n-1}\left(\frac{y_i-\beta_0x_{i,0}-\beta_1x_{i,1}-\beta_2x_{i,2}-\dots-\beta_{n-1}x_{i,n-1}}{\sigma_i}\right)^2\right]=0, $$ which results in $$ \frac{\partial \chi^2(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \beta_j} = -2\left[ \sum_{i=0}^{n-1}\frac{x_{ij}}{\sigma_i}\left(\frac{y_i-\beta_0x_{i,0}-\beta_1x_{i,1}-\beta_2x_{i,2}-\dots-\beta_{n-1}x_{i,n-1}}{\sigma_i}\right)\right]=0, $$ or in a matrix-vector form as $$ \frac{\partial \chi^2(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \hat{\beta}} = 0 = \hat{A}^T\left( \hat{b}-\hat{A}\hat{\beta}\right). $$ where we have defined the matrix \( \hat{A} =\hat{X}/\hat{\Sigma} \) with matrix elements \( a_{ij} = x_{ij}/\sigma_i \) and the vector \( \hat{b} \) with elements \( b_i = y_i/\sigma_i \).
We can rewrite $$ \frac{\partial \chi^2(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \hat{\beta}} = 0 = \hat{A}^T\left( \hat{b}-\hat{A}\hat{\beta}\right), $$ as $$ \hat{A}^T\hat{b} = \hat{A}^T\hat{A}\hat{\beta}, $$ and if the matrix \( \hat{A}^T\hat{A} \) is invertible we have the solution $$ \hat{\beta} =\left(\hat{A}^T\hat{A}\right)^{-1}\hat{A}^T\hat{b}. $$
If we then introduce the matrix $$ \hat{H} = \hat{A}^T\hat{A}, $$ we have then the following expression for the parameters \( \beta_j \) (the matrix elements of \( \hat{H} \) are \( h_{ij} \)) $$ \beta_j = \sum_{k=0}^{p-1}h_{jk}\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}\frac{y_i}{\sigma_i}\frac{x_{ik}}{\sigma_i} = \sum_{k=0}^{p-1}h_{jk}\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}b_ia_{ik} $$ We state without proof the expression for the uncertainty in the parameters \( \beta_j \) as $$ \sigma^2(\beta_j) = \sum_{i=0}^{n-1}\sigma_i^2\left( \frac{\partial \beta_j}{\partial y_i}\right)^2, $$ resulting in $$ \sigma^2(\beta_j) = \left(\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}h_{jk}\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}a_{ik}\right)\left(\sum_{l=0}^{p-1}h_{jl}\sum_{m=0}^{n-1}a_{ml}\right) = h_{jj}! $$
The first step here is to approximate the function \( y \) with a first-order polynomial, that is we write $$ y=y(x) \rightarrow y(x_i) \approx \beta_0+\beta_1 x_i. $$ By computing the derivatives of \( \chi^2 \) with respect to \( \beta_0 \) and \( \beta_1 \) show that these are given by $$ \frac{\partial \chi^2(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \beta_0} = -2\left[ \sum_{i=0}^{1}\left(\frac{y_i-\beta_0-\beta_1x_{i}}{\sigma_i^2}\right)\right]=0, $$ and $$ \frac{\partial \chi^2(\hat{\beta})}{\partial \beta_0} = -2\left[ \sum_{i=0}^{1}x_i\left(\frac{y_i-\beta_0-\beta_1x_{i}}{\sigma_i^2}\right)\right]=0. $$
We define then $$ \gamma = \sum_{i=0}^{1}\frac{1}{\sigma_i^2}, $$ $$ \gamma_x = \sum_{i=0}^{1}\frac{x_{i}}{\sigma_i^2}, $$ $$ \gamma_y = \sum_{i=0}^{1}\left(\frac{y_i}{\sigma_i^2}\right), $$ $$ \gamma_{xx} = \sum_{i=0}^{1}\frac{x_ix_{i}}{\sigma_i^2}, $$ $$ \gamma_{xy} = \sum_{i=0}^{1}\frac{y_ix_{i}}{\sigma_i^2}, $$ and show that $$ \beta_0 = \frac{\gamma_{xx}\gamma_y-\gamma_x\gamma_y}{\gamma\gamma_{xx}-\gamma_x^2}, $$ $$ \beta_1 = \frac{\gamma_{xy}\gamma-\gamma_x\gamma_y}{\gamma\gamma_{xx}-\gamma_x^2}. $$
The LSM suffers often from both being underdetermined and overdetermined in the unknown coefficients \( \beta_i \). A better approach is to use the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method discussed below.
# Importing various packages
from math import exp, sqrt
from random import random, seed
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = 2*np.random.rand(100,1)
y = 4+3*x+np.random.randn(100,1)
xb = np.c_[np.ones((100,1)), x]
theta_linreg = np.linalg.inv(xb.T.dot(xb)).dot(xb.T).dot(y)
print(theta_linreg)
theta = np.random.randn(2,1)
eta = 0.1
Niterations = 1000
m = 100
for iter in range(Niterations):
gradients = 2.0/m*xb.T.dot(xb.dot(theta)-y)
theta -= eta*gradients
print(theta)
xnew = np.array([[0],[2]])
xbnew = np.c_[np.ones((2,1)), xnew]
ypredict = xbnew.dot(theta)
ypredict2 = xbnew.dot(theta_linreg)
plt.plot(xnew, ypredict, "r-")
plt.plot(xnew, ypredict2, "b-")
plt.plot(x, y ,'ro')
plt.axis([0,2.0,0, 15.0])
plt.xlabel(r'$x$')
plt.ylabel(r'$y$')
plt.title(r'Random numbers ')
plt.show()
# Importing various packages
from math import exp, sqrt
from random import random, seed
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sklearn.linear_model import SGDRegressor
x = 2*np.random.rand(100,1)
y = 4+3*x+np.random.randn(100,1)
xb = np.c_[np.ones((100,1)), x]
theta_linreg = np.linalg.inv(xb.T.dot(xb)).dot(xb.T).dot(y)
print(theta_linreg)
sgdreg = SGDRegressor(n_iter = 50, penalty=None, eta0=0.1)
sgdreg.fit(x,y.ravel())
print(sgdreg.intercept_, sgdreg.coef_)
# Importing various packages
from math import exp, sqrt
from random import random, seed
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
m = 100
x = 2*np.random.rand(m,1)+4.
y = 4+3*x*x+ +x-np.random.randn(m,1)
xb = np.c_[np.ones((m,1)), x]
theta = np.linalg.inv(xb.T.dot(xb)).dot(xb.T).dot(y)
xnew = np.array([[0],[2]])
xbnew = np.c_[np.ones((2,1)), xnew]
ypredict = xbnew.dot(theta)
plt.plot(xnew, ypredict, "r-")
plt.plot(x, y ,'ro')
plt.axis([0,2.0,0, 15.0])
plt.xlabel(r'$x$')
plt.ylabel(r'$y$')
plt.title(r'Random numbers ')
plt.show()
How can we use the singular value decomposition to find the parameters \( \beta_j \)? More details will come. We first note that a general \( m\times n \) matrix \( \hat{A} \) can be written in terms of a diagonal matrix \( \hat{\Sigma} \) of dimensionality \( n\times n \) and two orthognal matrices \( \hat{U} \) and \( \hat{V} \), where the first has dimensionality \( m \times n \) and the last dimensionality \( n\times n \). We have then $$ \hat{A} = \hat{U}\hat{\Sigma}\hat{V} $$