[SciPy-User] scipy.optimize.leastsq question
josef.pktd at gmail.com
josef.pktd at gmail.com
Tue Jun 29 03:52:04 EDT 2010
On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 3:46 AM, Sebastian Walter
<sebastian.walter at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 9:28 AM, Ralph Kube <ralphkube at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Thank you, I found the error this way. The Jacobian is indeed very
>> hard to compute, and the leastsq routine computes a zero Jacobian.
>> The albedo function I want to minimize does not change for values
>> of h \approx 10**-8, but on scales h \approx 10**-3.
>> I now use the fmin function and working with other functions that do not
>> require any information about the derivative. They seem more appropriate
>> to my problem.
>
> Only use derivative free optimization methods if your problem is not continuous.
> If your problem is differentiable, you should compute the Jacobian
> yourself, e.g. with
>
> def myJacobian(x):
> h = 10**-3
> # do finite differences approximation
> return ....
>
> and provide the Jacobian to
> scipy.optimize.leastsq(..., Dfun = myJacobian)
> This should work much better/reliable/faster than any of the alternatives.
Maybe increasing the step length in the options to leastsq also works:
epsfcn – A suitable step length for the forward-difference
approximation of the Jacobian (for Dfun=None).
I don't think I have tried for leastsq, but for some fmin it works
much better with larger step length for the finite difference
approximation.
Josef
>
> Also, using Algorithmic Differentiation to compute the Jacobian would
> probably help in terms of robustness and convergence speed of leastsq.
>
> Sebastian
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Cheers, Ralph
>>
>> Den 28.06.10 17.13, skrev Sebastian Walter:
>>> there may be others who have more experience with scipy.optimize.leastsq.
>>>
>>>> From the mathematical point of view you should be certain that your
>>> function is continuously differentiable or at least
>>> (Lipschitz-)continuous.
>>> This is because scipy.optimize.leastsq uses the Levenberg-Marquardt
>>> algorithm which requires the Jacobian J(x) = dF/dx.
>>>
>>> You do not provide an analytic Jacobian for scipy.optimize.leastsq.
>>> That means that scipy.optimize.leastsq uses some finite differences
>>> approximation to approximate the Jacobian J(x).
>>> It can happen that this finite differences approximation is so poor
>>> that no descent direction for the residual can be found.
>>>
>>> So the first thing I would check is if the Jacobian J(x) makes sense.
>>> You should be able to extract it from
>>> scipy.optimize.leastsq's output infodict['fjac'].
>>>
>>> Then I'd check if
>>> F(x + h*v) - F(x)/h, for h \approx 10**-8
>>>
>>> gives the same vector as dot(J(x),v)
>>> if this doesn't match at all, then your Jacobian is wrong resp. your
>>> function is not continuously differentiable.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps a little,
>>> Sebastian
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Ralph Kube<ralphkube at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hello people,
>>>> I am having a problem using the leastsq routine. My goal is to
>>>> determine three parameters r_i, r_s and ppw so that the residuals
>>>> to a model function a(r_i, r_s, ppw) to a measurement are minimal.
>>>> When I call the leastsq routine with a good guess of starting values, it
>>>> iterates 6 times without changing the vales of the initial parameters
>>>> and then exits without an error.
>>>> The function a is very complicated and expensive to evaluate. Some
>>>> evaluation is done by using the subprocess module of python. Can this
>>>> pose a problem for the leastsq routine?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is in the main routine:
>>>>
>>>> import numpy as N
>>>>
>>>> for t_idx, t in enumerate(time_var):
>>>>
>>>> r_i = 300.
>>>> r_s = 1.0
>>>> ppw=1e-6
>>>> sza = 70.
>>>> wl = N.arange(300., 3001., 1.)
>>>>
>>>> albedo_true = compute_albedo(r_i, r_s, ppw, sza, wl)
>>>> # This emulates the measurement data
>>>> albedo_meas = albedo_true + 0.01*N.random.randn(len(wl))
>>>>
>>>> print 'Optimizing albedo'
>>>> p0 = [2.*r_i, 1.4*r_s, 4.*ppw]
>>>> plsq2 = leastsq(albedo_residual, p0, args=(albedo_meas, sza,
>>>> wl))
>>>> print '... done: ', plsq2[0][0], plsq2[0][1], plsq2[0][2]
>>>> albedo_model = compute_albedo(plsq2[0][0], plsq2[0][1], plsq2[0][2],
>>>> sza, wl)
>>>>
>>>> The residual function:
>>>> def albedo_residual(p, y, sza, wvl):
>>>> r_i, r_s, ppw = p
>>>> albedo = compute_albedo(r_i, r_s, ppw, sza, wvl)
>>>> err = albedo - y
>>>> print 'Albedo for r_i = %4.0f, r_s = %4.2f, ppw = %3.2e \
>>>> Residual squared: %5f' % (r_i, r_s, ppw, N.sum(err**2))
>>>>
>>>> return err
>>>>
>>>> The definition of the function a(r_i, r_s, ppw)
>>>> def compute_albedo(radius_ice, radius_soot, ppw, sza, wvl):
>>>>
>>>> The output is:
>>>> Optimizing albedo
>>>> Albedo for r_i = 600, r_s = 1.40, ppw = 4.00e-06 Residual squared:
>>>> 0.973819
>>>> Albedo for r_i = 600, r_s = 1.40, ppw = 4.00e-06 Residual squared:
>>>> 0.973819
>>>> Albedo for r_i = 600, r_s = 1.40, ppw = 4.00e-06 Residual squared:
>>>> 0.973819
>>>> Albedo for r_i = 600, r_s = 1.40, ppw = 4.00e-06 Residual squared:
>>>> 0.973819
>>>> Albedo for r_i = 600, r_s = 1.40, ppw = 4.00e-06 Residual squared:
>>>> 0.973819
>>>> Albedo for r_i = 600, r_s = 1.40, ppw = 4.00e-06 Residual squared:
>>>> 0.973819
>>>> ... done: 600.0 1.4 4e-06
>>>>
>>>> To check for errors, I implemented the example code from
>>>> http://www.tau.ac.il/~kineret/amit/scipy_tutorial/ in my code and it
>>>> runs successfully.
>>>>
>>>> I would be glad for any suggestion.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Ralph
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>>
>> --
>>
>> Cheers, Ralph
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