Example: Regression with estimated measurement noise

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Example: Regression with estimated measurement noise#

Let’s reuse our synthetic dataset:

\[ y_i = -0.5 + 2 x_i + + 2 x_i^2 + 0.1\epsilon_i, \]

where \(\epsilon_i \sim N(0,1)\) and where we sample \(x_i \sim U([0,1])\). Here is how to generate this synthetic dataset and how it looks like:

Hide code cell source 
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline
import seaborn as sns
sns.set(rc={"figure.dpi":100, 'savefig.dpi':300})
sns.set_context('notebook')
sns.set_style("ticks")
from IPython.display import set_matplotlib_formats
set_matplotlib_formats('retina', 'svg')
import numpy as np
import scipy.stats as st
Hide code cell source 
# How many observations we have
num_obs = 10
x = -1.0 + 2 * np.random.rand(num_obs)
w0_true = -0.5
w1_true = 2.0
w2_true = 2.0
sigma_true = 0.1
y = w0_true + w1_true * x + w2_true * x ** 2 + sigma_true * np.random.randn(num_obs)
# Let's plot the data
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y, 'x', label='Observed data')
ax.set_xlabel('$x$')
ax.set_ylabel('$y$')
plt.legend(loc='best');
../_images/bdc7a04b1526d57cc34252f6a8b0c2ec512359c82a7f1907f512e7091d01437b.svg

We will be fitting polynomials, so let’s copy-paste the code we developed for computing the design matrix:

Hide code cell source 
def get_polynomial_design_matrix(x, degree):
    """
    Returns the polynomial design matrix of ``degree`` evaluated at ``x``.
    """
    # Make sure this is a 2D numpy array with only one column
    assert isinstance(x, np.ndarray), 'x is not a numpy array.'
    assert x.ndim == 2, 'You must make x a 2D array.'
    assert x.shape[1] == 1, 'x must be a column.'
    # Start with an empty list where we are going to put the columns of the matrix
    cols = []
    # Loop over columns and add the polynomial
    for i in range(degree+1):
        cols.append(x ** i)
    return np.hstack(cols)

In the previous section, we saw that when least squares are interpreted probabilistically the weight estimate does not change. So, we can obtain it just like before:

# The degree of the polynomial
degree = 2
# The design matrix
Phi = get_polynomial_design_matrix(x[:, None], degree)
# Solve the least squares problem
w, sum_res, _, _ = np.linalg.lstsq(Phi, y, rcond=None)

Notice that we have now also stored the second output of numpy.linalg.lstsq. This is the sum of the residuals, i.e., it is:

\[ \sum_{i=1}^N\left[y_i - \sum_{j=1}^Mw_j\phi_j(x_i)\right]^2 = \parallel \mathbf{y}_{1:N} - \mathbf{\Phi}\mathbf{w}\parallel_2^2. \]

Let’s test this just to be sure…

print('sum_res = {0:1.4f}'.format(sum_res[0]))
print('compare to = {0:1.4f}'.format(np.linalg.norm(y-np.dot(Phi, w)) ** 2))

sum_res = 0.0480
compare to = 0.0480

It looks correct. In the video, we saw that the sum of residuals gives us the maximum likelihood estimate of the noise variance through this formula:

\[ \sigma^2 = \frac{\parallel \mathbf{y}_{1:N} - \mathbf{\Phi}\mathbf{w}\parallel_2^2}{N}. \]

Let’s compute it:

sigma2_MLE = sum_res[0] / num_obs
sigma_MLE = np.sqrt(sigma2_MLE)
print('True sigma = {0:1.4f}'.format(sigma_true))
print('MLE sigma = {0:1.4f}'.format(sigma_MLE))

True sigma = 0.1000
MLE sigma = 0.0693

Let’s also visualize this noise. The prediction at each \(x\) is Gaussian with mean \(\mathbf{w}^T\boldsymbol{\phi}(x)\) and variance \(\sigma_{\text{MLE}}^2\). So, we can simply create a 95% credible interval by subtracting and adding (about) two \(\sigma_{\text{MLE}}\) to the mean.

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
# Some points on which to evaluate the regression function
xx = np.linspace(-1, 1, 100)
# The true connection between x and y
yy_true = w0_true + w1_true * xx + w2_true * xx ** 2
# The mean prediction of the model we just fitted
Phi_xx = get_polynomial_design_matrix(xx[:, None], degree)
yy = np.dot(Phi_xx, w)
# Lower bound for 95% credible interval
sigma_MLE = np.sqrt(sigma2_MLE)
yy_l = yy - 2.0 * sigma_MLE
# Upper bound for 95% credible interval
yy_u = yy + 2.0 * sigma_MLE
# plot mean prediction
ax.plot(xx, yy, '--', label='Mean prediction')
# plot shaded area for 95% credible interval
ax.fill_between(xx, yy_l, yy_u, alpha=0.25, label='95% credible interval')
# plot the data again
ax.plot(x, y, 'kx', label='Observed data')
# overlay the true 
ax.plot(xx, yy_true, label='True response surface')
ax.set_xlabel('$x$')
ax.set_ylabel('$y$')
plt.legend(loc='best');
../_images/911311e52c18c82f2dca27dde85160d76fb11496216f489dc0c5d38fdea96bb2.svg

Questions#

  • Increase the number of observations num_obs and notice that the likelihood noise converges to the true measurement noise.

  • Change the polynomial degree to one so that you just fit a line. What does the model think about the noise now?

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