# On the “correlation” between a continuous and a categorical variable

Let us get back on the Titanic dataset,

loc_fichier = "http://freakonometrics.free.fr/titanic.RData" download.file(loc_fichier, "titanic.RData") load("titanic.RData") base = base[!is.na(base$Age),] On consider two variables, the age $x$ (the continuous one) and the survivor indicator $y$ (the qualitative one) X = base$Age Y = base$Survived It looks like the age might be a valid explanatory variable in the logistic regression, summary(glm(Survived~Age,data=base,family=binomial)) Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(&gt;|z|) (Intercept) -0.05672 0.17358 -0.327 0.7438 Age -0.01096 0.00533 -2.057 0.0397 * --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 (Dispersion parameter for binomial family taken to be 1) Null deviance: 964.52 on 713 degrees of freedom Residual deviance: 960.23 on 712 degrees of freedom AIC: 964.23 The significance test here has a $p$-value just below $4%$. Actually, one can relate it with the value of the deviance (the null deviance and the residual deviance). Recall that$$D=2\big(\log\mathcal{L}(\boldsymbol{y})-\log\mathcal{L}(\widehat{\boldsymbol{\mu}})\big)$$while$$D_0=2\big(\log\mathcal{L}(\boldsymbol{y})-\log\mathcal{L}(\overline{y})\big)$$Under the assumption that $x$ is worthless, $D_0-D$ tends to a $\chi^2$ distribution with 1 degree of freedom. And we can compute the $p$-value dof that likelihood ratio test, 1-pchisq(964.52-960.23,1) [1] 0.03833717 (which is consistent with a Gaussian test). But if we consider a nonlinear transformation summary(glm(Survived~bs(Age),data=base,family=binomial)) Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(&gt;|z|) (Intercept) 0.8648 0.3460 2.500 0.012433 * bs(Age)1 -3.6772 1.0458 -3.516 0.000438 *** bs(Age)2 1.7430 1.1068 1.575 0.115299 bs(Age)3 -3.9251 1.4544 -2.699 0.006961 ** --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 (Dispersion parameter for binomial family taken to be 1) Null deviance: 964.52 on 713 degrees of freedom Residual deviance: 948.69 on 710 degrees of freedom which seems to be “more significant” 1-pchisq(964.52-948.69,3) [1] 0.001228712 So it looks like the variable $x$ is interesting here. To visualize the non-null correlation, one can consider the condition distribution of $x$ given $y=1$, and compare it with the condition distribution of $x$ given $y=0$, ks.test(X[Y==0],X[Y==1]) Two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test data: X[Y == 0] and X[Y == 1] D = 0.088777, p-value = 0.1324 alternative hypothesis: two-sided i.e. with a $p$-value above $10%$, the two distributions are not significatly different. F0 = function(x) mean(X[Y==0]&lt;=x) F1 = function(x) mean(X[Y==1]&lt;=x) vx = seq(0,80,by=.1) vy0 = Vectorize(F0)(vx) vy1 = Vectorize(F1)(vx) plot(vx,vy0,col="red",type="s") lines(vx,vy1,col="blue",type="s") An alternative is discretize variable $x$ and to use Pearson’s independence test, k=5 LV = quantile(X,(0:k)/k) LV[1] = 0 Xc = cut(X,LV) table(Xc,Y) Y Xc 0 1 (0,19] 85 79 (19,25] 92 45 (25,31.8] 77 50 (31.8,41] 81 63 (41,80] 89 53 chisq.test(table(Xc,Y)) Pearson's Chi-squared test data: table(Xc, Y) X-squared = 8.6155, df = 4, p-value = 0.07146 The $p$-value is here $7%$, with five categories for the age. And actually, we can compare the $p$-value pvalue = function(k=5){ LV = quantile(X,(0:k)/k) LV[1] = 0 Xc = cut(X,LV) chisq.test(table(Xc,Y))$p.value} vk = 2:20 vp = Vectorize(pvalue)(vk) plot(vk,vp,type="l") abline(h=.05,col="red",lty=2)

which gives a $p$-value close to $5$%, as soon as we have enough categories. In the slides of the course (STT5100), I claim that actually, the age is an important variable when trying to predict if a passenger survived. Test mentioned here are not as conclusive, nevertheless…

# Modeling Pandemics (3)

In Statistical Inference in a Stochastic Epidemic SEIR Model with Control Intervention, a more complex model than the one we’ve seen yesterday was considered (and is called the SEIR model). Consider a population of size $N$, and assume that $S$ is the number of susceptible, $E$ the number of exposed, $I$ the number of infectious, and $R$ for the number recovered (or immune) individuals, \displaystyle{\begin{aligned}{\frac {dS}{dt}}&=-\beta {\frac {I}{N}}S\\[8pt]{\frac {dE}{dt}}&=\beta {\frac {I}{N}}S-aE\\[8pt]{\frac {dI}{dt}}&=aE-b I\\[8pt]{\frac {dR}{dt}}&=b I\end{aligned}}Between $S$ and $I$, the transition rate is $\beta I$, where $\beta$ is the average number of contacts per person per time, multiplied by the probability of disease transmission in a contact between a susceptible and an infectious subject. Between $I$ and $R$, the transition rate is $b$ (simply the rate of recovered or dead, that is, number of recovered or dead during a period of time divided by the total number of infected on that same period of time). And finally, the incubation period is a random variable with exponential distribution with parameter $a$, so that the average incubation period is $a^{-1}$.

Probably more interesting, Understanding the dynamics of ebola epidemics suggested a more complex model, with susceptible people $S$, exposed $E$, Infectious, but either in community $I$, or in hospitals $H$, some people who died $F$ and finally those who either recover or are buried and therefore are no longer susceptible $R$.

Thus, the following dynamic model is considered\displaystyle{\begin{aligned}{\frac {dS}{dt}}&=-(\beta_II+\beta_HH+\beta_FF)\frac{S}{N}\\[8pt]\frac {dE}{dt}&=(\beta_II+\beta_HH+\beta_FF)\frac{S}{N}-\alpha E\\[8pt]\frac {dI}{dt}&=\alpha E+\theta\gamma_H I-(1-\theta)(1-\delta)\gamma_RI-(1-\theta)\delta\gamma_FI\\[8pt]\frac {dH}{dt}&=\theta\gamma_HI-\delta\lambda_FH-(1-\delta)\lambda_RH\\[8pt]\frac {dF}{dt}&=(1-\theta)(1-\delta)\gamma_RI+\delta\lambda_FH-\nu F\\[8pt]\frac {dR}{dt}&=(1-\theta)(1-\delta)\gamma_RI+(1-\delta)\lambda_FH+\nu F\end{aligned}}In that model, parameters are $\alpha^{-1}$ is the (average) incubation period (7 days), $\gamma_H^{-1}$ the onset to hospitalization (5 days), $\gamma_F^{-1}$ the onset to death (9 days), $\gamma_R^{-1}$ the onset to “recovery” (10 days), $\lambda_F^{-1}$ the hospitalisation to death (4 days) while $\lambda_R^{-1}$ is the hospitalisation to recovery (5 days), $\eta^{-1}$ is the death to burial (2 days). Here, numbers are from Understanding the dynamics of ebola epidemics (in the context of ebola). The other parameters are $\beta_I$ the transmission rate in community (0.588), $\beta_H$ the transmission rate in hospital (0.794) and $\beta_F$ the transmission rate at funeral (7.653). Thus

epsilon = 0.001 Z = c(S = 1-epsilon, E = epsilon, I=0,H=0,F=0,R=0) p=c(alpha=1/7*7, theta=0.81, delta=0.81, betai=0.588, betah=0.794, blambdaf=7.653,N=1, gammah=1/5*7, gammaf=1/9.6*7, gammar=1/10*7, lambdaf=1/4.6*7, lambdar=1/5*7, nu=1/2*7)

If $\boldsymbol{Z}=(S,E,I,H,F,R)$, if we write $$\frac{\partial \boldsymbol{Z}}{\partial t} = SEIHFR(\boldsymbol{Z})$$where $SEIHFR$ is

SEIHFR = function(t,Z,p){ S=Z[1]; E=Z[2]; I=Z[3]; H=Z[4]; F=Z[5]; R=Z[6] alpha=p["alpha"]; theta=p["theta"]; delta=p["delta"] betai=p["betai"]; betah=p["betah"]; gammah=p["gammah"] gammaf=p["gammaf"]; gammar=p["gammar"]; lambdaf=p["lambdaf"] lambdar=p["lambdar"]; nu=p["nu"]; blambdaf=p["blambdaf"] N=S+E+I+H+F+R dS=-(betai*I+betah*H+blambdaf*F)*S/N dE=(betai*I+betah*H+blambdaf*F)*S/N-alpha*E dI=alpha*E-theta*gammah*I-(1-theta)*(1-delta)*gammar*I-(1-theta)*delta*gammaf*I dH=theta*gammah*I-delta*lambdaf*H-(1-delta)*lambdaf*H dF=(1-theta)*(1-delta)*gammar*I+delta*lambdaf*H-nu*F dR=(1-theta)*(1-delta)*gammar*I+(1-delta)*lambdar*H+nu*F dZ=c(dS,dE,dI,dH,dF,dR) list(dZ)}

We can solve it, or at least study the dynamics from some starting values

library(deSolve) times = seq(0, 50, by = .1) resol = ode(y=Z, times=times, func=SEIHFR, parms=p)

For instance, the proportion of people infected is the following

plot(resol[,"time"],resol[,"I"],type="l",xlab="time",ylab="",col="red") lines(resol[,"time"],resol[,"H"],col="blue")

# Modeling pandemics (2)

When introducing the SIR model, in our initial post, we got an ordinary differential equation, but we did not really discuss stability, and periodicity. It has to do with the Jacobian matrix of the system. But first of all, we had three equations for three function, but actually$$\displaystyle{{\frac{dS}{dt}}+{\frac {dI}{dt}}+{\frac {dR}{dt}}=0}$$so it means that our problem is here simply in dimension 2. Hence\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}&X={\frac {dS}{dt}}=\mu(N-S)-{\frac {\beta IS}{N}},\\[6pt]&Y={\frac {dI}{dt}}={\frac {\beta IS}{N}}-(\mu+\gamma)I\end{aligned}}and therefore, the Jacobian of the system is$$\begin{pmatrix}\displaystyle{\frac{\partial X}{\partial S}}&\displaystyle{\frac{\partial X}{\partial I}}\\[9pt]\displaystyle{\frac{\partial Y}{\partial S}}&\displaystyle{\frac{\partial Y}{\partial I}}\end{pmatrix}=\begin{pmatrix}\displaystyle{-\mu-\beta\frac{I}{N}}&\displaystyle{-\beta\frac{S}{N}}\\[9pt]\displaystyle{\beta\frac{I}{N}}&\displaystyle{\beta\frac{S}{N}-(\mu+\gamma)}\end{pmatrix}$$We should evaluate the Jacobian at the equilibrium, i.e. $$S^\star=\frac{\gamma+\mu}{\beta}=\frac{1}{R_0}$$and$$I^\star=\frac{\mu(R_0-1)}{\beta}$$We should then look at eigenvalues of the matrix.

Our very last example was

times = seq(0, 100, by=.1) p = c(mu = 1/100, N = 1, beta = 50, gamma = 10) start_SIR = c(S=0.19, I=0.01, R = 0.8) resol = ode(y=start_SIR, t=times, func=SIR, p=p) plot(resol[,"time"],resol[,"I"],type="l",xlab="time",ylab="")

We can compute values at the equilibrium

mu=p["mu"]; beta=p["beta"]; gamma=p["gamma"] N=1 S = (gamma + mu)/beta I = mu * (beta/(gamma + mu) - 1)/beta

and the Jacobian matrix

J=matrix(c(-(mu + beta * I/N),-(beta * S/N), beta * I/N,beta * S/N - (mu + gamma)),2,2,byrow = TRUE)

Now, if we look at the eigenvalues,

eigen(J)$values [1] -0.024975+0.6318831i -0.024975-0.6318831i or more precisely $2\pi/b$ where $a\pm ib$ are the conjuguate eigenvalues 2 * pi/(Im(eigen(J)$values[1])) [1] 9.943588

we have a damping period of 10 time lengths (10 days, or 10 weeks), which is more or less what we’ve seen above,

The graph above was obtained using

p = c(mu = 1/100, N = 1, beta = 50, gamma = 10) start_SIR = c(S=0.19, I=0.01, R = 0.8) resol = ode(y=start_SIR, t=times, func=SIR, p=p) plot(resol[1:1e5,"time"],resol[1:1e5,"I"],type="l",xlab="time",ylab="",lwd=3,col="red") yi=resol[,"I"] dyi=diff(yi) i=which((dyi[2:length(dyi)]*dyi[1:(length(dyi)-1)])&lt;0) t=resol[i,"time"] arrows(t[2],.008,t[4],.008,length=.1,code=3)

If we look carefully. at the begining, the duration is (much) longer than 10 (about 13)… but it does converge towards 9.94

plot(diff(t[seq(2,40,by=2)]),type="b") abline(h=2 * pi/(Im(eigen(J)values[1])) So here, theoretically, every 10 weeks (assuming that our time length is a week), we should observe an outbreak, smaller than the previous one. In practice, initially it is every 13 or 12 weeks, but the time to wait between outbreaks decreases (until it reaches 10 weeks). # Modeling pandemics (1) The most popular model to model epidemics is the so-called SIR model – or Kermack-McKendrick. Consider a population of size $N$, and assume that $S$ is the number of susceptible, $I$ the number of infectious, and $R$ for the number recovered (or immune) individuals, \displaystyle {\begin{aligned}&{\frac {dS}{dt}}=-{\frac {\beta IS}{N}},\\[6pt]&{\frac {dI}{dt}}={\frac {\beta IS}{N}}-\gamma I,\\[6pt]&{\frac {dR}{dt}}=\gamma I,\end{aligned}}so that $$\displaystyle{{\frac{dS}{dt}}+{\frac {dI}{dt}}+{\frac {dR}{dt}}=0}$$which implies that $S+I+R=N$. In order to be more realistic, consider some (constant) birth rate $\mu$, so that the model becomes\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}&{\frac {dS}{dt}}=\mu(N-S)-{\frac {\beta IS}{N}},\\[6pt]&{\frac {dI}{dt}}={\frac {\beta IS}{N}}-(\gamma+\mu) I,\\[6pt]&{\frac {dR}{dt}}=\gamma I-\mu R,\end{aligned}}Note, in this model, that people get sick (infected) but they do not die, they recover. So here, we can model chickenpox, for instance, not SARS. The dynamics of the infectious class depends on the following ratio:$$\displaystyle{R_{0}={\frac {\beta }{\gamma +\mu}}}$$ which is the so-called basic reproduction number (or reproductive ratio). The effective reproductive ratio is $R_0S/N$, and the turnover of the epidemic happens exactly when $R_0S/N=1$, or when the fraction of remaining susceptibles is $R_0^{-1}$. As shown in Directly transmitted infectious diseases:Control by vaccination, if $S/N the disease (the number of people infected) will start to decrease. Want to see it ? Start with mu = 0 beta = 2 gamma = 1/2 for the parameters. Here, $R_0=4$. We also need starting values epsilon = .001 N = 1 S = 1-epsilon I = epsilon R = 0 Then use the ordinary differential equation solver, in R. The idea is to say that $\boldsymbol{Z}=(S,I,R)$ and we have the gradient $$\frac{\partial \boldsymbol{Z}}{\partial t} = SIR(\boldsymbol{Z})$$where $SIR$ is function of the various parameters. Hence, set p = c(mu = 0, N = 1, beta = 2, gamma = 1/2) start_SIR = c(S = 1-epsilon, I = epsilon, R = 0) The we must define the time, and the function that returns the gradient, times = seq(0, 10, by = .1) SIR = function(t,Z,p){ S=Z[1]; I=Z[2]; R=Z[3]; N=S+I+R mu=p["mu"]; beta=p["beta"]; gamma=p["gamma"] dS=mu*(N-S)-beta*S*I/N dI=beta*S*I/N-(mu+gamma)*I dR=gamma*I-mu*R dZ=c(dS,dI,dR) return(list(dZ))} To solve this problem use library(deSolve) resol = ode(y=start_SIR, times=times, func=SIR, parms=p) We can visualize the dynamics below par(mfrow=c(1,2)) t=resol[,"time"] plot(t,resol[,"S"],type="l",xlab="time",ylab="") lines(t,resol[,"I"],col="red") lines(t,resol[,"R"],col="blue") plot(t,t*0+1,type="l",xlab="time",ylab="",ylim=0:1) polygon(c(t,rev(t)),c(resol[,"R"],rep(0,nrow(resol))),col="blue") polygon(c(t,rev(t)),c(resol[,"R"]+resol[,"I"],rev(resol[,"R"])),col="red") We can actually also visualize the effective reproductive number is $R_0S/N$, where R0=p["beta"]/(p["gamma"]+p["mu"]) The effective reproductive number is on the left, and as we mentioned above, when we reach 1, we actually reach the maximum of the infected, plot(t,resol[,"S"]*R0,type="l",xlab="time",ylab="") abline(h=1,lty=2,col="red") abline(v=max(t[resol[,"S"]*R0&gt;=1]),col="darkgreen") points(max(t[resol[,"S"]*R0&gt;=1]),1,pch=19) plot(t,resol[,"S"],type="l",xlab="time",ylab="",col="grey") lines(t,resol[,"I"],col="red",lwd=3) lines(t,resol[,"R"],col="light blue") abline(v=max(t[resol[,"S"]*R0&gt;=1]),col="darkgreen") points(max(t[resol[,"S"]*R0&gt;=1]),max(resol[,"I"]),pch=19) And when adding a $\mu$ parameter, we can obtain some interesting dynamics on the number of infected, times = seq(0, 100, by=.1) p = c(mu = 1/100, N = 1, beta = 50, gamma = 10) start_SIR = c(S=0.19, I=0.01, R = 0.8) resol = ode(y=start_SIR, t=times, func=SIR, p=p) plot(resol[,"time"],resol[,"I"],type="l",xlab="time",ylab="") # Function basis and regression In the first part of the course on linear models, we’ve seen how to construct a linear model when the vector of covariates $\boldsymbol{x}$ is given, so that $\mathbb{E}(Y|\boldsymbol{X}=\boldsymbol{x})$ is either simply $\boldsymbol{x}^\top\boldsymbol{\beta}$ (for standard linear models) or a functional of $\boldsymbol{x}^\top\boldsymbol{\beta}$ (in GLMs). But more generally, we can consider transformations of the covariates, so that a linear model can be used. In a very general setting, consider $$\sum_{j=1}^m\beta_j h_j(\boldsymbol{x})$$with $h_j:\mathbb{R}^p\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$. The standard linear model is obtained when $m=p$ and $h_j(\boldsymbol{x})=x_j$ , but of course, much more general models can be obtained, for instance with $h_k(\boldsymbol{x})=x_j^2$ or $h_k(\boldsymbol{x})=x_{j}x_{j'}$, that could be used to achieve high-order Taylor expansions. In that case, we will obtain the polynomial regression, that we will discuss first. We might also think of piecewise constant functions, $h_k(\boldsymbol{x})=\boldsymbol{1}(x_j\in [a,b])$ , that could be related to regression trees (but that is not in the scope in the STT5100 course). And if we go on step futher, we might think of piecewise linear or piecewise polynomial function, possibly with additional continuity constraints, that will lead us to spline basis. • Polynomial regression For pedagogical purpose, when I talk about polynomial regression, I always have in mind (in the univariate case) $$y=\beta_0+\beta_1x+\beta_2x^2+\cdots+\beta_kx^k+\varepsilon$$but if we use lm(y~poly(x,k)) in R, the output is not the $\beta_j$‘s. As discussed in Kennedy & Gentle (1980) Statistical Computing, Recall that orthogonal polynomials are defined with respect to the classical inner-product (on the finite interval $(a,b)$)$${\displaystyle \langle f,g\rangle =\int _{a}^{b}f(x)g(x)~\mathrm {d} x}$$ And a sequence of orthogonal polynomials is $(P_n)$ where $P_n$ is a polynomial of degree $n$, for all $n$, and such that $P_m\perp P_n$ for all $m\neq n$. Note that those polyomials are orthogonal with respect to the inner product defined above, i.e. given some finite interval $(a,b)$. But if $(a,b)$ changes, the polynomials will be different. A popular family of orthogonal polynomial, on finite interval $(-1,+1)$ is the family of Legendre polynomials, satisfying$${\displaystyle \int _{-1}^{1}P_{m}(x)P_{n}(x)~\mathrm {d} x=0}$$as soon as $m\neq n$. Those polynomials satisfy Bonnet’s recursion formula$${\displaystyle (n+1)P_{n+1}(x)=(2n+1)xP_{n}(x)-nP_{n-1}(x)}$$ or Rodrigues’ formula $${\displaystyle P_{n}(x)={\frac {1}{2^{n}n!}}{\frac {d^{n}}{dx^{n}}}(x^{2}-1)^{n}}$$The first values are here$${\displaystyle P_{0}(x)=1}$$$${\displaystyle P_{1}(x)=x}$$$${\displaystyle P_{2}(x)={\frac {3x^{2}-1}{2}}}$$$${\displaystyle P_{3}(x)={\frac {5x^{3}-3x}{2}}}$$$${\displaystyle P_{4}(x)={\frac {35x^{4}-30x^{2}+3}{8}}}$$ Interestingly, we can get those polynomial functions using library(orthopolynom) (leg4coef = legendre.polynomials(n=4)) [[1]] 1 [[2]] x [[3]] -0.5 + 1.5*x^2 [[4]] -1.5*x + 2.5*x^3 [[5]] 0.375 - 3.75*x^2 + 4.375*x^4 Of course, there are many families of orthogonal polynomials (Jacobi polynomials, Laguerre polynomials, Hermite polynomials, etc). Now, in R, there is the standard poly function, that we use in polynomial regression. x = seq(-1,1,length=101) y = poly(x,4) y 1 2 3 4 [1,] -1.706475e-01 0.215984813 -2.480753e-01 0.270362873 [2,] -1.672345e-01 0.203025724 -2.183063e-01 0.216290298 ... [100,] 1.672345e-01 0.203025724 2.183063e-01 0.216290298 [101,] 1.706475e-01 0.215984813 2.480753e-01 0.270362873 attr(,"coefs") attr(,"coefs")alpha [1] 3.157229e-17 2.655145e-16 9.799244e-17 5.368224e-16   attr(,"coefs")$norm2 [1] 1.0000000 101.0000000 34.3400000 9.3377328 2.4472330 0.6330176 attr(,"degree") [1] 1 2 3 4 attr(,"class") [1] "poly" "matrix" But these are not Legendre polynomials… As explained in 李哲源‘s post on stackoverflow, the idea is to start with $P_{-1}(x)=0$, $P_{0}(x)=1$ and $P_{1}(x)=x$, and then define $\ell_n=\langle P_n,P_n\rangle$ as well as $\alpha_n=\langle P_nP_1,P_1\rangle/\ell_n=\langle P_n^2,P_1\rangle/\ell_i=$ and $\beta_n=\ell_n/\ell_{n-1}$. Finally, define recursively$${\displaystyle P_{n}(x)=(x-\alpha_{n-1})P_{n-1}(x)-\beta_{i-1}P_{i-2}(x)}$$and its normalized version, $\tilde{P}_{n}=P_n/\sqrt{\ell_n}$. That is what poly computes. So, for pedagogical purpose, I said that I like to use $y=\boldsymbol{x}^\top\boldsymbol{\beta}+\varepsilon$ where$$\boldsymbol{x}=(1,x,x^2,\cdots,xˆ{k-1},x^k)$$And actually, when using poly, we use the QR decomposition of that matrix. As discussed in in 李哲源‘s post, we can almost reproduce the poly function using my_poly - function (x, degree = 1) { xbar = mean(x) x = x - xbar QR = qr(outer(x, 0:degree, "^")) X = qr.qy(QR, diag(diag(QR$qr), length(x), degree + 1))[, -1, drop = FALSE] X2 = X * X norm2 = colSums(X * X) alpha = drop(crossprod(X2, x)) / norm2 beta = norm2 / (c(length(x), norm2[-degree])) colnames(X) = 1:degree scale = sqrt(norm2) X = X * rep(1 / scale, each = length(x)) X}

Nevertheless, the two models are equivalent. More precisely,

plot(cars) reg1 = lm(dist~speed+I(speed^2)+I(speed^3),data=cars) reg2 = lm(dist~poly(speed,3),data=cars) u = seq(3,26,by=.1) v1 = predict(reg1,newdata=data.frame(speed=u)) v2 = predict(reg2,newdata=data.frame(speed=u)) lines(u,v1,col="blue") lines(u,v2,col="red",lty=2)

We have exactly the same prediction here

v1[u==15] 121 38.43919 v2[u==15] 121 38.43919

And probably also quite interesting : the coefficients do not have the same interpretation (since we do not have the same basis), but the $p$-value for the highest degree is exactly the same here ! Here the two models reject, with the same confidence, the polynomial of degree three,

summary(reg1)   Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) (Intercept) -19.50505 28.40530 -0.687 0.496 speed 6.80111 6.80113 1.000 0.323 I(speed^2) -0.34966 0.49988 -0.699 0.488 I(speed^3) 0.01025 0.01130 0.907 0.369   Residual standard error: 15.2 on 46 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.6732, Adjusted R-squared: 0.6519 F-statistic: 31.58 on 3 and 46 DF, p-value: 3.074e-11   summary(reg2)   Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) (Intercept) 42.98 2.15 19.988 &lt; 2e-16 *** poly(speed, 3)1 145.55 15.21 9.573 1.6e-12 *** poly(speed, 3)2 23.00 15.21 1.512 0.137 poly(speed, 3)3 13.80 15.21 0.907 0.369 --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1   Residual standard error: 15.2 on 46 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.6732, Adjusted R-squared: 0.6519 F-statistic: 31.58 on 3 and 46 DF, p-value: 3.074e-11
• B-splines regression (and GAMs)

Splines are also important in regression models, especially when we start talking about Generalized Additive Models. See Perperoglou, Sauerbrei, Abrahamowicz & Schmid (2019) for a review. In the univariate case, I introduce (linear) splines through positive parts, in the sense that$$y=\beta_0+\beta_1x+\beta_2(x-s_1)_++\cdots+\beta_k(x-s_{k-1})_++\varepsilon$$where $(x-s)_+$ equals $0$ if $x and $x-s$ if $x>s$. Those functions are nice since they are continuous, so the model is continuous (the weighted sum of continuous functions is continuous). And we can go one step further, with $$y=\beta_0+\beta_1x+\beta_2x^2+\beta_3(x-s_1)^2_++\cdots+\beta_k(x-s_{k-2})^2_++\varepsilon$$with quadratic splines, or $$y=\beta_0+\beta_1x+\beta_2x^2+\beta_3x^3+\beta_4(x-s_1)^3_++\cdots+\beta_k(x-s_{k-3})^3_++\varepsilon$$for cubic splines. Interestingly, quadratic splines are not only continuous, but their first derivative is also continuous (and the second one for cubic splines). So the knot discontinuity is $s_1,s_2,\cdots$ is now invisible…

I like those models since they are easy to interprete. For example, the simple model $$\beta_1 x+\beta_2(x-s)_+$$ is the following piecewise linear function, continuous, with a “rupture” at knot $s$.

Observe also the following interpretation: for small values of $x$, there is a linear increase, with slope $\beta_1$, and for lager values of $x$, there is a linear decrease, with slope $\beta_1+\beta_2$. Hence, $\beta_2$ is interpreted as a change of the slope.

Unfortunately, it is now what R is using when using the bs function in R, which are the standard B-splines. Just to visualize (I will skip the maths here), with R, we have

library(splines) clr6 = c("#1b9e77","#d95f02","#7570b3","#e7298a","#66a61e","#e6ab02") x = seq(5,25,by=.25) B = bs(x,knots=c(10,20),Boundary.knots=c(5,55),degre=1) matplot(x,B,type="l",lty=1,lwd=2,col=clr6) B=bs(x,knots=c(10,20),Boundary.knots=c(5,55),degre=2) matplot(x,B,type="l",col=clr6,lty=1,lwd=2)

while the functions I mentioned were (more or less) the following

pos = function(x,s) (x-s)*(x&gt;s) par(mfrow=c(1,2)) clr6 = c("#1b9e77","#d95f02","#7570b3","#e7298a","#66a61e","#e6ab02") x = seq(5,25,by=.25) B = cbind(pos(x,5),pos(x,10),pos(x,20)) matplot(x,B,type="l",lty=1,lwd=2,col=clr6) pos2 = function(x,s) (x-s)^2*(x&gt;s) B = cbind(pos(x,5)*20,pos2(x,5),pos2(x,10),pos2(x,20)) matplot(x,B,type="l",col=clr6,lty=1,lwd=2)

And as for the polynomial regression, the two models are equivalent. For example

plot(cars) reg1 = lm(dist~speed+pos(speed,10)+pos(speed,20),data=cars) reg2 = lm(dist~bs(speed,degree=1,knots=c(10,20)),data=cars) v1 = predict(reg1,newdata=data.frame(speed=u)) v2 = predict(reg2,newdata=data.frame(speed=u)) lines(u,v1,col="blue") lines(u,v2,col="red",lty=2)

or more specifically

v1[u==15] 121 39.35747 v2[u==15] 121 39.35747

So one more time, the two models are equivalent, but I still find the approach with the positive part more intuitive, and easy to understand. As well as the interpretation of coefficients,

summary(reg1)   Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) (Intercept) -7.6305 16.2941 -0.468 0.6418 speed 3.0630 1.8238 1.679 0.0998 . pos(speed, 10) 0.2087 2.2453 0.093 0.9263 pos(speed, 20) 4.2812 2.2843 1.874 0.0673 . --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1   Residual standard error: 15 on 46 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.6821, Adjusted R-squared: 0.6613 F-statistic: 32.89 on 3 and 46 DF, p-value: 1.643e-11   summary(reg2)   Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) (Intercept) 4.621 9.344 0.495 0.6233 bs(speed, degree = 1, knots = c(10, 20))1 18.378 10.943 1.679 0.0998 . bs(speed, degree = 1, knots = c(10, 20))2 51.094 10.040 5.089 6.51e-06 *** bs(speed, degree = 1, knots = c(10, 20))3 88.859 12.047 7.376 2.49e-09 *** --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1   Residual standard error: 15 on 46 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.6821, Adjusted R-squared: 0.6613 F-statistic: 32.89 on 3 and 46 DF, p-value: 1.643e-11

Here we can see directly that the first knot was not interesting (the slope did not change significantly) while the second one was…

# Testing for a causal effect (with 2 time series)

A few days ago, I came back on a sentence I found (in a French newspaper), where someone was claiming that

“… an old variable explains 85% of the change in a new variable. So we can talk about causality”

and I tried to explain that it was just stupid : if we consider the regression of the temperature on day $t+1$ against the number of cyclist on day $t$, the $R^2$ exceeds 80%… but it is hard to claim that the number of cyclists on specific day will actually cause the temperature on the next day…

Nevertheless, that was frustrating, and I was wondering if there was a clever way to test for causality in that case. A popular one is Granger causality (I can mention a paper we published a few years ago where we use such a test, Tents, Tweets, and Events: The Interplay Between Ongoing Protests and Social Media). To explain that test, consider a bivariate time series (just like the one we have here), $\boldsymbol{z}_t=(x_t,y_t)$, and consider some bivariate autoregressive model
$${\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}x_{t}\\y_{t}\end{bmatrix}}={\begin{bmatrix}c_{1}\\c_{2}\end{bmatrix}}+{\begin{bmatrix}a_{1,1}&\textcolor{red}{a_{1,2}}\\\textcolor{blue}{a_{2,1}}&a_{2,2}\end{bmatrix}}{\begin{bmatrix}x_{t-1}\\y_{t-1}\end{bmatrix}}+{\begin{bmatrix}u_{t}\\v_{t}\end{bmatrix}}}$$where $\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}_t=(u_t,v_t)$ is some bivariate white noise, in the sense that (i) ${\displaystyle \mathbb{E} (\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}_{t})=\boldsymbol{0}}$ (the noise is centered) (ii) ${\displaystyle \mathbb{E} (\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}_{t}\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}_{t}^\top)=\Omega }$, so the variance matrix is constant, but possibly non-diagonal (iii) ${\displaystyle \mathbb{E} (\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}_{t}\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}_{t-h}^\top)=\boldsymbol{0} }$ for all $h\neq 0$. Note that we can use the simplified expression$${\displaystyle {\boldsymbol{z}_t=\boldsymbol{c}+\boldsymbol{A}\boldsymbol{z}_{t-1}+\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}_t}}$$Now, Granger test is based on several quantities. With off-diagonal terms of matrix $\Omega$, we have a so-called instantaneous causality, and since $\Omega$ is symmetry, we will write $x\leftrightarrow y$. With off-diagonal terms of matrix $\boldsymbol{A}$, we have a so-called lagged causality, with either $\textcolor{blue}{x\rightarrow y}$ or $\textcolor{red}{x\leftarrow y}$ (and possibly both, if both terms are significant).

So I wanted to try on my two-variable problem.

df = read.csv("cyclistsTempHKI.csv") dfts = cbind(C=ts(df$cyclists,start = c(2014, 1,2), frequency = 365), T=ts(df$meanTemp,start = c(2014, 1,2), frequency = 365)) library(vars)

I now have “time series” objects, and we can fit a VAR model,

var2 = VAR(dfts, p = 1, type = "const") coefficients(var2) $C Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) C.l1 0.8684009 0.02889424 30.054460 8.080226e-107 T.l1 70.3042012 20.07247411 3.502518 5.102094e-04 const 807.6394001 187.75472482 4.301566 2.110412e-05$T Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) C.l1 0.0003865391 6.257596e-05 6.177118 1.540467e-09 T.l1 0.6611135594 4.347074e-02 15.208241 6.086394e-42 const -1.6413074565 4.066184e-01 -4.036481 6.446018e-05

For instant, we can run a causality, to test if the number of cyclists can cause the temperature (on the next day)

causality(var2, cause = "C") $Granger Granger causality H0: C do not Granger-cause T data: VAR object var2 F-Test = 38.157, df1 = 1, df2 = 842, p-value = 1.015e-09 Here, we should clearly reject $H_0$, which is that there is no causal effect. Which is the way statisticians say that there should be some causal effect between the number of cyclist and the temperature… So clearly, something is wrong here. Either it is some sort of superpower that cyclists are not aware of. Or this test that was used for forty years (Clive Granger even got a Nobel price for it) is not working. Or we missed something. Actually… I think we missed something here. Possibly because the series are not stationary. We can almost see it with Phi = matrix(c(coefficients(var2)$C[1:2,1],coefficients(var2)$T[1:2,1]),2,2) eigen(Phi) eigen() decomposition$values [1] 0.9594810 0.5700335

where the highest eigenvalue is very close to one. But actually, we look here at the temperature…

plot(dfts)

so, at least, we should expect some seasonal unit root here. So let us use two techniques. The first one is a classical one-year difference, $\Delta_{365}\boldsymbol{z}_t=\boldsymbol{z}_t-\boldsymbol{z}_{t-365}$

var2 = VAR(diff(dfts,365), p = 1, type = "const") coefficients(var2) $C Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) C.l1 0.8376424 0.07259969 11.537823 1.993355e-16 T.l1 42.2638410 28.58783276 1.478386 1.449076e-01 const -507.5514795 219.40240747 -2.313336 2.440042e-02$T Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(&gt;|t|) C.l1 0.000518209 0.0003277295 1.5812096 1.194623e-01 T.l1 0.598425288 0.1290511945 4.6371154 2.162476e-05 const 0.547828079 0.9904263469 0.5531235 5.823804e-01

The test on the fited VAR model yields

causality(var2, cause = "C") $Granger Granger causality H0: C do not Granger-cause T data: VAR object var2 F-Test = 2.5002, df1 = 1, df2 = 112, p-value = 0.1167 i.e., with a 11% $p$-value, we should reject the assumption that the number of cyclists cause the temperature (on the next day), and actually, we should also reject the other way causality(var2, cause = "T")$Granger   Granger causality H0: T do not Granger-cause C   data: VAR object var2 F-Test = 2.1856, df1 = 1, df2 = 112, p-value = 0.1421

Nevertheless, if we look at the instantaneous causality, this one makes more sense

$Instant H0: No instantaneous causality between: T and C data: VAR object var2 Chi-squared = 13.081, df = 1, p-value = 0.0002982 The second idea would be to use a one day difference, $\Delta_{1}\boldsymbol{z}_t=\boldsymbol{z}_t-\boldsymbol{z}_{t-1}$ and to fit a VAR model on that one VARselect(diff(dfts,1), lag.max = 4, type="const")$selection AIC(n) HQ(n) SC(n) FPE(n) 3 3 2 3

but on that one, a VAR(1) model – with only one lag – might not be sufficient. It might be better to consider a VAR(3)

var2 = VAR(diff(dfts,1), p = 3, type = "const")

and on that one, one more time, we should reject the causal effect of the number of cyclists on the temperature (on the next day)

causality(var2, cause = "C") $Granger Granger causality H0: C do not Granger-cause T data: VAR object var2 F-Test = 0.67644, df1 = 3, df2 = 828, p-value = 0.5666 and this time, there could be a (lagged) causal effect of the temperature on the number of cyclists causality(var2, cause = "T")$Granger   Granger causality H0: T do not Granger-cause C   data: VAR object var2 F-Test = 7.7981, df1 = 3, df2 = 828, p-value = 3.879e-05   $Instant H0: No instantaneous causality between: T and C data: VAR object var2 Chi-squared = 55.83, df = 1, p-value = 7.905e-14 but nothing instantaneously… So it looks like Granger causality performs well on that one ! # Lasso Regression (home made) Again, this post is related to my MAT7381 course, where we will see that it is actually possible to write our own code to compute Lasso regression, $$\min\left\lbrace\frac{1}{2}\|\mathbf{y}-\mathbf{X}\mathbf{\beta}\|_{\ell_2}^2+\lambda\|\mathbf{\beta}\|_{\ell_1}\right\rbrace$$We have to define the soft-thresholding function$$S(z,\gamma)=\text{sign}(z)\cdot(|z|-\gamma)_+=\begin{cases}z-\gamma&\text{ if }\gamma>|z|\text{ and }z<0\\z+\gamma&\text{ if }\gamma<|z|\text{ and }z<0 \\0&\text{ if }\gamma\geq|z|\end{cases}$$The R function would be soft_thresholding = function(x,a){ sign(x) * pmax(abs(x)-a,0) } To solve our optimization problem, set$$\mathbf{r}_j=\mathbf{y} - \left(\beta_0\mathbf{1}+\sum_{k\neq j}\beta_k\mathbf{x}_k\right)=\mathbf{y}-\widehat{\mathbf{y}}^{(j)}$$ so that the optimization problem can be written, equivalently $$\min\left\lbrace\frac{1}{2n}\sum_{j=1}^p [\mathbf{r}_j-\beta_j\mathbf{x}_j]^2+\lambda |\beta_j|\right\rbrace$$ hence$$\min\left\lbrace\frac{1}{2n}\sum_{j=1}^p \beta_j^2\|\mathbf{x}_j\|-2\beta_j\mathbf{r}_j^T\mathbf{x}_j+\lambda |\beta_j|\right\rbrace$$ and one gets $$\beta_{j,\lambda} = \frac{1}{\|\mathbf{x}_j\|^2}S(\mathbf{r}_j^T\mathbf{x}_j,n\lambda)$$ or, if we develop $$\beta_{j,\lambda} = \frac{1}{\sum_i x_{ij}^2}S\left(\sum_ix_{i,j}[y_i-\widehat{y}_i^{(j)}],n\lambda\right)$$ Again, if there are weights $\mathbf{\omega}=(\omega_i)$, the coordinate-wise update becomes $$\beta_{j,\lambda,{\color{red}{\omega}}} = \frac{1}{\sum_i {\color{red}{\omega_i}}x_{ij}^2}S\left(\sum_i{\color{red}{\omega_i}}x_{i,j}[y_i-\widehat{y}_i^{(j)}],n\lambda\right)$$ The code to compute this componentwise descent is lasso_coord_desc = function(X,y,beta,lambda,tol=1e-6,maxiter=1000){ beta = as.matrix(beta) X = as.matrix(X) omega = rep(1/length(y),length(y)) obj = numeric(length=(maxiter+1)) betalist = list(length(maxiter+1)) betalist[[1]] = beta beta0list = numeric(length(maxiter+1)) beta0 = sum(y-X%*%beta)/(length(y)) beta0list[1] = beta0 for (j in 1:maxiter){ for (k in 1:length(beta)){ r = y - X[,-k]%*%beta[-k] - beta0*rep(1,length(y)) beta[k] = (1/sum(omega*X[,k]^2))* soft_thresholding(t(omega*r)%*%X[,k],length(y)*lambda) } beta0 = sum(y-X%*%beta)/(length(y)) beta0list[j+1] = beta0 betalist[[j+1]] = beta obj[j] = (1/2)*(1/length(y))*norm(omega*(y - X%*%beta - beta0*rep(1,length(y))),'F')^2 + lambda*sum(abs(beta)) if (norm(rbind(beta0list[j],betalist[[j]]) - rbind(beta0,beta),'F') &lt; tol) { break } } return(list(obj=obj[1:j],beta=beta,intercept=beta0)) } For instance, consider the following (simple) dataset, with three covariates chicago = read.table("http://freakonometrics.free.fr/chicago.txt",header=TRUE,sep=";") that we can “normalize” (or “standardize“) X = model.matrix(lm(Fire~.,data=chicago))[,2:4] for(j in 1:3) X[,j] = (X[,j]-mean(X[,j]))/sd(X[,j]) y = chicago$Fire y = (y-mean(y))/sd(y)

To initialize the algorithm, use the OLS estimate

beta_init = lm(Fire~0+.,data=chicago)$coef For instance lasso_coord_desc(X,y,beta_init,lambda=.001)$obj [1] 0.001014426 0.001008009 0.001009558 0.001011094 0.001011119 0.001011119   $beta [,1] X_1 0.0000000 X_2 0.3836087 X_3 -0.5026137$intercept [1] 2.060999e-16

and we can get the standard Lasso plot by looping,

# Quantile Regression (home made, part 2)

A few months ago, I posted a note with some home made codes for quantile regression… there was something odd on the output, but it was because there was a (small) mathematical problem in my equation. So since I should teach those tomorrow, let me fix them.

## Median

Consider a sample $\{y_1,\cdots,y_n\}$. To compute the median, solve$$\min_\mu \left\lbrace\sum_{i=1}^n|y_i-\mu|\right\rbrace$$which can be solved using linear programming techniques. More precisely, this problem is equivalent to$$\min_{\mu,\mathbf{a},\mathbf{b}}\left\lbrace\sum_{i=1}^na_i+b_i\right\rbrace$$with $a_i,b_i\geq 0$ and $y_i-\mu=a_i-b_i$, $\forall i=1,\cdots,n$. Heuristically, the idea is to write $y_i=\mu+\varepsilon_i$, and then define $a_i$‘s and $b_i$‘s so that $\varepsilon_i=a_i-b_i$ and $|\varepsilon_i|=a_i+b_i$, i.e. $$a_i=(\varepsilon_i)_+=\max\lbrace0,\varepsilon_i\rbrace=|\varepsilon|\cdot\boldsymbol{1}_{\varepsilon_i>0}$$and$$b_i=(-\varepsilon_i)_+=\max\lbrace0,-\varepsilon_i\rbrace=|\varepsilon|\cdot\boldsymbol{1}_{\varepsilon_i<0}$$denote respectively the positive and the negative parts.

Unfortunately (that was the error in my previous post), the expression of linear programs is$$\min_{\mathbf{z}}\left\lbrace\boldsymbol{c}^\top\mathbf{z}\right\rbrace\text{ s.t. }\boldsymbol{A}\mathbf{z}=\boldsymbol{b},\mathbf{z}\geq\boldsymbol{0}$$In the equation above, with the $a_i$‘s and $b_i$‘s, we’re not far away. Except that we have $\mu\in\mathbb{R}$, while it should be positive. So similarly, set $\mu=\mu^+-\mu^-$ where $\mu^+=(\mu)_+$ and $\mu^-=(-\mu)_+$.

Thus, let$$\mathbf{z}=\big(\mu^+;\mu^-;\boldsymbol{a},\boldsymbol{b}\big)^\top\in\mathbb{R}_+^{2n+2}$$and then write the constraint as $\boldsymbol{A}\mathbf{z}=\boldsymbol{b}$ with $\boldsymbol{b}=\boldsymbol{y}$ and $$\boldsymbol{A}=\big[\boldsymbol{1}_n;-\boldsymbol{1}_n;\mathbb{I}_n;-\mathbb{I}_n\big]$$And for the objective function$$\boldsymbol{c}=\big(\boldsymbol{0},\boldsymbol{1}_n,-\boldsymbol{1}_n\big)^\top\in\mathbb{R}_+^{2n+2}$$

To illustrate, consider a sample from a lognormal distribution,

n = 101 set.seed(1) y = rlnorm(n) median(y) [1] 1.077415

For the optimization problem, use the matrix form, with $3n$ constraints, and $2n+1$ parameters,

So far so good…

## Quantile Regression

Consider the following dataset, with rents of flat, in a major German city, as function of the surface, the year of construction, etc.

base=read.table("http://freakonometrics.free.fr/rent98_00.txt",header=TRUE)

The linear program for the quantile regression is now$$\min_{\boldsymbol{\beta}^+,\boldsymbol{\beta}^-,\mathbf{a},\mathbf{b}}\left\lbrace\sum_{i=1}^n\tau a_i+(1-\tau)b_i\right\rbrace$$with $a_i,b_i\geq 0$ and $$y_i=\boldsymbol{x}^\top[\boldsymbol{\beta}^+-\boldsymbol{\beta}^-]+a_i-b_i$$$\forall i=1,\cdots,n$ and $\beta_j^+,\beta_j^-\geq 0$ $\forall j=0,\cdots,k$. So use here

require(lpSolve) tau = .3 n=nrow(base) X = cbind( 1, base$area) y = base$rent_euro K = ncol(X) N = nrow(X) A = cbind(X,-X,diag(N),-diag(N)) c = c(rep(0,2*ncol(X)),tau*rep(1,N),(1-tau)*rep(1,N)) b = base$rent_euro const_type = rep("=",N) r = lp("min",c,A,const_type,b) beta = r$sol[1:K] - r$sol[(1:K+K)] beta [1] 148.946864 3.289674 Of course, we can use R function to fit that model library(quantreg) rq(rent_euro~area, tau=tau, data=base) Coefficients: (Intercept) area 148.946864 3.289674 Here again, it seems to work quite well. We can use a different probability level, of course, and get a plot plot(base$area,base$rent_euro,xlab=expression(paste("surface (",m^2,")")), ylab="rent (euros/month)",col=rgb(0,0,1,.4),cex=.5) sf=0:250 yr=r$solution[2*n+1]+r$solution[2*n+2]*sf lines(sf,yr,lwd=2,col="blue") tau = .9 r = lp("min",c,A,const_type,b) tail(r$solution,2) [1] 121.815505 7.865536 yr=r$solution[2*n+1]+r$solution[2*n+2]*sf lines(sf,yr,lwd=2,col="blue")

And we can adapt the later to multiple regressions, of course,

X = cbind(1,base$area,base$yearc) K = ncol(X) N = nrow(X) A = cbind(X,-X,diag(N),-diag(N)) c = c(rep(0,2*ncol(X)),tau*rep(1,N),(1-tau)*rep(1,N)) b = base$rent_euro const_type = rep("=",N) r = lp("min",c,A,const_type,b) beta = r$sol[1:K] - r$sol[(1:K+K)] beta [1] -5542.503252 3.978135 2.887234 to be compared with library(quantreg) rq(rent_euro~ area + yearc, tau=tau, data=base) Coefficients: (Intercept) area yearc -5542.503252 3.978135 2.887234 Degrees of freedom: 4571 total; 4568 residual # On Cochran Theorem (and Orthogonal Projections) Cochran Theorem – from The distribution of quadratic forms in a normal system, with applications to the analysis of covariance published in 1934 – is probably the most import one in a regression course. It is an application of a nice result on quadratic forms of Gaussian vectors. More precisely, we can prove that if $\boldsymbol{Y}\sim\mathcal{N}(\boldsymbol{0},\mathbb{I}_d)$ is a random vector with $d$ $\mathcal{N}(0,1)$ variable then (i) if $A$ is a (squared) idempotent matrix $\boldsymbol{Y}^\top A\boldsymbol{Y}\sim\chi^2_r$ where $r$ is the rank of matrix $A$, and (ii) conversely, if $\boldsymbol{Y}^\top A\boldsymbol{Y}\sim\chi^2_r$ then $A$ is an idempotent matrix of rank $r$. And just in case, $A$ is an idempotent matrix means that $A^2=A$, and a lot of results can be derived (for instance on the eigenvalues). The prof of that result (at least the (i) part) is nice: we diagonlize matrix $A$, so that $A=P\Delta P^\top$, with $P$ orthonormal. Since $A$ is an idempotent matrix observe that$$A^2=P\Delta P^\top=P\Delta P^\top=P\Delta^2 P^\top$$where $\Delta$ is some diagonal matrix such that $\Delta^2=\Delta$, so terms on the diagonal of $\Delta$ are either $0$ or $1$‘s. And because the rank of $A$ (and $\Delta$) is $r$ then there should be $r$ $1$‘s and $d-r$ $1$‘s. Now write$$\boldsymbol{Y}^\top A\boldsymbol{Y}=\boldsymbol{Y}^\top P\Delta P^\top\boldsymbol{Y}=\boldsymbol{Z}^\top \Delta\boldsymbol{Z}$$where $\boldsymbol{Z}=P^\top\boldsymbol{Y}$ that satisfies$\boldsymbol{Z}\sim\mathcal{N}(\boldsymbol{0},PP^\top)$ i.e. $\boldsymbol{Z}\sim\mathcal{N}(\boldsymbol{0},\mathbb{I}_d)$. Thus $$\boldsymbol{Z}^\top \Delta\boldsymbol{Z}=\sum_{i:\Delta_{i,i}-1}Z_i^2\sim\chi^2_r$$Nice, isn’t it. And there is more (that will be strongly connected actually to Cochran theorem). Let $A=A_1+\dots+A_k$, then the two following statements are equivalent (i) $A$ is idempotent and $\text{rank}(A)=\text{rank}(A_1)+\dots+\text{rank}(A_k)$ (ii) $A_i$‘s are idempotents, $A_iA_j=0$ for all $i\neq j$. Now, let us talk about projections. Let $\boldsymbol{y}$ be a vector in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Its projection on the space $\mathcal V(\boldsymbol{v}_1,\dots,\boldsymbol{v}_p)$ (generated by those $p$ vectors) is the vector $\hat{\boldsymbol{y}}=\boldsymbol{V} \hat{\boldsymbol{a}}$ that minimizes $\|\boldsymbol{y} -\boldsymbol{V} \boldsymbol{a}\|$ (in $\boldsymbol{a}$). The solution is$$\hat{\boldsymbol{a}}=( \boldsymbol{V}^\top \boldsymbol{V})^{-1} \boldsymbol{V}^\top \boldsymbol{y} \text{ and } \hat{\boldsymbol{y}} = \boldsymbol{V} \hat{\boldsymbol{a}}$$ Matrix $P=\boldsymbol{V} ( \boldsymbol{V}^\top \boldsymbol{V})^{-1} \boldsymbol{V}^\top$ is the orthogonal projection on $\{\boldsymbol{v}_1,\dots,\boldsymbol{v}_p\}$ and $\hat{\boldsymbol{y}} = P\boldsymbol{y}$. Now we can recall Cochran theorem. Let $\boldsymbol{Y}\sim\mathcal{N}(\boldsymbol{\mu},\sigma^2\mathbb{I}_d)$ for some $\sigma>0$ and $\boldsymbol{\mu}$. Consider sub-vector orthogonal spaces $F_1,\dots,F_m$, with dimension $d_i$. Let $P_{F_i}$ be the orthogonal projection matrix on $F_i$, then (i) vectors $P_{F_1}\boldsymbol{X},\dots,P_{F_m}\boldsymbol{X}$ are independent, with respective distribution $\mathcal{N}(P_{F_i}\boldsymbol{\mu},\sigma^2\mathbb{I}_{d_i})$ and (ii) random variables $\|P_{F_i}(\boldsymbol{X}-\boldsymbol{\mu})\|^2/\sigma^2$ are independent and $\chi^2_{d_i}$ distributed. We can try to visualize those results. For instance, the orthogonal projection of a random vector has a Gaussian distribution. Consider a two-dimensional Gaussian vector library(mnormt) r = .7 s1 = 1 s2 = 1 Sig = matrix(c(s1^2,r*s1*s2,r*s1*s2,s2^2),2,2) Sig Y = rmnorm(n = 1000,mean=c(0,0),varcov = Sig) plot(Y,cex=.6) vu = seq(-4,4,length=101) vz = outer(vu,vu,function (x,y) dmnorm(cbind(x,y), mean=c(0,0), varcov = Sig)) contour(vu,vu,vz,add=TRUE,col='blue') abline(a=0,b=2,col="red") Consider now the projection of points $\boldsymbol{y}=(y_1,y_2)$ on the straight linear with directional vector $\overrightarrow{\boldsymbol{u}}$ with slope $a$ (say $a=2$). To get the projected point $\boldsymbol{x}=(x_1,x_2)$ recall that $x_2=ay_1$ and $\overrightarrow{\boldsymbol{x},\boldsymbol{y}}\perp\overrightarrow{\boldsymbol{u}}$. Hence, the following code will give us the orthogonal projections p = function(a){ x0=(Y[,1]+a*Y[,2])/(1+a^2) y0=a*x0 cbind(x0,y0) } with P = p(2) for(i in 1:20) segments(Y[i,1],Y[i,2],P[i,1],P[i,2],lwd=4,col="red") points(P[,1],P[,2],col="red",cex=.7) Now, if we look at the distribution of points on that line, we get… a Gaussian distribution, as expected, z = sqrt(P[,1]^2+P[,2]^2)*c(-1,+1)[(P[,1]>0)*1+1] vu = seq(-6,6,length=601) vv = dnorm(vu,mean(z),sd(z)) hist(z,probability = TRUE,breaks = seq(-4,4,by=.25)) lines(vu,vv,col="red") Or course, we can use the matrix representation to get the projection on $\overrightarrow{\boldsymbol{u}}$, or a normalized version of that vector actually a=2 U = c(1,a)/sqrt(a^2+1) U [1] 0.4472136 0.8944272 matP = U %*% solve(t(U) %*% U) %*% t(U) matP %*% Y[1,] [,1] [1,] -0.1120555 [2,] -0.2241110 P[1,] x0 y0 -0.1120555 -0.2241110  (which is consistent with our manual computation). Now, in Cochran theorem, we start with independent random variables, Y = rmnorm(n = 1000,mean=c(0,0),varcov = diag(c(1,1))) Then we consider the projection on $\overrightarrow{\boldsymbol{u}}$ and $\overrightarrow{\boldsymbol{v}}=\overrightarrow{\boldsymbol{u}}^\perp$ U = c(1,a)/sqrt(a^2+1) matP1 = U %*% solve(t(U) %*% U) %*% t(U) P1 = Y %*% matP1 z1 = sqrt(P1[,1]^2+P1[,2]^2)*c(-1,+1)[(P1[,1]>0)*1+1] V = c(a,-1)/sqrt(a^2+1) matP2 = V %*% solve(t(V) %*% V) %*% t(V) P2 = Y %*% matP2 z2 = sqrt(P2[,1]^2+P2[,2]^2)*c(-1,+1)[(P2[,1]>0)*1+1] We can plot those two projections plot(z1,z2) and observe that the two are indeed, independent Gaussian variables. And (of course) there squared norms are $\chi^2_{1}$ distributed. # On the conjugate function In the MAT7381 course (graduate course on regression models), we will talk about optimization, and a classical tool is the so-called conjugate. Given a function $f:\mathbb{R}^p\to\mathbb{R}$ its conjugate is function $f^{\star}:\mathbb{R}^p\to\mathbb{R}$ such that $$f^{\star}(\boldsymbol{y})=\max_{\boldsymbol{x}}\lbrace\boldsymbol{x}^\top\boldsymbol{y}-f(\boldsymbol{x})\rbrace$$so, long story short, $f^{\star}(\boldsymbol{y})$ is the maximum gap between the linear function $\boldsymbol{x}^\top\boldsymbol{y}$ and $f(\boldsymbol{x})$. Just to visualize, consider a simple parabolic function (in dimension 1) $f(x)=x^2/2$, then $f^{\star}(\color{blue}{2})$ is the maximum gap between the line $x\mapsto\color{blue}{2}x$ and function $f(x)$. x = seq(-100,100,length=6001) f = function(x) x^2/2 vf = Vectorize(f)(x) fstar = function(y) max(y*x-vf) vfstar = Vectorize(fstar)(x) We can see it on the figure below. viz = function(x0=1,YL=NA){ idx=which(abs(x)<=3) par(mfrow=c(1,2)) plot(x[idx],vf[idx],type="l",xlab="",ylab="",col="blue",lwd=2) abline(h=0,col="grey") abline(v=0,col="grey") idx2=which(x0*x>=vf) polygon(c(x[idx2],rev(x[idx2])),c(vf[idx2],rev(x0*x[idx2])),col=rgb(0,1,0,.3),border=NA) abline(a=0,b=x0,col="red") i=which.max(x0*x-vf) segments(x[i],x0*x[i],x[i],f(x[i]),lwd=3,col="red") if(is.na(YL)) YL=range(vfstar[idx]) plot(x[idx],vfstar[idx],type="l",xlab="",ylab="",col="red",lwd=1,ylim=YL) abline(h=0,col="grey") abline(v=0,col="grey") segments(x0,0,x0,fstar(x0),lwd=3,col="red") points(x0,fstar(x0),pch=19,col="red") } viz(1) or viz(1.5) In that case, we can actually compute $f^{\star}$, since $$f^{\star}(y)=\max_{x}\lbrace xy-f(x)\rbrace=\max_{x}\lbrace xy-x^2/2\rbrace$$The first order condition is here $x^{\star}=y$ and thus$$f^{\star}(y)=\max_{x}\lbrace xy-x^2/2\rbrace=\lbrace x^{\star}y-(x^{\star})^2/2\rbrace=\lbrace y^2-y^2/2\rbrace=y^2/2$$And actually, that can be related to two results. The first one is to observe that $f(\boldsymbol{x})=\|\boldsymbol{x}\|_2^2/2$ and in that case $f^{\star}(\boldsymbol{y})=\|\boldsymbol{y}\|_2^2/2$ from the following general result : if $f(\boldsymbol{x})=\|\boldsymbol{x}\|_p^p/p$ with $p>1$, where $\|\cdot\|_p$ denotes the standard $\ell_p$ norm, then $f^{\star}(\boldsymbol{y})=\|\boldsymbol{y}\|_q^q/q$ where$$\frac{1}{p}+\frac{1}{q}=1$$The second one is the conjugate of a quadratic function. More specifically if $f(\boldsymbol{x})=\boldsymbol{x}^{\top}\boldsymbol{Q}\boldsymbol{x}/2$ for some definite positive matrix $\boldsymbol{Q}$$f^{\star}(\boldsymbol{y})=\boldsymbol{y}^{\top}\boldsymbol{Q}^{-1}\boldsymbol{y}/2$. In our case, it was a univariate problem with $\boldsymbol{Q}=1$. For the conjugate of the $\ell_p$ norm, we can use the following code to visualize it p = 3 f = function(x) abs(x)^p/p vf = Vectorize(f)(x) fstar = function(y) max(y*x-vf) vfstar = Vectorize(fstar)(x) viz(1.5) or p = 1.1 f = function(x) abs(x)^p/p vf = Vectorize(f)(x) fstar = function(y) max(y*x-vf) vfstar = Vectorize(fstar)(x) viz(1, YL=c(0,10)) Actually, in that case, we almost visualize that if $f(x)=|x|$ then$$\displaystyle{f^{\star}\left(y\right)={\begin{cases}0,&\left|y\right|\leq 1\\\infty ,&\left|y\right|>1.\end{cases}}}$$ To conclude, another popular case, $f(x)=\exp(x)$ then$${\displaystyle f^{\star}\left(y\right)={\begin{cases}y\log(y)-y,&y>0\\0,&y=0\\\infty ,&y<0.\end{cases}}}$$We can visualize that case below f = function(x) exp(x) vf = Vectorize(f)(x) fstar = function(y) max(y*x-vf) vfstar = Vectorize(fstar)(x) viz(1,YL=c(-3,3)) # Combining automatically factor levels with trees Last year, in a post, I discussed how to merge levels of factor variables, using combinatorial techniques (it was for my STT5100 cours, and trees are not in the syllabus), with an extension on trees at the end of the post. consider the following (simulated dataset) n=200 set.seed(1) x1=runif(n) x2=runif(n) y=1+2*x1-x2+rnorm(n,0,.2) LB=sample(LETTERS[1:10]) b=data.frame(y=y,x1=x1, x2=cut(x2,breaks= c(-1,.05,.1,.2,.35,.4,.55,.65,.8,.9,2), labels=LB)) str(b) 'data.frame': 200 obs. of 3 variables:$ y : num  1.345 1.863 1.946 2.481 0.765 ...
$x1: num 0.266 0.372 0.573 0.908 0.202 ...$ x2: Factor w/ 10 levels "I","A","H","F",..: 4 4 6 4 3 6 7 3 4 8 ...
table(b$x2)[LETTERS[1:10]] A B C D E F G H I J 11 12 23 34 23 36 12 32 3 14 Just by looking at the data (see the previous post), we could easily get the feeling that 10 levels was too much. Following my post, Przemyslaw sent a comment suggesting to use library(factorMerger) It is indeed a nice package (unless you have really really big datasets with a lot of categories in your factor variables – as I experienced recently), and you can get great graphs MF = mergeFactors(response = b$y,
factor = b$x2, family = "gaussian") plot(MF) Here is suggests to create three categories. Recall that with student t-tests (changing the reference), we got Another interesting package, by Piro Polo, is library(tree.bins) To use it, we simply call the following function, and we transform automatically our dataset : the continuous variables remain unchanged, and (possibly) categories of categorical variables are merged b.bins = tree.bins(data=b, y=y) str(b.bins) Classes ‘data.table’ and 'data.frame': 200 obs. of 3 variables:$ y : num  1.345 1.863 1.946 2.481 0.765 ...
$x1: num 0.266 0.372 0.573 0.908 0.202 ...$ x2: chr  "Group.4" "Group.4" "Group.4" "Group.4" ...
- attr(*, ".internal.selfref")=
table(b.bins$x2) Group.1 Group.2 Group.3 Group.4 23 35 26 116 here in four groups. To get the correspondance, use tree.bins(data=b, y=y, return = "lkup.list") [[1]] x2 Categories 1 E Group.1 2 G Group.2 3 C Group.2 4 B Group.3 5 J Group.3 6 I Group.4 7 A Group.4 8 H Group.4 9 F Group.4 10 D Group.4 (we have a list with one element, one dataframe, since there is only one factor variable). Cool, isn’t it ? I miss Przemyslaw’s plot, but this is rather quick, and efficient.. # On leverage Last week, in our STT5100 (applied linear models) class, I’ve introduce the hat matrix, and the notion of leverage. In a classical regression model, $\boldsymbol{y}=\boldsymbol{X}\boldsymbol{\beta}$ (in a matrix form), the ordinary least square estimator of parameter $\boldsymbol{\beta}$ is $$\widehat{\boldsymbol{\beta}}=(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1}\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{y}$$The prediction can then be written$$\widehat{\boldsymbol{y}}=\boldsymbol{X}\widehat{\boldsymbol{\beta}}=\underbrace{\color{blue}{\boldsymbol{X}(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1}\boldsymbol{X}^\top}}_{\color{blue}{\boldsymbol{H}}}\boldsymbol{y}$$where $\color{blue}{\boldsymbol{H}}$ is called the hat matrix. The matrix is idempotent, i.e. $$\boldsymbol{H}^2={\boldsymbol{X}(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1}\textcolor{grey}{\boldsymbol{X}^\top{\boldsymbol{X}}(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1}}\boldsymbol{X}^\top}={\boldsymbol{X}(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1}\boldsymbol{X}^\top}=\boldsymbol{H}$$so it can be interpreted as a projection matrix. Furthermore, since$\boldsymbol{H}\boldsymbol{X}=\boldsymbol{X}$ (just do the maths), the projection is on a subspace that contains all the linear combinations of columns of $\boldsymbol{X}$. One can also observe that $\mathbb{I}-\boldsymbol{H}$ is also a projection matrix. And we can write$$\boldsymbol{y}=\underbrace{\boldsymbol{H}\boldsymbol{y}}_{\widehat{\boldsymbol{y}}}+\underbrace{(\mathbb{I}-\boldsymbol{H})\boldsymbol{y}}_{\widehat{\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}}}$$where $\widehat{\boldsymbol{y}}$ is the orthogonal projection of $\boldsymbol{y}$ on the (linear) space of linear combinations of columns of $\boldsymbol{X}$, and $\widehat{\boldsymbol{y}}\perp\widehat{\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}}$, which gives the classical interpretation of residuals, being unpredictible (at least with a linear model using variables $\boldsymbol{X}$). Let’s move a bit faster now (we’ve seen many other properties last week), and consider elements on the diagonal of matrix $\boldsymbol{H}$. Recall that we have so entry $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}$ is a measure of the influence of entry $\boldsymbol{y}_i$ on its prediction latex]\widehat{\boldsymbol{y}}_i[/latex]. We have seen that$$\sum_{i=1}^n\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=\text{trace}(\boldsymbol{H})=\text{trace}(\boldsymbol{X}(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1}\boldsymbol{X}^\top)$$which can be written$$\sum_{i=1}^n\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=\text{trace}\boldsymbol{X}^\top(\boldsymbol{X}(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1})=\text{trace}(\mathbb{I})=p$$where classically $p=k+1$, where $k$ is the number of explanatory variables. Further, since $\boldsymbol{H}$ is idempotent, we can write (from $\boldsymbol{H}=\boldsymbol{H}^2$) that$$\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}^2 + \sum_{j\neq i}\boldsymbol{H}_{i,j}\boldsymbol{H}_{j,i}=\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}^2 + \sum_{j\neq i}\boldsymbol{H}_{i,j}^2$$One the one hand, since the second term is positive $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}\geq\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}^2$, i.e. $1\geq\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}$. And since both terms are positive, then $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}\in[0,1]$. And there was a question in the course on the sharpeness of the bounds. Using Anscombe’s dataset, we’ve seen that it was possible to get a leverage of 1. Using something rather similar df = data.frame(x = c(rep(1,10),6), y = c(1:10,8)) plot(df) we obtain model = lm(y~x,data=df) abline(model,col="red",lwd=2) H = lm.influence(model)$hat plot(1:11,H,type="h")

The very last observation, the one one the right, is here extremely influencial : if we remove it, the model is completely different ! And here, we reach the upper bound, $\boldsymbol{H}_{11,11}=1$. Observe that all other points are equally influencial, and because on the constraint on the trace of the matrix, $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=1/10$ when $i\in\{1,2,\cdots,10\}$.

Now, what about the lower bound ? In order to have some sort of “non-influencial” observations, consider the two following case.

• the case where one observation (below the first one) is such that $\widehat{\boldsymbol{y}}_{i}=\boldsymbol{y}_{i}$ (perfect prediction)
• the case where one observation (below the tenth one) is such that $\boldsymbol{x}_{i}=\overline{\boldsymbol{x}}$ and $\boldsymbol{y}_{i}=\overline{\boldsymbol{y}}$ (from the first order condition – or normal equation), the fitted regression line always go through point $(\overline{\boldsymbol{x}},\overline{\boldsymbol{y}})$

Let us move two observations from our dataset,

mean(c(4,rep(1,8),6)) [1] 1.8 df = data.frame(x = c(4,rep(1,8),6,1.8), y = c(predict(model,newdata=data.frame(x=4)), 2:9,8, predict(model,newdata=data.frame(x=1.8))))

We now have

If we compute the leverages, we obtain

model = lm(y~x,data=df) H = lm.influence(model)\$hat plot(1:11,H,type="h")

so, for the first observation, its leverage actually increased (the blue part), and for the tenth one, we have the lowest influence, but it is not zero. Is it possible to reach zero ?

Here, observe that for the tenth observation, $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=1/n$. And actually, that’s the best we can do… We can prove that, in the case of a simple regression (as above)$$\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=\frac{1}{n}+\frac{(x_i-\overline{x})^2}{n\text{Var}(x)}$$which is minimum when $x_i=\overline{x}$, and then $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=1/n$, otherwise $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}>1/n$. And this property is also valid in a multiple regression (as soon as an intercept is included in the regression – which should always be the case). To prove that result, let $\tilde{\boldsymbol{X}}$ denote the matrix of centered variables $\boldsymbol{X}$, then we can prove that $$\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}=\frac{1}{n}+\big[\tilde{\boldsymbol{X}}(\tilde{\boldsymbol{X}}^\top\tilde{\boldsymbol{X}})^{-1}\tilde{\boldsymbol{X}}^\top\big]_{i,i}$$(which is basically a matrix version of the previous equation).

I can maybe add another comment on Anscombe’s data. We’ve seen that on the right that we did reach 1. But I did not prove it. One way to prove it is actually to focus on the remaining $n-1$ points, on the left. Those have all the same $x$ values. We can prove that if $\boldsymbol{X}_{i_1}=\boldsymbol{X}_{i_2}$, then $$\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,i_2}=\boldsymbol{X}_{i_1}^\top(\boldsymbol{X}^\top\boldsymbol{X})^{-1}\boldsymbol{X}_{i_2}=\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,i_1}$$hence, using the relationship obtained since the hat matrix is idempotent$$\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,i_1}=2\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,i_1}^2+\sum_{j\notin\{i_1,i_2\}}\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,j}^2$$thus, we now have$$\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,i_1}\big(1-2\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,i_1}\big)>0$$i.e. $\boldsymbol{H}_{i_1,i_1}\in[0,1/2]$, where the upper bound becomes $1/(n-1)$ “duplicates”. So for $n-1$ $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}$‘s, we have values below $1/(n-1)$, the last one should be below $1$ and the sum has to be $k=2$ . So we have the value of the $n$ $\boldsymbol{H}_{i,i}$‘s.

# Insurance data science : Networks

At the Summer School of the Swiss Association of Actuaries, in Lausanne, I will start talking about networks and insurance this Friday. Slides are available online

# Insurance data science : Text

At the Summer School of the Swiss Association of Actuaries, in Lausanne, I will start talking about text based data and NLP this Thursday. Slides are available online

Ewen Gallic (AMSE) will present a tutorial on tweets. I can upload a few additional slides on LSTM (recurrent neural nets)

# Insurance data science : Pictures

At the Summer School of the Swiss Association of Actuaries, in Lausanne, following the part of Jean-Philippe Boucher (UQAM) on telematic data, I will start talking about pictures this Wednesday. Slides are available online

Ewen Gallic (AMSE) will present a tutorial on satellite pictures, and a simple classification problem, related to Alzeimher detection.

We will try to identify what is on the following pictures, starting with the car

(we will see that the car is indeed identified)

a skier,

and a fire,

We will also discuss previous pictures from the summer school