Tag Archives: Taylor

2013, ACT2040, Automne, Course, Regression

Some heuristics about spline smoothing

08/10/2013 Arthur Charpentier Leave a comment

Let us continue our discussion on smoothing techniques in regression. Assume that . $\mathbb{E}(Y\vert X=x)=h(x)$ where $h(\cdot)$ is some unkown function, but assumed to be sufficently smooth. For instance, assume that $h(\cdot)$ is continuous, that $h'(\cdot)$ exists, and is continuous, that $h''(\cdot)$ exists and is also continuous, etc. If $h(\cdot)$ is smooth enough, Taylor’s expansion can be used. Hence, for $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?x\in(\alpha,\beta)$

$h(x)=h(\alpha)+\sum_{k=1}^ d \frac{(x-\alpha)^k}{k!}h^{(k)}(x_0)+\frac{1}{d!}\int_{\alpha}^x [x-t]^d h^{(d+1)}(t)dt$

which can also be writen as

$h(x)=\sum_{k=0}^ d a_k (x-\alpha)^k +\frac{1}{d!}\int_{\alpha}^x [x-t]^d h^{(d+1)}(t)dt$

for some $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?a_k$ ‘s. The first part is simply a polynomial.

The second part, is some integral. Using Riemann integral, observe that

$\frac{1}{d!}\int_{\alpha}^x [x-t]^d h^{(d+1)}(t)dt\sim \sum_{i=1}^ j b_i (x-x_i)_+^d$

for some $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?b_i$ ‘s, and some

$\alpha < x_1< x_2< \cdots < x_{j-1} < x_j < \beta$

Thus,

$h(x) \sim \sum_{k=0}^ d a_k (x-\alpha)^k +\sum_{i=1}^ j b_i (x-x_i)_+^d$

Nice! We have our linear regression model. A natural idea is then to consider a regression of $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?Y$ on $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?\boldsymbol{X}$ where

$https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?\boldsymbol{X}%20=%20(1,X,X^2,\cdots,X^d,(X-x_1)_+^d,\cdots,(X-x_k)_+^d%20)$

given some knots $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?\{x_1,\cdots,x_k\}$ . To make things easier to understand, let us work with our previous dataset,

plot(db)

If we consider one knot, and an expansion of order 1,

attach(db)
library(splines)
B=bs(xr,knots=c(3),Boundary.knots=c(0,10),degre=1)
reg=lm(yr~B)
lines(xr[xr<=3],predict(reg)[xr<=3],col="red")
lines(xr[xr>=3],predict(reg)[xr>=3],col="blue")

The prediction obtained with this spline can be compared with regressions on subsets (the doted lines)

reg=lm(yr~xr,subset=xr<=3)
lines(xr[xr<=3],predict(reg)[xr<=3],col="red",lty=2)
reg=lm(yr~xr,subset=xr>=3)
lines(xr[xr>=3],predict(reg),col="blue",lty=2)

It is different, since we have here three parameters (and not four, as for the regressions on the two subsets). One degree of freedom is lost, when asking for a continuous model. Observe that it is possible to write, equivalently

reg=lm(yr~bs(xr,knots=c(3),Boundary.knots=c(0,10),degre=1),data=db)

So, what happened here?

B=bs(xr,knots=c(2,5),Boundary.knots=c(0,10),degre=1)
matplot(xr,B,type="l")
abline(v=c(0,2,5,10),lty=2)

Here, the functions that appear in the regression are the following

Now, if we run the regression on those two components, we get

B=bs(xr,knots=c(2,5),Boundary.knots=c(0,10),degre=1)
matplot(xr,B,type="l")
abline(v=c(0,2,5,10),lty=2)

If we add one knot, we get

the prediction is

reg=lm(yr~B)
lines(xr,predict(reg),col="red")

Of course, we can choose much more knots,

B=bs(xr,knots=1:9,Boundary.knots=c(0,10),degre=1)
reg=lm(yr~B)
lines(xr,predict(reg),col="red")

We can even get a confidence interval

reg=lm(yr~B)
P=predict(reg,interval="confidence")
plot(db,col="white")
polygon(c(xr,rev(xr)),c(P[,2],rev(P[,3])),col="light blue",border=NA)
points(db)
reg=lm(yr~B)
lines(xr,P[,1],col="red")
abline(v=c(0,2,5,10),lty=2)

And if we keep the two knots we chose previously, but consider Taylor’s expansion of order 2, we get

B=bs(xr,knots=c(2,5),Boundary.knots=c(0,10),degre=2)
matplot(xr,B,type="l")
abline(v=c(0,2,5,10),lty=2)

So, what’s going on? If we consider the constant, and the first component of the spline based matrix, we get

k=2
plot(db)
B=cbind(1,B)
lines(xr,B[,1:k]%*%coefficients(reg)[1:k],col=k-1,lty=k-1)

If we add the constant term, the first term and the second term, we get the part on the left, before the first knot,

k=3
lines(xr,B[,1:k]%*%coefficients(reg)[1:k],col=k-1,lty=k-1)

and with three terms from the spline based matrix, we can get the part between the two knots,

k=4
lines(xr,B[,1:k]%*%coefficients(reg)[1:k],col=k-1,lty=k-1)

and finallty, when we sum all the terms, we get this time the part on the right, after the last knot,

k=5
lines(xr,B[,1:k]%*%coefficients(reg)[1:k],col=k-1,lty=k-1)

This is what we get using a spline regression, quadratic, with two (fixed) knots. And can can even get confidence intervals, as before

reg=lm(yr~B)
P=predict(reg,interval="confidence")
plot(db,col="white")
polygon(c(xr,rev(xr)),c(P[,2],rev(P[,3])),col="light blue",border=NA)
points(db)
reg=lm(yr~B)
lines(xr,P[,1],col="red")
abline(v=c(0,2,5,10),lty=2)

The great idea here is to use functions $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?(x-x_i)_+$ , that will insure continuity at point $https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?x_i$ .

Of course, we can use those splines on our Dexter application,

Here again, using linear spline function, it is possible to impose a continuity constraint,

plot(data$no,data$mu,ylim=c(6,10))
abline(v=12*(0:8)+.5,lty=2)
reg=lm(mu~bs(no,knots=c(12*(1:7)+.5),Boundary.knots=c(0,97),
degre=1),data=db)
lines(c(1:94,96),predict(reg),col="red")

But we can also consider some quadratic splines,

plot(data$no,data$mu,ylim=c(6,10))
abline(v=12*(0:8)+.5,lty=2)
reg=lm(mu~bs(no,knots=c(12*(1:7)+.5),Boundary.knots=c(0,97),
degre=2),data=db)
lines(c(1:94,96),predict(reg),col="red")

2011, ACT2040, Computer, GLM, Ratemaking, Regression

Confidence interval for predictions with GLMs

04/11/2011 Arthur Charpentier 5 Comments

Consider a (simple) Poisson regression . Given a sample where , the goal is to derive a 95% confidence interval for given , where is the prediction. Hence, we want to derive a confidence interval for the prediction, not the potential observation, i.e. the dot on the graph below

> r=glm(dist~speed,data=cars,family=poisson)
> P=predict(r,type="response",
+ newdata=data.frame(speed=seq(-1,35,by=.2)))
> plot(cars,xlim=c(0,31),ylim=c(0,170))
> abline(v=30,lty=2)
> lines(seq(-1,35,by=.2),P,lwd=2,col="red")
> P0=predict(r,type="response",se.fit=TRUE,
+ newdata=data.frame(speed=30))
> points(30,P1$fit,pch=4,lwd=3)

i.e.

Let denote the maximum likelihood estimator of . Then

where is Fisher information of (from standard maximum likelihood theory). Recall that

where computation of those values is based on the following calculations

In the case of the log-Poisson regression

Let us get back to our initial problem.

confidence interval for the linear combination

A first idea to get a confidence interval for is to get a confidence interval for (by taking exponential values of bounds, since the exponential is a monotone function). Asymptotically, we know that

thus, an approximation for the variance matrix of will be based on , obtained by plugging estimators of the parameters.
Then, since as an asymptotic multivariate distribution, any linear combination of the parameters will also be normal, i.e.
has a normal distribution, centered on , with variance where is the variance of . All those quantities can be easily computed. First, we can get the variance of the estimators

> i1=sum(predict(reg,type="response"))
> i2=sum(cars$speed*predict(reg,type="response"))
> i3=sum(cars$speed^2*predict(reg,type="response"))
> I=matrix(c(i1,i2,i2,i3),2,2)
> V=solve(I)

Hence, if we compare with the output of the regression,

> summary(reg)$cov.unscaled
(Intercept)         speed
(Intercept)  0.0066870446 -3.474479e-04
speed       -0.0003474479  1.940302e-05
> V
[,1]          [,2]
[1,]  0.0066871228 -3.474515e-04
[2,] -0.0003474515  1.940318e-05

Based on those values, it is easy to derive the standard deviation for the linear combination,

> x=30
> P2=predict(r,type="link",se.fit=TRUE,
+ newdata=data.frame(speed=x))
> P2
$fit
1
5.046034

$se.fit
[1] 0.05747075

$residual.scale
[1] 1

> sqrt(V[1,1]+2*x*V[2,1]+x^2*V[2,2])
[1] 0.05747084
> sqrt(t(c(1,x))%*%V%*%c(1,x))
[,1]
[1,] 0.05747084

And once we have the standard deviation, and normality (at least asymptotically), confidence intervals are derived, and then, taking the exponential of the bounds, we get confidence interval

> segments(30,exp(P2$fit-1.96*P2$se.fit),
+ 30,exp(P2$fit+1.96*P2$se.fit),col="blue",lwd=3)

Based on that technique, confidence intervals are no longer centered on the prediction. But who cares ?

delta method

Actually, those who like to use “more or less” expressions for confidence intervals will not like non centered intervals. So, an alternative is to use the delta method. Instead of writing (again) something on the theory, we can use a package which computes that method,

> estmean=t(c(1,x))%*%coef(reg)
> var=t(c(1,x))%*%summary(reg)$cov.unscaled%*%c(1,x)
> library(msm)
> deltamethod (~ exp(x1), estmean, var)
[1] 8.931232
> P1=predict(r,type="response",se.fit=TRUE,
+ newdata=data.frame(speed=30))
> P1
$fit
1
155.4048

$se.fit
1
8.931232

$residual.scale
[1] 1

The delta method gives us (asymptotic) normality, so once we have a standard deviation, we get the confidence interval.

> segments(30,P1$fit-1.96*P1$se.fit,30,
+ P1$fit+1.96*P1$se.fit,col="blue",lwd=3)

Note that those quantities – obtained with two different approaches – are rather close here

> exp(P2$fit-1.96*P2$se.fit)
1
138.8495
> P1$fit-1.96*P1$se.fit
1
137.8996
> exp(P2$fit+1.96*P2$se.fit)
1
173.9341
> P1$fit+1.96*P1$se.fit
1
172.9101

bootstrap techniques

And a third method (but far from what I expect to teach on that course) is to use bootstrap techniques to about those results based on asymptotic normality (we have only 50 observations). The idea is to sample from out dataset, and to run a log-Poisson regression on those new samples, and to repeat a lot of time,

Freakonometrics

Tag Archives: Taylor

Some heuristics about spline smoothing

Confidence interval for predictions with GLMs

"sendo l'intento mio scrivere cosa utile a chi la intende…"