Linear regression gradient descent algorithms in R produce varying results - r

Question

I am trying to implement a linear regression in R from scratch without using any packages or libraries using the following data:
UCI Machine Learning Repository, Bike-Sharing-Dataset
The linear regression was easy enough, here is the code:
data <- read.csv("Bike-Sharing-Dataset/hour.csv")
# Select the useable features
data1 <- data[, c("season", "mnth", "hr", "holiday", "weekday", "workingday", "weathersit", "temp", "atemp", "hum", "windspeed", "cnt")]
# Split the data
trainingObs<-sample(nrow(data1),0.70*nrow(data1),replace=FALSE)
# Create the training dataset
trainingDS<-data1[trainingObs,]
# Create the test dataset
testDS<-data1[-trainingObs,]
x0 <- rep(1, nrow(trainingDS)) # column of 1's
x1 <- trainingDS[, c("season", "mnth", "hr", "holiday", "weekday", "workingday", "weathersit", "temp", "atemp", "hum", "windspeed")]
# create the x- matrix of explanatory variables
x <- as.matrix(cbind(x0,x1))
# create the y-matrix of dependent variables
y <- as.matrix(trainingDS$cnt)
m <- nrow(y)
solve(t(x)%*%x)%*%t(x)%*%y
The next step is to implement the batch update gradient descent and here is where I am running into problems. I dont know where the errors are coming from or how to fix them, but the code works. The problem is that the values being produced are radically different from the results of the regression and I am unsure of why.
The two versions of the batch update gradient descent that I have implemented are as follows (the results of both algorithms differ from one another and from the results of the regression):
# Gradient descent 1
gradientDesc <- function(x, y, learn_rate, conv_threshold, n, max_iter) {
plot(x, y, col = "blue", pch = 20)
m <- runif(1, 0, 1)
c <- runif(1, 0, 1)
yhat <- m * x + c
MSE <- sum((y - yhat) ^ 2) / n
converged = F
iterations = 0
while(converged == F) {
## Implement the gradient descent algorithm
m_new <- m - learn_rate * ((1 / n) * (sum((yhat - y) * x)))
c_new <- c - learn_rate * ((1 / n) * (sum(yhat - y)))
m <- m_new
c <- c_new
yhat <- m * x + c
MSE_new <- sum((y - yhat) ^ 2) / n
if(MSE - MSE_new <= conv_threshold) {
abline(c, m)
converged = T
return(paste("Optimal intercept:", c, "Optimal slope:", m))
}
iterations = iterations + 1
if(iterations > max_iter) {
abline(c, m)
converged = T
return(paste("Optimal intercept:", c, "Optimal slope:", m))
}
}
return(paste("MSE=", MSE))
}
AND:
grad <- function(x, y, theta) { # note that for readability, I redefined theta as a column vector
gradient <- 1/m* t(x) %*% (x %*% theta - y)
return(gradient)
}
grad.descent <- function(x, maxit, alpha){
theta <- matrix(rep(0, length=ncol(x)), ncol = 1)
for (i in 1:maxit) {
theta <- theta - alpha * grad(x, y, theta)
}
return(theta)
}
If someone could explain why these two functions are producing different results I would greatly appreciate it. I also want to make sure that I am in fact implementing the gradient descent correctly.
Lastly, how can I plot the results of the descent with varying learning rates and superimpose this data over the results of the regression itself?
EDIT
Here are the results of running the two algorithms with alpha = .005 and 10,000 iterations:
1)
> gradientDesc(trainingDS, y, 0.005, 0.001, 32, 10000)
TEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable.
[1] "Optimal intercept: 2183458.95872599 Optimal slope: 62417773.0184353"
2)
> print(grad.descent(x, 10000, .005))
[,1]
x0 8.3681113
season 19.8399837
mnth -0.3515479
hr 8.0269388
holiday -16.2429750
weekday 1.9615369
workingday 7.6063719
weathersit -12.0611266
temp 157.5315413
atemp 138.8019732
hum -162.7948299
windspeed 31.5442471

Answer 1

To give you an example of how to write functions like this in a slightly better way, consider the following:
gradientDesc <- function(x, y, learn_rate, conv_threshold, max_iter) {
n <- nrow(x)
m <- runif(ncol(x), 0, 1) # m is a vector of dimension ncol(x), 1
yhat <- x %*% m # since x already contains a constant, no need to add another one
MSE <- sum((y - yhat) ^ 2) / n
converged = F
iterations = 0
while(converged == F) {
m <- m - learn_rate * ( 1/n * t(x) %*% (yhat - y))
yhat <- x %*% m
MSE_new <- sum((y - yhat) ^ 2) / n
if( abs(MSE - MSE_new) <= conv_threshold) {
converged = T
}
iterations = iterations + 1
MSE <- MSE_new
if(iterations >= max_iter) break
}
return(list(converged = converged,
num_iterations = iterations,
MSE = MSE_new,
coefs = m) )
}
For comparison:
ols <- solve(t(x)%*%x)%*%t(x)%*%y
Now,
out <- gradientDesc(x,y, 0.005, 1e-7, 200000)
data.frame(ols, out$coefs)
ols out.coefs
x0 33.0663095 35.2995589
season 18.5603565 18.5779534
mnth -0.1441603 -0.1458521
hr 7.4374031 7.4420685
holiday -21.0608520 -21.3284449
weekday 1.5115838 1.4813259
workingday 5.9953383 5.9643950
weathersit -0.2990723 -0.4073493
temp 100.0719903 147.1157262
atemp 226.9828394 174.0260534
hum -225.7411524 -225.2686640
windspeed 12.3671942 9.5792498
Here, x refers to your x as defined in your first code chunk. Note the similarity between the coefficients. However, also note that
out$converged
[1] FALSE
so that you could increase the accuracy by increasing the number of iterations or by playing around with the step size. It might also help to scale your variables first.