Error in Gradient Descent Calculation - r

Question

I tried to write a function to calculate gradient descent for a linear regression model. However the answers I was getting does not match the answers I get using the normal equation method.
My sample data is:
df <- data.frame(c(1,5,6),c(3,5,6),c(4,6,8))
with c(4,6,8) being the y values.
lm_gradient_descent <- function(df,learning_rate, y_col=length(df),scale=TRUE){
n_features <- length(df) #n_features is the number of features in the data set
#using mean normalization to scale features
if(scale==TRUE){
for (i in 1:(n_features)){
df[,i] <- (df[,i]-mean(df[,i]))/sd(df[,i])
}
}
y_data <- df[,y_col]
df[,y_col] <- NULL
par <- rep(1,n_features)
df <- merge(1,df)
data_mat <- data.matrix(df)
#we need a temp_arr to store each iteration of parameter values so that we can do a
#simultaneous update
temp_arr <- rep(0,n_features)
diff <- 1
while(diff>0.0000001){
for (i in 1:(n_features)){
temp_arr[i] <- par[i]-learning_rate*sum((data_mat%*%par-y_data)*df[,i])/length(y_data)
}
diff <- par[1]-temp_arr[1]
print(diff)
par <- temp_arr
}
return(par)
}
Running this function,
lm_gradient_descent(df,0.0001,,0)
the results I got were
c(0.9165891,0.6115482,0.5652970)
when I use the normal equation method, I get
c(2,1,0).
Hope someone can shed some light on where I went wrong in this function.

Answer 1

You used the stopping criterion
old parameters - new parameters <= 0.0000001
First of all I think there's an abs() missing if you want to use this criterion (though my ignorance of R may be at fault).
But even if you use
abs(old parameters - new parameters) <= 0.0000001
this is not a good stopping criterion: it only tells you that progress has slowed down, not that it's already sufficiently accurate. Try instead simply to iterate for a fixed number of iterations. Unfortunately it's not that easy to give a good, generally applicable stopping criterion for gradient descent here.

Answer 2

It seems that you have not implemented a bias term. In a linear model like this, you always want to have an additional additive constant, i.e., your model should be like
w_0 + w_1*x_1 + ... + w_n*x_n.
Without the w_0 term, you usually won't get a good fit.

Answer 3

I know this is a couple of weeks old at this point but I'm going to take a stab at for several reasons, namely
Relatively new to R so deciphering your code and rewriting it is good practice for me
Working on a different Gradient Descent problem so this is all fresh to me
Need the stackflow points and
As far as I can tell you never got a working answer.
First, regarding your data structures. You start with a dataframe, rename a column, strip out a vector, then strip out a matrix. It would be a lot easier to just start with an X matrix (capitalized since its component 'features' are referred to as xsubscript i) and a y solution vector.
X <- cbind(c(1,5,6),c(3,5,6))
y <- c(4,6,8)
We can easily see what the desired solutions are, with and without scaling by fitting a linear fit model. (NOTE We only scale X/features and not y/solutions)
> lm(y~X)
Call:
lm(formula = y ~ X)
Coefficients:
(Intercept) X1 X2
-4 -1 3
> lm(y~scale(X))
Call:
lm(formula = y ~ scale(X))
Coefficients:
(Intercept) scale(X)1 scale(X)2
6.000 -2.646 4.583
With regards to your code, one of the beauties of R is that it can perform matrix multiplication which is significantly faster than using loops.
lm_gradient_descent <- function(X, y, learning_rate, scale=TRUE){
if(scale==TRUE){X <- scale(X)}
X <- cbind(1, X)
theta <- rep(0, ncol(X)) #your old temp_arr
diff <- 1
old.error <- sum( (X %*% theta - y)^2 ) / (2*length(y))
while(diff>0.000000001){
theta <- theta - learning_rate * t(X) %*% (X %*% theta - y) / length(y)
new.error <- sum( (X %*% theta - y)^2 ) / (2*length(y))
diff <- abs(old.error - new.error)
old.error <- new.error
}
return(theta)
}
And to show it works...
> lm_gradient_descent(X, y, .01, 0)
[,1]
[1,] -3.9360685
[2,] -0.9851775
[3,] 2.9736566
vs expected of (-4, -1, 3)
For what its worth while I agree with #cfh that I would prefer a loop with a defined number of iterations, I'm actually not sure you need the abs function. If diff < 0 then your function is not converging.
Finally rather than using something like old.error and new.error I'd suggest using a a vector that records all errors. You can then plot that vector to see how quickly your function converges.