R Optimization given objective function - r

obj1<-function(monthly.savings,
success,
start.capital,
target.savings,
monthly.mean.return,
monthly.ret.std.dev,
monthly.inflation,
monthly.inf.std.dev,
n.obs,
n.sim=1000){
req = matrix(start.capital, n.obs+1, n.sim) #matrix for storing target weight
monthly.invest.returns = matrix(0, n.obs, n.sim)
monthly.inflation.returns = matrix(0, n.obs, n.sim)
monthly.invest.returns[] = rnorm(n.obs * n.sim, mean = monthly.mean.return, sd = monthly.ret.std.dev)
monthly.inflation.returns[] = rnorm(n.obs * n.sim, mean = monthly.inflation, sd = monthly.inf.std.dev)
#for loop to be
for (a in 1:n.obs){
req[a + 1, ] = req[a, ] * (1 + monthly.invest.returns[a,] - monthly.inflation.returns[a,]) + monthly.savings
}
ending.values=req[nrow(req),]
suc<-sum(ending.values>target.savings)/n.sim
value<-success-suc
return(abs(value))
}
I have the above objective function that I want to minimize for. It tries to solve for the monthly savings required for a given probability of success. Given the following input assumptions
success<-0.9
start.capital<-1000000
target.savings<-1749665
monthly.savings=10000
monthly.mean.return<-(5/100)/12
monthly.ret.std.dev<-(3/100)/sqrt(12)
monthly.inflation<-(5/100)/12
monthly.inf.std.dev<-(1.5/100)/sqrt(12)
monthly.withdrawals<-10000
n.obs<-10*12 #years * 12 months in a year
n.sim=1000
I used the following notation:
optimize(f=obj1,
success=success,
start.capital=start.capital,
target.savings=target.savings,
monthly.mean.return=monthly.mean.return,
monthly.ret.std.dev=monthly.ret.std.dev,
monthly.inflation=monthly.inflation,
monthly.inf.std.dev=monthly.inf.std.dev,
n.obs = n.obs,
n.sim = n.sim,
lower = 0,
upper = 10000,
tol = 0.000000001,maximum=F)
I get 7875.03
Since I am sampling from a normal distribution, the output will be different each time but they should be around the same give or take a few % points. The problem I am having is that I can't specify a upper limit arbitrarily. The above example's upper limit (10000) is cherry picked after numerous trials. If say I put in a upper limit of 100000 (unreasonable I know) it will return that number as oppose to finding the global minimum saving. Any ideas where I am structuring my objective function incorrectly?
thanks,

The fact that your function does not always return the same output for a given input
is likely to pose a few problems (it will create a lot of spurious local minima):
you can avoid them by setting the seed of the random number generator
inside the function (e.g., set.seed(1)),
or by storing the random numbers and reusing them each time,
or by using a low-discrepancy sequence (e.g., randtoolbox::sobol).
Since it is a function of one variable, you can simply plot it to see what happens:
it has a plateau after 10,000 -- optimization algorithms cannot distinguish
between a plateau and a local optimum.
f <- function(x) {
set.seed(1)
obj1(x,
success = success,
start.capital = start.capital,
target.savings = target.savings,
monthly.mean.return = monthly.mean.return,
monthly.ret.std.dev = monthly.ret.std.dev,
monthly.inflation = monthly.inflation,
monthly.inf.std.dev = monthly.inf.std.dev,
n.obs = n.obs,
n.sim = n.sim
)
}
g <- Vectorize(f)
curve(g(x), xlim=c(0, 20000))
Your initial problem is actually not a minimization problem,
but a root finding problem, which is much easier.
obj2 <- function(monthly.savings) {
set.seed(1)
req = matrix(start.capital, n.obs+1, n.sim)
monthly.invest.returns <- matrix(0, n.obs, n.sim)
monthly.inflation.returns <- matrix(0, n.obs, n.sim)
monthly.invest.returns[] <- rnorm(n.obs * n.sim, mean = monthly.mean.return, sd = monthly.ret.std.dev)
monthly.inflation.returns[] <- rnorm(n.obs * n.sim, mean = monthly.inflation, sd = monthly.inf.std.dev)
for (a in 1:n.obs)
req[a + 1, ] <- req[a, ] * (1 + monthly.invest.returns[a,] - monthly.inflation.returns[a,]) + monthly.savings
ending.values <- req[nrow(req),]
suc <- sum(ending.values>target.savings)/n.sim
success - suc
}
uniroot( obj2, c(0, 1e6) )
# [1] 7891.187

Related

R package submission error concerning set.seed()

I recently submitted a package to CRAN that passed all the automatic checks, but failed passing the manual ones. One of the errors were the following:
Please do not set a seed to a specific number within a function.
Please do not modifiy the .GlobalEnv. This is not allowed by the CRAN policies.
I believe the lines of code that these comments are referring to are the following
if(simul == TRUE){
set.seed(42)
}
w <- matrix(data = rbinom(n = p, size = 1, prob = 0.5), ncol = 1)
beta <- w*beta-(1-w)*beta
s <- round((1-sparsity)*p)
toReplace <- sample(p, size = s)
beta <- replace(beta, list = toReplace, values = 0)
# Generate the random p-columned matrix of indicator series.
X <- matrix(data = rnorm ((n_l*m) * p, mean = mean_X, sd = sd_X), ncol = p, nrow = n_l*m)
if(simul == TRUE){
rm(.Random.seed, envir = globalenv())
}
Essentially, I am allowing the function to include a simulations option "simul", such that when set to "TRUE", a matrix "X" and a vector of coefficients "beta" remain fixed. I remove the seed at the end of this segment (final lines), as the rest of the code contains variables that should change at each iteration of the simulation. However, as noted in the feedback from CRAN, this is not allowed. What is an alternative way to go about this? I cannot set a fixed vector "beta" or matrix "X" when "simul" is "TRUE", since the dimension of these are inputs to the function and thus vary depending on the preferences of the investigator.
If you really, really, want to set the seed inside a function, which I believe you nor anyone should do, save the current seed, do whatever you want, and before exiting the function reset it to the saved value.
old_seed <- .Random.seed
rnorm(1)
#[1] -1.173346
set.seed(42)
rbinom(1, size = 1, prob = 0.5)
#[1] 0
.Random.seed <- old_seed
rnorm(1)
#[1] -1.173346
In a function it could be something like the following, without the message instructions. Note that the function prints nothing, it never calls any pseudo-RNG and always outputs TRUE. The point is to save the seed's current value and reset the seed in on.exit.
f <- function(simul = FALSE){
if(simul){
message("simul is TRUE")
old_seed <- .Random.seed
on.exit(.Random.seed <- old_seed)
# rest of code
} else message("simul is FALSE")
invisible(TRUE)
}
f()
s <- .Random.seed
f(TRUE)
identical(s, .Random.seed)
#[1] TRUE
rm(s)
A similar question has been asked on the Bio devel mailing list. The suggestion there was to use the functionality of withr::with_seed. Your code could then become:
library(withr)
if(simul == TRUE){
w <- with_seed(42, matrix(data = rbinom(n = p, size = 1, prob = 0.5), ncol = 1))
} else {
w <- matrix(data = rbinom(n = p, size = 1, prob = 0.5), ncol = 1)
}
beta <- w*beta-(1-w)*beta
s <- round((1-sparsity)*p)
toReplace <- sample(p, size = s)
beta <- replace(beta, list = toReplace, values = 0)
# Generate the random p-columned matrix of indicator series.
X <- matrix(data = rnorm ((n_l*m) * p, mean = mean_X, sd = sd_X), ncol = p, nrow = n_l*m)
Of course that raises the question of how withr got on CRAN, given that it appears to do the same thing that you're being told not to do - the difference may be that your version may overwrite an existing seed, whereas that code checks whether a seed already exists.
When you fix the seed, if the user try this code with the same parameters, the same results will be obtained each time.
Supposing that this chunk of code is inside a larger chunk related only to the simulation, just get rid of the setseed() and try something like that:
if(simul == TRUE){
w <- matrix(data = rbinom(n = p, size = 1, prob = 0.5), ncol = 1)
beta <- w*beta-(1-w)*beta
s <- round((1-sparsity)*p)
toReplace <- sample(p, size = s)
beta <- replace(beta, list = toReplace, values = 0)
# Generate the random p-columned matrix of indicator series.
X <- matrix(data = rnorm ((n_l*m) * p, mean = mean_X, sd = sd_X), ncol = p, nrow = n_l*m)
}

Sequential Quadratic Programming in R to find optimal weights of an Equally-Weighted Risk Contribution Portfolio

Introduction to the problem
I am trying to write down a code in R so to obtain the weights of an Equally-Weighted Contribution (ERC) Portfolio. As some of you may know, the portfolio construction was presented by Maillard, Roncalli and Teiletche.
Skipping technicalities, in order to find the optimal weights of an ERC portfolio one needs to solve the following Sequential Quadratic Programming problem:
with:
Suppose we are analysing N assets. In the above formulas, we have that x is a (N x 1) vector of portfolio weights and Σ is the (N x N) variance-covariance matrix of asset returns.
What I have done so far
Using the function slsqp of the package nloptr which solves SQP problems, I would like to solve the above minimisation problem. Here is my code. Firstly, the objective function to be minimised:
ObjFuncERC <- function (x, Sigma) {
sum <- 0
R <- Sigma %*% x
for (i in 1:N) {
for (j in 1:N) {
sum <- sum + (x[i]*R[i] - x[j]*R[j])^2
}
}
}
Secondly, the starting point (we start by an equally-weighted portfolio):
x0 <- matrix(1/N, nrow = N, ncol = 1)
Then, the equality constraint (weights must sum to one, that is: sum of the weights minus one equal zero):
heqERC <- function (x) {
h <- numeric(1)
h[1] <- (t(matrix(1, nrow = N, ncol = 1)) %*% x) - 1
return(h)
}
Finally, the lower and upper bounds constraints (weights cannot exceed one and cannot be lower than zero):
lowerERC <- matrix(0, nrow = N, ncol = 1)
upperERC <- matrix(1, nrow = N, ncol = 1)
So that the function which should output optimal weights is:
slsqp(x0 = x0, fn = ObjFuncERC, Sigma = Sigma, lower = lowerERC, upper = upperERC, heq = heqERC)
Unfortunately, I do not know how to share with you my variance-covariance matrix (which takes name Sigma and is a (29 x 29) matrix, so that N = 29) so to reproduce my result, still you can simulate one.
The output error
Running the above code yields the following error:
Error in nl.grad(x, fn) :
Function 'f' must be a univariate function of 2 variables.
I have no idea what to do guys. Probably, I have misunderstood how things must be written down in order for the function slsqp to understand what to do. Can someone help me understand how to fix the problem and get the result I want?
UPDATE ONE: as pointed out by #jogo in the comments, I have updated the code, but it still produces an error. The code and the error above are now updated.
UPDATE 2: as requested by #jaySf, here is the full code that allows you to reproduce my error.
## ERC Portfolio Test
# Preliminary Operations
rm(list=ls())
require(quantmod)
require(nloptr)
# Load Stock Data in R through Yahoo! Finance
stockData <- new.env()
start <- as.Date('2014-12-31')
end <- as.Date('2017-12-31')
tickers <-c('AAPL','AXP','BA','CAT','CSCO','CVX','DIS','GE','GS','HD','IBM','INTC','JNJ','JPM','KO','MCD','MMM','MRK','MSFT','NKE','PFE','PG','TRV','UNH','UTX','V','VZ','WMT','XOM')
getSymbols.yahoo(tickers, env = stockData, from = start, to = end, periodicity = 'monthly')
# Create a matrix containing the price of all assets
prices <- do.call(cbind,eapply(stockData, Op))
prices <- prices[-1, order(colnames(prices))]
colnames(prices) <- tickers
# Compute Returns
returns <- diff(prices)/lag(prices)[-1,]
# Compute variance-covariance matrix
Sigma <- var(returns)
N <- 29
# Set up the minimization problem
ObjFuncERC <- function (x, Sigma) {
sum <- 0
R <- Sigma %*% x
for (i in 1:N) {
for (j in 1:N) {
sum <- sum + (x[i]*R[i] - x[j]*R[j])^2
}
}
}
x0 <- matrix(1/N, nrow = N, ncol = 1)
heqERC <- function (x) {
h <- numeric(1)
h[1] <- t(matrix(1, nrow = N, ncol = 1)) %*% x - 1
}
lowerERC <- matrix(0, nrow = N, ncol = 1)
upperERC <- matrix(1, nrow = N, ncol = 1)
slsqp(x0 = x0, fn = ObjFuncERC, Sigma = Sigma, lower = lowerERC, upper = upperERC, heq = heqERC)
I spotted several mistakes in your code. For instance, ObjFuncERC is not returning any value. You should use the following instead:
# Set up the minimization problem
ObjFuncERC <- function (x, Sigma) {
sum <- 0
R <- Sigma %*% x
for (i in 1:N) {
for (j in 1:N) {
sum <- sum + (x[i]*R[i] - x[j]*R[j])^2
}
}
sum
}
heqERC doesn't return anything too, I also changed your function a bit
heqERC <- function (x) {
sum(x) - 1
}
I made those changes and tried slsqp without lower and upper and it worked. Still, another thing to consider is that you set lowerERC and upperERC as matrices. Use the following instead:
lowerERC <- rep(0,N)
upperERC <- rep(1,N)
Hope this helps.

How to program a differential equation of form dy/dt = f(t,y) (i.e. time is in differential equation) in R?

I am trying to simulate a model with this differential equation for concentration A:
dA/dt = (a-b)*exp^(d*(s-t))
(The equations has parameters: a, b, d, and s.) I can not figure out how to use R to solve differential equations that have a t (time step) variable? I tried it with the function radau of the package deSolve (See beneath). I did not get the code to work. I also do not understand how to define the index variable? Or if this is solvable with this function at all? (All my other simpler differential equations I have ran in the past with the ode function of deSolve, worked fine).
I hope you can help me!
My try:
#Defining parameters
parameter <- c(a=0.03, b=0.02, d=0.01, s=179)
#Defining Function
Function1 <- function(t, y, parameter) { with (as.list(Y),
list(c(dA = (a-b)*exp^(d*(s-t)))))}
#Initial conditions
yini <- c(A=1)
#Mass matrix
M <- diag(nrow=1)
M[5,5] <- 0
M
#index/times/output
index <- c(1)
times <- seq(from = 0, to = 10, by = 0.01)
out <- radau(y = yini, func = Function1, parms = parameters, times = times, mass = M, nind = index)
plot(out, type = "l", lwd = 2)
I'm not sure what's up with M or index as they don't appear in your model, but here's code that runs and produces results based on your code.
#Defining parameters
parameter <- c(a=0.03, b=0.02, d=0.01, s=179)
#Defining Function
model <- function(t, y, parameter) {
with(as.list(parameter),{
dA <- (a - b) * exp(d * (s - t))
list(dA)
})
}
#Initial conditions
yini <- 1
# Output times
times <- seq(from = 0, to = 10, by = 0.01)
# Solve model
out <- ode(y = yini, func = model, parms = parameter, times = times)
# Plot results
plot(out, type = "l", lwd = 2)

How to loop all values in a dataframe as the start value in maxLik

I'm doing Maximum Likelihood Estimation using maxLik, which requires specifying starting values. Instead of specifying a single value, is there any way that allows me to use all the values from a matrix as the start value?
My current code of maxLik is:
f12 <- function(param){
alpha <- param[1]
rho <- param[2]
lambda <- param[3]
u <- 0.5*(p12$v_50_1)^alpha + 0.5*lambda*(p12$v_50_2)^alpha
p <- 1/(1 + exp(-rho*u))
f <- sum(p12$gamble*log(p) + (1-p12$gamble)*log(1-p))}
ml <- maxLik(f12, start = c(alpha = 1, rho=2, lambda = 1), method = "NM")
I create a dataframe with the upper and lower bounds of potential start values:
st <- expand.grid(alpha = seq(0, 2, len = 100),rho = seq(0, 1, len = 100),lambda = seq(0,2, length(100))
There are 3 parameters in my function, and my goal is to loop all the values in the above dataframe st and select the best vector of start values after running the model from a variety of starting parameters.
Thanks!
Consider Map (wrapper to mapply) to pass the st columns elementwise through your methods. Here, Map will return a list of maxLik objects, specifically inherited maxim class objects containing a list of other components. The number of items in this list will be equal to rows of st.
Notice input parameters, a, r, and l being passed into start argument of maxLik() and no longer hard-coded integers. And f12 is left untouched.
maxLik_run <- function(a, r, l) {
tryCatch({
f12 <- function(param){
alpha <- param[1]
rho <- param[2]
lambda <- param[3]
u <- 0.5*(p12$v_50_1)^alpha + 0.5*lambda*(p12$v_50_2)^alpha
p <- 1/(1 + exp(-rho*u))
f <- sum(p12$gamble*log(p) + (1-p12$gamble)*log(1-p))
}
return(maxLik(f12, start = c(alpha = a, rho = r, lambda = l), method = "NM"))
}, error = function(e) return(NA))
}
st <- expand.grid(alpha = seq(0, 2, len = 100),
rho = seq(0, 1, len = 100),
lambda = seq(0, 2, length(100)))
maxLik_list <- Map(maxLik_run, st$alpha, st$rho, st$lambda)
And to answer the question --best vector of start values after running the model from a variety of starting parameters-- requires a particular definition of "best". Once you define this, you can use Filter() on your returned list of objects to select the one or more element that yields this "best".
Below is a demonstration to find the highest value across each maximum likelihood's maximum. Use estimate if needed. Do note, this returned list can have more than one if the highest value is shared by other list items:
highest_value <- max(sapply(maxLik_list, function(item) item$maximum))
maxLik_item_list <- Filter(function(i) i$maximum == highest_value, maxLik_list)
What you are doing in your logLik function is that you are calculating alpha,lambda,rho whereas your data already has them.Those are the lines with u,p and f12(that is also your function name!). Also it is possible to calculate log likelihood for one row as your log likelihood function has single indices. So you run the code using apply like this
#create a function to find mle estimate for first row
maxlike <- function(a) {
f12 <- function(param){
alpha <- param[1]
rho <- param[2]
lambda <- param[3]
#u <- 0.5*(p12$v_50_1)^alpha + 0.5*lambda*(p12$v_50_2)^alpha
#p <- 1/(1 + exp(-rho*u))
#f12 <- sum(p12$gamble*log(p) + (1-p12$gamble)*log(1-p))
}
ml <- maxLik(f12, start = c(alpha = 1, rho=2, lambda = 1), method = "NM")
}
#then using apply with data = st, 2 means rows and your mle function
mle <- apply(st,2,maxlike)
mle

R: How to add jitter only on singular matrices within a function?

I have the following function that I need to (m)apply on a list of more than 1500 large matrices (Z) and a list of vectors (p) of the same length. However, I get the error that some matrices are singular as I already posted here. Here my function:
kastner <- function(item, p) { print(item)
imp <- rowSums(Z[[item]])
exp <- colSums(Z[[item]])
x = p + imp
ac = p + imp - exp
einsdurchx = 1/as.vector(x)
einsdurchx[is.infinite(einsdurchx)] <- 0
A = Z[[item]] %*% diag(einsdurchx)
R = solve(diag(length(p))-A) %*% diag(p)
C = ac * einsdurchx
R_bar = diag(as.vector(C)) %*% R
rR_bar = round(R_bar)
return(rR_bar)
}
and my mapply command that also prints the names of the running matrix:
KASTNER <- mapply(kastner, names(Z), p, SIMPLIFY = FALSE)
In order to overcome the singularity problem, I want to add a small amount of jitter the singular matrices. The problem starts in line 9 of the function R = solve(diag(length(p))-A) %*% diag(p) as this term(diag(length(p))-A) gets singular and can't be solved. I tried to add jitter to all Z matrices in the first line of the function using: Z <- lapply(Z,function(x) jitter(x, factor = 0.0001, amount = NULL)), but this is very very low and produces still errors.
Therefore my idea is to check with if/else or something similar if this matrix diag(length(p))-A is singular (maybe using eigenvectors to check collinearity) and add on those matrices jitter, else (if not) the solve command should performed as it is. Ideas how to implement this on the function? Thanks
Here some example data, although there is no problem with singularity as I was not able to rebuild this error for line 9:
Z <- list("111.2012"= matrix(c(0,0,100,200,0,0,0,0,50,350,0,50,50,200,200,0),
nrow = 4, ncol = 4, byrow = T),
"112.2012"= matrix(c(10,90,0,30,10,90,0,10,200,50,10,350,150,100,200,10),
nrow = 4, ncol = 4, byrow = T))
p <- list("111.2012"=c(200, 1000, 100, 10), "112.2012"=c(300, 900, 50, 100))
Edit: a small amount o jitter shouldn't be problematic in my data as I have probably more than 80% of zeros in my matrices and than large values. And I am only interested in those large values, but the large amount of 0s are probably the reason for the singularity, but needed.
Since you didn't provide a working example I couldn't test this easily, so the burden of proof is on you. :) In any case, it should be a starting point for further tinkering. Comments in the code.
kastner <- function(item, p) { print(item)
imp <- rowSums(Z[[item]])
exp <- colSums(Z[[item]])
x = p + imp
ac = p + imp - exp
einsdurchx = 1/as.vector(x)
einsdurchx[is.infinite(einsdurchx)] <- 0
# start a chunk that repeats until you get a valid result
do.jitter <- TRUE # bureaucracy
while (do.jitter == TRUE) {
# run the code as usual
A = Z[[item]] %*% diag(einsdurchx)
# catch any possible errors, you can even catch "singularity" error here by
# specifying error = function(e) e
R <- tryCatch(solve(diag(length(p))-A) %*% diag(p), error = function(e) "jitterme")
# if you were able to solve(), and the result is a matrix (carefuly if it's a vector!)...
if (is.matrix(R)) {
# ... turn the while loop off
do.jitter <- FALSE
} else {
#... else apply some jitter and repeat by construcing A from a jittered Z[[item]]
Z[[item]] <- jitter(Z[[item]])
}
}
C = ac * einsdurchx
R_bar = diag(as.vector(C)) %*% R
rR_bar = round(R_bar)
return(rR_bar)
}

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