Optimisation in R using Ucminf package - r

Question

I am not able to apply ucminf function to minimise my cost function in R.
Here is my cost function:
costfunction <- function(X,y,theta){
m <- length(y);
J = 1/m * ((-t(y)%*%log(sigmoid(as.matrix(X)%*%as.matrix(theta)))) - ((1-t(y))%*%log(1-sigmoid(as.matrix(X)%*%as.matrix(theta)))))
}
Here is my sigmoid function:
sigmoid <- function(t){
g = 1./(1+exp(-t))
}
Here is my gradient function:
gradfunction <- function(X,y,theta){
grad = 1/ m * t(X) %*% (sigmoid(as.matrix(X) %*% as.matrix(theta) - y));
}
I am trying to do the following:
library("ucminf")
data <- read.csv("ex2data1.txt",header=FALSE)
X <<- data[,c(1,2)]
y <<- data[,3]
qplot(X[,1],X[,2],colour=factor(y))
m <- dim(X)[1]
n <- dim(X)[2]
X <- cbind(1,X)
initial_theta <<- matrix(0,nrow=n+1,ncol=1)
cost <- costfunction(X,y,initial_theta)
grad <- gradfunction(X,y,initial_theta)
This is where I want to call ucminf to find the minimum cost and values of theta. I am not sure how to do this.

Answer 1

Looks like you are trying to do the week2 problem of the machine learning course of Coursera.
No need to use ucminf packages here, you can simply use the R function optim it works
We will define the sigmoid and cost function first.
sigmoid <- function(z)
1 / (1 + exp(-z))
costFunction <- function(theta, X, y) {
m <- length(y)
J <- -(1 / m) * crossprod(c(y, 1 - y),
c(log(sigmoid(X %*% theta)), log(1 - sigmoid(X %*% theta))))
grad <- (1 / m) * crossprod(X, sigmoid(X %*% theta) - y)
list(J = J, grad = grad)
}
Let's load the data now, to make this code it reproductible, I put the data in my dropbox.
download.file("https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8750577/ex2data1.txt",
method = "curl", destfile = "/tmp/ex2data1.txt")
data <- matrix(scan('/tmp/ex2data1.txt', what = double(), sep = ","),
ncol = 3, byrow = TRUE)
X <- data[, 1:2]
y <- data[, 3, drop = FALSE]
m <- nrow(X)
n <- ncol(X)
X <- cbind(1, X)
initial_theta = matrix(0, nrow = n + 1)
We can then compute the result of the cost function at the initial theta like this
cost <- costFunction(initial_theta, X, y)
(grad <- cost$grad)
## [,1]
## [1,] -0.100
## [2,] -12.009
## [3,] -11.263
(cost <- cost$J)
## [,1]
## [1,] 0.69315
Finally we can use optim to ge the optimal theta
res <- optim(par = initial_theta,
fn = function(t) costFunction(t, X, y)$J,
gr = function(t) costFunction(t, X, y)$grad,
method = "BFGS", control = list(maxit = 400))
(theta <- res$par)
## [,1]
## [1,] -25.08949
## [2,] 0.20566
## [3,] 0.20089
(cost <- res$value)
## [1] 0.2035
If you have some problem with the function download.file, the data can be downloaded
here

Answer 2

As you did not provide a reproducible example it is hard to exactly give you the code you need, but the general idea is to hand the functions over to ucminf:
ucminf(start, costfunction, gradfunction, y = y, theta = initial_theta)
Note that start needs to be a vector of initial starting values which when handed over as X to the two functions need to produce a result. Usually you use random starting value (e.g., runif).