differentiation in matlab - math

i need to find acceleration of an object the formula for that given in text is a = d^2(L)/d(T)^2 , where L= length and T= time
i calculated this in matlab by using this equation
a = (1/(T3-T1))*(((L3-L2)/(T3-T2))-((L2-L1)/(T2-T1)))
or
a = (v2-v1)/(T2-T1)
but im not getting the right answers ,can any body tell me how to find (a) by any other method in matlab.

This has nothing to do with matlab, you are just trying to numerically differentiate a function twice. Depending on the behaviour of the higher (3rd, 4th) derivatives of the function this will or will not yield reasonable results. You will also have to expect an error of order |T3 - T1|^2 with a formula like the one you are using, assuming L is four times differentiable. Instead of using intervals of different size you may try to use symmetric approximations like
v (x) = (L(x-h) - L(x+h))/ 2h
a (x) = (L(x-h) - 2 L(x) + L(x+h))/ h^2
From what I recall from my numerical math lectures this is better suited for numerical calculation of higher order derivatives. You will still get an error of order
C |h|^2, with C = O( ||d^4 L / dt^4 || )
with ||.|| denoting the supremum norm of a function (that is, the fourth derivative of L needs to be bounded). In case that's true you can use that formula to calculate how small h has to be chosen in order to produce a result you are willing to accept. Note, though, that this is just the theoretical error which is a consequence of an analysis of the Taylor approximation of L, see [1] or [2] -- this is where I got it from a moment ago -- or any other introductory book on numerical mathematics. You may get additional errors depending on the quality of the evaluation of L; also, if |L(x-h) - L(x)| is very small numerical substraction may be ill conditioned.
[1] Knabner, Angermann; Numerik partieller Differentialgleichungen; Springer
[2] http://math.fullerton.edu/mathews/n2003/numericaldiffmod.html

Related

Why do the inverse t-distributions for small values differ in Matlab and R?

I would like to evaluate the inverse Student's t-distribution function for small values, e.g., 1e-18, in Matlab. The degrees of freedom is 2.
Unfortunately, Matlab returns NaN:
tinv(1e-18,2)
NaN
However, if I use R's built-in function:
qt(1e-18,2)
-707106781
The result is sensible. Why can Matlab not evaluate the function for this small value? The Matlab and R results are quite similar to 1e-15, but for smaller values the difference is considerable:
tinv(1e-16,2)/qt(1e-16,2) = 1.05
Does anyone know what is the difference in the implemented algorithms of Matlab and R, and if R gives correct results, how could I effectively calculate the inverse t-distribution, in Matlab, for smaller values?
It appears that R's qt may use a completely different algorithm than Matlab's tinv. I think that you and others should report this deficiency to The MathWorks by filing a service request. By the way, in R2014b and R2015a, -Inf is returned instead of NaN for small values (about eps/8 and less) of the first argument, p. This is more sensible, but I think they should do better.
In the interim, there are several workarounds.
Special Cases
First, in the case of the Student's t-distribution, there are several simple analytic solutions to the inverse CDF or quantile function for certain integer parameters of ν. For your example of ν = 2:
% for v = 2
p = 1e-18;
x = (2*p-1)./sqrt(2*p.*(1-p))
which returns -7.071067811865475e+08. At a minimum, Matlab's tinv should include these special cases (they only do so for ν = 1). It would probably improve the accuracy and speed of these particular solutions as well.
Numeric Inverse
The tinv function is based on the betaincinv function. It appears that it may be this function that is responsible for the loss of precision for small values of the first argument, p. However, as suggested by the OP, one can use the CDF function, tcdf, and root-finding methods to evaluate the inverse CDF numerically. The tcdf function is based on betainc, which doesn't appear to be as sensitive. Using fzero:
p = 1e-18;
v = 2
x = fzero(#(x)tcdf(x,v)-p, 0)
This returns -7.071067811865468e+08. Note that this method is not very robust for values of p close to 1.
Symbolic Solutions
For more general cases, you can take advantage of symbolic math and variable precision arithmetic. You can use identities in terms of Gausian hypergeometric functions, 2F1, as given here for the CDF. Thus, using solve and hypergeom:
% Supposedly valid for or x^2 < v, but appears to work for your example
p = sym('1e-18');
v = sym(2);
syms x
F = 0.5+x*gamma((v+1)/2)*hypergeom([0.5 (v+1)/2],1.5,-x^2/v)/(sqrt(sym('pi')*v)*gamma(v/2));
sol_x = solve(p==F,x);
vpa(sol_x)
The tinv function is based on the betaincinv function. There is no equivalent function or even an incomplete Beta function in the Symbolic Math toolbox or MuPAD, but a similar 2F1 relation for the incomplete Beta function can be used:
p = sym('1e-18');
v = sym(2);
syms x
a = v/2;
F = 1-x^a*hypergeom([a 0.5],a+1,x)/(a*beta(a,0.5));
sol_x = solve(2*abs(p-0.5)==F,x);
sol_x = sign(p-0.5).*sqrt(v.*(1-sol_x)./sol_x);
vpa(sol_x)
Both symbolic schemes return results that agree to -707106781.186547523340184 using the default value of digits.
I've not fully validated the two symbolic methods above so I can't vouch for their correctness in all cases. The code also needs to be vectorized and will be slower than a fully numerical solution.

Fast Fourier Transform Pseudocode?

The purpose of the following code is to convert a polynomial from coefficient representation into value representation by dividing it into its odd and even powers and then recursing on the smaller polynomials.
function FFT(A, w)
Input: Coefficient representation of a polynomials A(x) of degree ≤ n-1, where n
is a power of 2w, an nth root of unity.
Output: Value representation A(w^0),...,A(w^(n-1))
if w = 1; return A(1)
express A(x) in the form A_e(x^2) and xA_o(x^2) /*where A_e are the even powers and A_o
the odd.*/
call FFT(A_e,w^2) to evaluate A_e at even of powers of w
call FFT(A_o,w^2) to evaluate A_o at even powers of w
for j = 0 to n-1;
compute A(w^j) = A_e(w^(2j))+w^j(A_o(w^(2j)))
return A(w^0),...,A(w^(n-1))
What is the for loop being used for?
Why is the pseudocode only adding the smaller polynomials, doesn't it need to subtract them too? (to calculate A(-x)). Isn't that what the algorithm completely based on? Adding and subtracting the smaller polynomials to reduce the points in half?*
Why are powers of "w" being evaluated as opposed to "x"?
I am not a too sure if this belongs here, since the question is quite mathematical. If you feel this question is off-topic, I would appreciate it if you moved it to a site where you felt this question would be more appropriate, rather that just closing it.
*Psuedocode was gotten from Algorithms by S. Dasgupta. Page 71.
The loop is for recursion.
No need to add for negative x; the FFT transforms from time to frequency space.

Get branch points of equation

If I have a general function,f(z,a), z and a are both real, and the function f takes on real values for all z except in some interval (z1,z2), where it becomes complex. How do I determine z1 and z2 (which will be in terms of a) using Mathematica (or is this possible)? What are the limitations?
For a test example, consider the function f[z_,a_]=Sqrt[(z-a)(z-2a)]. For real z and a, this takes on real values except in the interval (a,2a), where it becomes imaginary. How do I find this interval in Mathematica?
In general, I'd like to know how one would go about finding it mathematically for a general case. For a function with just two variables like this, it'd probably be straightforward to do a contour plot of the Riemann surface and observe the branch cuts. But what if it is a multivariate function? Is there a general approach that one can take?
What you have appears to be a Riemann surface parametrized by 'a'. Consider the algebraic (or analytic) relation g(a,z)=0 that would be spawned from this branch of a parametrized Riemann surface. In this case it is simply g^2 - (z - a)*(z - 2*a) == 0. More generally it might be obtained using Groebnerbasis, as below (no guarantee this will always work without some amount of user intervention).
grelation = First[GroebnerBasis[g - Sqrt[(z - a)*(z - 2*a)], {x, a, g}]]
Out[472]= 2 a^2 - g^2 - 3 a z + z^2
A necessary condition for the branch points, as functions of the parameter 'a', is that the zero set for 'g' not give a (single valued) function in a neighborhood of such points. This in turn means that the partial derivative of this relation with respect to g vanishes (this is from the implicit function theorem of multivariable calculus). So we find where grelation and its derivative both vanish, and solve for 'z' as a function of 'a'.
Solve[Eliminate[{grelation == 0, D[grelation, g] == 0}, g], z]
Out[481]= {{z -> a}, {z -> 2 a}}
Daniel Lichtblau
Wolfram Research
For polynomial systems (and some class of others), Reduce can do the job.
E.g.
In[1]:= Reduce[Element[{a, z}, Reals]
&& !Element[Sqrt[(z - a) (z - 2 a)], Reals], z]
Out[1]= (a < 0 && 2a < z < a) || (a > 0 && a < z < 2a)
This type of approach also works (often giving very complicated solutions for functions with many branch cuts) for other combinations of elementary functions I checked.
To find the branch cuts (as opposed to the simple class of branch points you're interested in) in general, I don't know of a good approach. The best place to find the detailed conventions that Mathematica uses is at the functions.wolfram site.
I do remember reading a good paper on this a while back... I'll try to find it....
That's right! The easiest approach I've seen for branch cut analysis uses the unwinding number. There's a paper "Reasoning about the elementary functions of complex analysis" about this the the journal "Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation". It and similar papers can be found at one of the authors homepage: http://www.apmaths.uwo.ca/~djeffrey/offprints.html.
For general functions you cannot make Mathematica calculate it.
Even for polynomials, finding an exact answer takes time.
I believe Mathematica uses some sort of quantifier elimination when it uses Reduce,
which takes time.
Without any restrictions on your functions (are they polynomials, continuous, smooth?)
one can easily construct functions which Mathematica cannot simplify further:
f[x_,y_] := Abs[Zeta[y+0.5+x*I]]*I
If this function is real for arbitrary x and any -0.5 < y < 0 or 0<y<0.5,
then you will have found a counterexample to the Riemann zeta conjecture,
and I'm sure Mathematica cannot give a correct answer.

how to evaluate derivative of function in matlab?

This should be very simple. I have a function f(x), and I want to evaluate f'(x) for a given x in MATLAB.
All my searches have come up with symbolic math, which is not what I need, I need numerical differentiation.
E.g. if I define: fx = inline('x.^2')
I want to find say f'(3), which would be 6, I don't want to find 2x
If your function is known to be twice differentiable, use
f'(x) = (f(x + h) - f(x - h)) / 2h
which is second order accurate in h. If it is only once differentiable, use
f'(x) = (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h (*)
which is first order in h.
This is theory. In practice, things are quite tricky. I'll take the second formula (first order) as the analysis is simpler. Do the second order one as an exercise.
The very first observation is that you must make sure that (x + h) - x = h, otherwise you get huge errors. Indeed, f(x + h) and f(x) are close to each other (say 2.0456 and 2.0467), and when you substract them, you lose a lot of significant figures (here it is 0.0011, which has 3 significant figures less than x). So any error on h is likely to have a huge impact on the result.
So, first step, fix a candidate h (I'll show you in a minute how to chose it), and take as h for your computation the quantity h' = (x + h) - x. If you are using a language like C, you must take care to define h or x as volatile for that computation not to be optimized away.
Next, the choice of h. The error in (*) has two parts: the truncation error and the roundoff error. The truncation error is because the formula is not exact:
(f(x + h) - f(x)) / h = f'(x) + e1(h)
where e1(h) = h / 2 * sup_{x in [0,h]} |f''(x)|.
The roundoff error comes from the fact that f(x + h) and f(x) are close to each other. It can be estimated roughly as
e2(h) ~ epsilon_f |f(x) / h|
where epsilon_f is the relative precision in the computation of f(x) (or f(x + h), which is close). This has to be assessed from your problem. For simple functions, epsilon_f can be taken as the machine epsilon. For more complicated ones, it can be worse than that by orders of magnitude.
So you want h which minimizes e1(h) + e2(h). Plugging everything together and optimizing in h yields
h ~ sqrt(2 * epsilon_f * f / f'')
which has to be estimated from your function. You can take rough estimates. When in doubt, take h ~ sqrt(epsilon) where epsilon = machine accuracy. For the optimal choice of h, the relative accuracy to which the derivative is known is sqrt(epsilon_f), ie. half the significant figures are correct.
In short: too small a h => roundoff error, too large a h => truncation error.
For the second order formula, same computation yields
h ~ (6 * epsilon_f / f''')^(1/3)
and a fractional accuracy of (epsilon_f)^(2/3) for the derivative (which is typically one or two significant figures better than the first order formula, assuming double precision).
If this is too imprecise, feel free to ask for more methods, there are a lot of tricks to get better accuracy. Richardson extrapolation is a good start for smooth functions. But those methods typically compute f quite a few times, this may or not be what you want if your function is complex.
If you are going to use numerical derivatives a lot of times at different points, it becomes interesting to construct a Chebyshev approximation.
To get a numerical difference (symmetric difference), you calculate (f(x+dx)-f(x-dx))/(2*dx)
fx = #(x)x.^2;
fPrimeAt3 = (fx(3.1)-fx(2.9))/0.2;
Alternatively, you can create a vector of function values and apply DIFF, i.e.
xValues = 2:0.1:4;
fValues = fx(xValues);
df = diff(fValues)./0.1;
Note that diff takes the forward difference, and that it assumes that dx equals to 1.
However, in your case, you may be better off to define fx as a polynomial, and evaluating the derivative of the function, rather than the function values.
Lacking the symbolic toolbox, nothing stops you from using Derivest, a tool for automatic adaptive numerical differentiation.
derivest(#sin,pi)
ans =
-1
For your example it does very nicely. In fact, it even provides an estimate of the error in the resulting approximation.
fx = inline('x.^2');
[fp,errest] = derivest(fx,3)
fp =
6
errest =
3.6308e-14
did you try diff (calculates differences and approximates a derivative), gradient, or polyder (calculates the derivative of a polynomial) functions?
You can read more on these functions by using help <commandname> on MATLAB console, or use the function browser in the Help menu.
For a given function in analytical form, you can evaluate the derivative at a desired point with the following code:
syms x
df = diff(x^2);
df3 = subs(df, 'x', 3);
fprintf('f''(3)=%f\n', df3);
For pure numerical derivatives use the already given solutions by Jonas and posdef.

Help understanding unipolar transfer function

There is a question I am stuck on using the following formula for the unipolar transfer function:
f(net)= 1
__________
-net
1 + e
The example has the following:
out = 1
____________ = 0.977
-3.75
1 + e
How do we arrive at 0.977?
What is e?
e = 2.71828... is the base of natural logarithms. It's a mathematical constant that comes up in many different equations, similar to π. You will see it all the time when doing exponents and logarithms.
Plug it into your equation and you get 0.977.
While factually correct the other responses merely provide the value of e and confirm the underlying computation. This type of sigmoid functions is so ubiquitous to neural networks that some additional insight may be welcome.
Essentially the exponential function (e to the x power), has a very characteristic curve:
Mostly flat at zero (very slightly above zero, actually), from - infinity to about -2
incrementally sharp turn towards the vertical, between about -2 and +4
quasi "vertical", with values in excess of 150 and increasingly huge, from +5 to infinity
As a result exponential curves are very useful for producing "S-shaped" functions; BTW, "S" is Sigma in Greek which supplied the etymology for "sigmoid". Such functions are often patterned on the formula shown in the question:
1/(1 + e^-x)
where x is the variable. Typically such functions also include constants aimed at stretching the range (the input zone where changes in x are significant) and/or at modifying the curve in this middle zone.
The result of such functions is that up to a particular value of the input, the function is quasi constant, then, for a particular range of inputs, the function provides a increasing output, and finally past the upper value of the range, the function is quasi constant. Also looking in more details, such Sigmoids have a point of inflection which correspond to a reversing of the rate of change of the ouptut and which also marks an area of the curve, on either side, where the changes are the slowest, relatively.
In turn, such S-shaped curves (1) are very useful to normalize the output of neural network neurons, or more generally, to normalize various numeric values during processes of various nature. Intuitively these correspond to a "sweet spot" or a "sweet range" of the underlying neuron or device.
(1) Or also, possibly, "step-down" shaped curves, i.e. curves with a mostly constant high value, a decreasing value within the mid-range, and a low mostly constant value thereafter.
e is Euler's number == 2.718281828....
If you raise e to the -3.75 power, add one to it, and take the inverse, you'll get precisely 0.977022630....
'e' is the base for the natural logarithm function, the value of which is equivalent to the sum of the infinite series 1/n! for n from 0 to infinity. It is available in the C standard library or the java Math package as the exp() function.
If you evaluate 1/(1+exp(-3.75)) you will get 0.977

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