Vector autoregressive model fitting with scikit-learn - python

I am trying to fit vector autoregressive (VAR) models using the generalized linear model fitting methods included in scikit-learn. The linear model has the form y = X w, but the system matrix X has a very peculiar structure: it is block-diagonal, and all blocks are identical. To optimize performance and memory consumption the model can be expressed as Y = BW, where B is a block from X, and Y and W are now matrices instead of vectors.
The classes LinearRegression, Ridge, RidgeCV, Lasso, and ElasticNet readily accept the latter model structure. However, fitting LassoCV or ElasticNetCV fails due to Y being two-dimensional.
I found https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/issues/2402
From this discussion I assume that the behavior of LassoCV/ElasticNetCV is intended.
Is there a way to optimize the alpha/rho parameters other than manually implementing cross-validation?
Furthermore, Bayesian regression techniques in scikit-learn also expect y to be one-dimensional. Is there any way around this?
Note: I use scikit-learn 0.14 (stable)

How crucial is the performance and memory optimization gained by using this formulation of the regression? Given that your reformulation breaks scikit-learn, I wouldn't really call it an optimization... I would suggest:
Running the unoptimized version and waiting (if possible).
Git pull the following code, which supposedly solves your problem. It's referenced in the conversation you posted from the scikit-learn github project. See here for instructions on building scikit-learn from a git pull. You can then add the branched scikit-learn location to your python path and execute your regression using the modified library code. Be sure to post your experiences and any issues you encounter; I'm sure the scikit developers would appreciate it.

To predict matrices instead of vectors there is for Lasso and ElasticNet their MultiTask* counterpart:
http://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.linear_model.MultiTaskLasso.html
http://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.linear_model.MultiTaskElasticNet.html

Related

Converting an sklearn logistic regression to a statsmodel logistic regression

I'm optimizing a logistic regression in sklearn through repeated kfold cross validation. I want to checkout the confidence interval and, based on other stack exchange answers, it seems easier to get that info from statsmodels.
Coming from a basis in sklearn though, statsmodels is opaque. How can I translate the optimized settings for my logistic regression into statsmodels. Things like the L2 penalty, C value, intercept, etc.?
I've done some research and it looks like statsmodel support L2 indirectly through GLM Binomials. The C value will need to be converted from C into alpha (whatever that means), and I have only a vague idea of how to specify the intercept (it looks like it has something to do with the add_constant function).
Can someone drop an example of how to do this kind of translation into statsmodels? I'm sure once I see it done, a lot of it will naturally fall into place in my head.

SKLearn NMF Vs Custom NMF

I am trying to build a recommendation system using Non-negative matrix factorization. Using scikit-learn NMF as the model, I fit my data, resulting in a certain loss(i.e., reconstruction error). Then I generate recommendation for new data using the inverse_transform method.
Now I do the same using another model I built in TensorFlow. The reconstruction error after training is close to that obtained using sklearn's approach earlier.
However, neither are the latent factors similar to one another nor the final recommendations.
One difference between the 2 approaches that I am aware of is:
In sklearn, I am using the Coordinate Descent solver whereas in TensorFlow, I am using the AdamOptimizer which is based on Gradient Descent.
Everything else seems to be the same:
Loss function used is the Frobenius Norm
No regularization in both cases
Tested on the same data using same number of latent dimensions
Relevant code that I am using:
1. scikit-learn approach:
model = NMF(alpha=0.0, init='random', l1_ratio=0.0, max_iter=200,
n_components=2, random_state=0, shuffle=False, solver='cd', tol=0.0001,
verbose=0)
model.fit(data)
result = model.inverse_transform(model.transform(data))
2. TensorFlow approach:
w = tf.get_variable(initializer=tf.abs(tf.random_normal((data.shape[0],
2))), constraint=lambda p: tf.maximum(0., p))
h = tf.get_variable(initializer=tf.abs(tf.random_normal((2,
data.shape[1]))), constraint=lambda p: tf.maximum(0., p))
loss = tf.sqrt(tf.reduce_sum(tf.squared_difference(x, tf.matmul(w, h))))
My question is that if the recommendations generated by these 2 approaches do not match, then how can I determine which are the right ones?
Based on my use case, sklearn's NMF is giving me good results, but not the TensorFlow implementation. How can I achieve the same using my custom implementation?
The choice of the optimizer has a big impact on the quality of the training. Some very simple models (I'm thinking of GloVe for example) do work with some optimizer and not at all with some others. Then, to answer your questions:
how can I determine which are the right ones ?
The evaluation is as important as the design of your model, and it is as hard i.e. you can try these 2 models and several available datasets and use some metrics to score them. You could also use A/B testing on a real case application to estimate the relevance of your recommendations.
How can I achieve the same using my custom implementation ?
First, try to find a coordinate descent optimizer for Tensorflow and make sure all step you implemented are exactly the same as the one in scikit-learn. Then, if you can't reproduce the same, try different solutions (why don't you try a simple gradient descent optimizer first ?) and take profit of the great modularity that Tensorflow offers !
Finally, if the recommendations provided by your implementation are that bad, I suggest you have an error in it. Try to compare with some existing codes.

Does sklearn have group lasso?

I'm interested in using group lasso for a problem I have. Here is a link to the algorithm. I know R has a slick implementation, but am curious to see if python has something similar.
I think sklearn.linear_model.MultiTaskLasso might be kind of similar, but am not sure. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Whether or not to implement the Group Lasso in sklearn is discussed in this issue in the sklearn repo, where the conclusion so far is that it is too much of a niche model to justify the maintenance it would need if included in master.
Therefore, I have implemented a GroupLasso class which passes sklearn's check_estimator() in my python/cython package celer, which acts as a dropin replacement for sklearn's Lasso, MultitaskLasso, sparse Logistic regression with faster solvers.
The solver uses coordinate descent, working set methods and extrapolation, which should allow it to scale to problems with millions of features.
It supports sparse and dense data, along with centering and normalization (centering sparse data is not trivial as it breaks the sparsity of the design matrix), and comes with a GroupLassoCV class to perform cross-validation.
In celer's documentation, there is an example showing how to use it.
I've also looked into this, as far as I know scikit-learn does not provide this implementation.
The MultiTaskLasso does something else. From the documentation:
"The MultiTaskLasso is a linear model that estimates sparse coefficients for multiple regression problems jointly: y is a 2D array, of shape (n_samples, n_tasks). The constraint is that the selected features are the same for all the regression problems, also called tasks."
In other words, the MultiTaskLasso is an implementation of the Lasso which is able to predict multiple targets at the same time (hence y is a 2D array). Another way this problem is known is 'multi-output regression' or 'multi-target regression'. If the tasks are related, such methods can improve methods which try to model every task or target separately.

Quickest linear regression implementation in python

I'm performing a stepwise model selection, progressively dropping variables with a variance inflation factor over a certain threshold.
In order to do this, I'm running OLS many, many times on datasets ranging from a few hundred MB to 10 gigs.
What is the quickest implementation of OLS would be for larger datasets? The Statsmodel OLS implementation seems to be using numpy to invert matrices. Would a gradient descent based method be quicker? Does scikit-learn have an especially quick implementation?
Or maybe an mcmc based approach using pymc is quickest...
Update 1: Seems that the scikit learn implementation of LinearRegression is a wrapper for the scipy implementation.
Update 2: Scipy OLS via scikit learn LinearRegression is twice as fast as statsmodels OLS in my very limited tests...
The scikit-learn SGDRegressor class is (iirc) the fastest, but would probably be more difficult to tune than a simple LinearRegression.
I would give each of those a try, and see if they meet your needs. I also recommend subsampling your data - if you have many gigs but they are all samples from the same distibution, you can train/tune your model on a few thousand samples (dependent on the number of features). This should lead to faster exploration of your model space, without wasting a bunch of time on "repeat/uninteresting" data.
Once you find a few candidate models, then you can try those on the whole dataset.
Stepwise methods are not a good way to perform model selection, as they are entirely ad hoc, and depend highly on which direction you run the stepwise procedure. Its far better to use criterion-based methods, or some other method for generating model probabilities. Perhaps the best approach is to use reversible-jump MCMC, which fits models over the entire models space, and not just the parameter space of a particular model.
PyMC does not implement rjMCMC itself, but it can be implemented. Note also that PyMC 3 makes it really easy to fit regression models using its new glm submodule.

scikit-learn OpenMP libsvm

I am using scikit-learn SVC to classify some data. I would like to increase the training performance.
clf = svm.SVC(cache_size=4000, probability=True, verbose=True)
Since sckikit-learn interfaces with libsvm and libsvm uses OpenMp I was hoping that:
export OMP_NUM_THREADS=16
would run on multiple cores.
Unfortunately this did not help.
Any Ideas?
Thanks
There is no OpenMP support in the current binding for libsvm in scikit-learn. However it is very likely that if you have performance issues with sklearn.svm.SVC should you use a more scalable model instead.
If your data is high dimensional it might be linearly separable. In that case it is advised to first try simpler models such as naive bayes models or sklearn.linear_model.Perceptron that are known to be very speedy to train. You can also try sklearn.linear_model.LogisticRegression and sklearn.svm.LinearSVC both implemented using liblinear that is more scalable than libsvm albeit less memory efficients than other linear models in scikit-learn.
If your data is not linearly separable, you can try sklearn.ensemble.ExtraTreesClassifier (adjust the n_estimators parameter to trade-off training speed vs. predictive accuracy).
Alternatively you can try to approximate a RBF kernel using the RBFSampler transformer of scikit-learn + fitting a linear model on the output:
http://scikit-learn.org/dev/modules/kernel_approximation.html
If you are using cross validation or grid search in scikit-learn then you can use multiple CPUs with the n_jobs parameter:
GridSearchCV(..., n_jobs=-1)
cross_val_score(..., n_jobs=-1)
Note that cross_val_score only needs a job per forld so if your number of folds is less than your CPUs you still won't be using all of your processing power.
LibSVM can use OpenMP if you can compile it and use it directly as per these instructions in the LibSVM FAQ. So you could export your scaled data in LibSVM format (here's a StackOverflow question on how to do that) and use LibSVM directly to train your data. But that will only be of benefit if you're grid searching or wanting to know accuracy scores, as far as I know the model LibSVM creates cannot be used in scikit-learn.
There is also a GPU accelerated version of LibSVM which I have tried and is extremely fast, but is not based on the current LibSVM version. I have talked to the developers and they say they hope to release a new version soon.
Although this thread is a year+ old, I thought it is worth answering.
I wrote a patch for openmp support on scikit-learn for both libsvm and liblinear (linearSVC) that's available here - https://github.com/fidlr/sklearn-openmp.
It is based on libsvm's FAQ on how to add OpenMP support, and the multi-core implementation of liblinear.
Just clone the repo and run sklearn-build-openmp.sh to apply the patch and build it.
Timing OMP_NUM_THREADS=4 python plot_permutation_test_for_classification.py:
svmlib with linear kernel timinig dropped by a factor of 2.3
RBF kernel - same.
Liblinear with 4 thread dropped by x1.6
Details about and usage information can be found here -
http://fidlr.org/post/137303264732/scikit-learn-017-with-libsvm-openmp-support

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