We Keep Coding

How to calculate the probability between two numbers from a probability distribution in python

I've always thought it would be useful to calculate the probability between two values on a probability distribution. While there isn't a built-in way to do this using seaborn or matplotlib, I reckon it just takes some basic calculus, right? Here is some code I found from an article on this topic:
from sklearn.neighbors import KernelDensity
import numpy as np
x = np.random.normal(loc=0.0, scale=1.0, size=1000000)
kd = KernelDensity(kernel='gaussian', bandwidth=0.5).fit(np.array(x).reshape(-1, 1))
def get_probability(start_value, end_value, eval_points, kd):
# Number of evaluation points
N = eval_points
step = (end_value - start_value) / (N - 1) # Step size
x = np.linspace(start_value, end_value, N)[:, np.newaxis] # Generate values in the range
kd_vals = np.exp(kd.score_samples(x)) # Get PDF values for each x
probability = np.sum(kd_vals * step) # Approximate the integral of the PDF
return probability.round(4)
get_probability(x.mean() - x.std(), x.mean() + x.std(), 100, kd)
0.6338
This returns a probability that converges at 0.6338. This confused me, as the 68-95-99.7 rule states that the probability of a value being within one standard deviation of the mean in either direction should be 68%.
I decided to run another test by calculating the probability between the median and max of a randomly generated sample, figuring it should converge close to 50%:
x = np.random.randint(100, size=(1000000))
# sns.kdeplot(x) # this is how i'd generate a kdeplot of this data
kd = KernelDensity(kernel='gaussian', bandwidth=0.5).fit(np.array(x).reshape(-1, 1))
def get_probability(start_value, end_value, eval_points, kd):
# Number of evaluation points
N = eval_points
step = (end_value - start_value) / (N - 1) # Step size
x = np.linspace(start_value, end_value, N)[:, np.newaxis] # Generate values in the range
kd_vals = np.exp(kd.score_samples(x)) # Get PDF values for each x
probability = np.sum(kd_vals * step) # Approximate the integral of the PDF
return probability.round(4)
get_probability(np.median(x), x.max(), 100, kd)
0.4946
And it's pretty close. Am I missing something here? Why am I nearly 5 percentage points off from the 68-95-99.7 rule? Is this method of generating probabilities from a probability distribution wrong? Is there a better way to find the probability between two values from a probability distribution?
EDIT: Could you potentially calculate something by using the data generated from a kdeplot?
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
sns.kdeplot(x)
kdeline = ax.lines[0]
xs = kdeline.get_xdata()
ys = kdeline.get_ydata()
And implement np.interp() somehow?
More edits:
Using CDFs per #7shoe, I was able to get a way better (and correct) result for my normal distribution example:
from scipy.stats import norm
import numpy as np
np.random.seed(42)
x = np.random.normal(loc=0.0, scale=1.0, size=10000000)
norm.cdf(x.mean() + x.std()) - norm.cdf(x.mean() - x.std())
However, my curiosity is still piqued. Let's say we have a distribution that may or may not be normal. For example, let's look at Tom Brady's epa per pass from last season
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns
import random
import numpy as np
YEAR = 2021
data = pd.read_csv(
'https://github.com/nflverse/nflfastR-data/blob/master/data/play_by_play_' \
+ str(YEAR) + '.csv.gz?raw=True',compression='gzip', low_memory=False
)
df = data.loc[data.passer == 'T.Brady','epa'].copy()
# tom brady's distribution
sns.kdeplot(df)
sample_mean = []
for i in range(50):
y = np.random.choice(df, 500)
avg = np.mean(y)
sample_mean.append(avg)
# distribution of sampling means - can we assume this is normal and proceed with cdfs?
sns.kdeplot(sample_mean)
Could we use sampling means or even just bootstrap resampling methods to
Make a more "normal" distribution with sampling means in order to incorporate cdfs if the initial distribution doesn't quite appear normal (this, though, would be a distribution of means rather than individual samples. Is this not encouraged?)
or
If the distribution already resembles a normal distribution, simply use such resampling methods to create better parametric estimates?

Computing the probability p for some interval is not overly complicated. However, it might be tricky to combine the right tools to do so. In particular, since there are several statistical approaches to do so.
1. Probability theory
Given two numbers, let's call them lower and upper, what probability is enclosed in between them? If the cumulative distribution function (CDF) F is known, it is merely p = F(upper) - F(lower). Similarly, p coincides with the area enclosed by the probability density function(PDF) f's graph on the interval [lower, upper].
However, when the CDF/PDF is unknown, it constitutes a statistical question. In a nutshell, estimating the PDF f and computing the area its graph enclosed with the interval will do. But there are several paradigms and estimation procedures to obtain it.
1. Parametric estimation
One could assume that the data x is set of IID realizations of some normal distribution, either because of prior knowledge or convenience. Then, one just needs to estimate its parameters mu (aka scale) and sigma (aka standard deviation or scale). scipy.stats provides all we need in this setting. Moreover, it offers estimation procedures as well as pdf/cdf functions for various parametric distributions.
from scipy import stats
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
lower, upper = 0.0, 2.0
x = [-0.804, -2.267, 1.55, -1.004, 3.173, -0.522, -0.231, 3.95, -0.574, -0.213, 1.333, 2.42, 1.879, 3.814]
# fit parameter
loc_hat, scale_hat = stats.norm.fit(x)
# probability
p = stats.norm.cdf(upper, loc=loc_hat, scale=scale_hat) - stats.norm.cdf(lower, loc=loc_hat, scale=scale_hat)
# plot
x_axis = np.linspace(-5, 7, 1000)
plt.title('1. Parametric Estimation', fontsize=18)
plt.plot(x_axis, stats.norm.pdf(x_axis, loc_hat, scale_hat))
plt.fill_between(x = np.arange(lower, upper, 0.01),
y1 = stats.norm.pdf(np.arange(lower, upper, 0.01), loc=loc_hat, scale=scale_hat) ,
facecolor='red',
alpha=0.35)
plt.text(x=0.1, y=0.1, s= 'p=' + str(round(p, 3)))
plt.show()
which yields
2. Non-parametric estimation
In the absence of a parametric assumption, various techniques exist to estimate the density directly (rather than identifying it by estimated parameters as seen above). Kernel density estimation is the most popular variant to do so. In this case, as alluded in the question, scikit-learn is an ideal tool. However, in the absence of an analytical CDF, we need to compute the area enclosed by the density's graph over the interval [lower, upper] directly.
In contrast to previous answers, I'd leave this to SciPy's numerical integration routines, e.g. scipy.inegrate.quad(). The advantage is that it is lightning-fast and can be applied to any function (beyond kernel density estimates). The resulting code is as follows
from sklearn.neighbors import KernelDensity
from scipy.integrate import quad
x = [-0.804, -2.267, 1.55, -1.004, 3.173, -0.522, -0.231, 3.95, -0.574, -0.213, 1.333, 2.42, 1.879, 3.814]
# fit density function
f_hat = KernelDensity(bandwidth=.9, kernel='gaussian').fit(np.array(x).reshape(-1, 1))
def f_pred(x):
'''wrapper function to compute probability'''
return np.exp(f_hat.score_samples(np.array(x).reshape(-1, 1)))[0]
p = quad(func=f_pred, a=lower, b=upper)
# plot
plt.title('2. Non-Parametric Estimation', fontsize=18)
xaxis = np.linspace(-5, 7, 1000)
plt.plot(x_axis, np.exp(f_hat.score_samples(xaxis.reshape(-1, 1))))
plt.fill_between(x = np.arange(lower, upper, 0.01),
y1 = np.exp(f_hat.score_samples(np.arange(lower, upper, 0.01).reshape(-1, 1))),
facecolor='red',
alpha=0.35)
plt.text(x=0.15, y=0.1, s= 'p=' + str(round(p[0], 3)))
plt.show()
and yields

I do see a bug in the get_probability function, but that bug causes it to compute a too high result - in np.sum(kd_vals * step), it's multiplying N sample values by a step with N-1 in the denominator, effectively resulting in an output a factor of N/(N-1) too high. (If they wanted to use a trapezoid rule computation for the integral, they should have divided the left and right endpoint values by 2 first.)
Other than that, the computation looks correct. The problem is that the model doesn't reflect the input distribution.
You're not modeling the distribution as a normal distribution. You're modeling it with a kernel density estimator with a Gaussian kernel, and the kernel bandwidth is very high relative to the scale of the distribution and the number of available samples. This results in the model being "flatter" than the actual distribution, with less of the probability concentrated in the center.

Is there an a method to fit a wave created from two wave?

I need to fit a sine curve created from two sine waves and extract the parameters for the fitted curve (such as frequency, amplitude, etc).
Data example:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
%matplotlib inline
x = np.arange(0, 50, 0.01)
x2 = np.arange(0, 100, 0.02)
x3 = np.arange(0, 150, 0.03)
sin1 = np.sin(x)
sin2 = np.sin(x2)
sin3= np.sin(x3/2)
sin4 = sin1 + sin2+sin3
plt.plot(x, sin4)
plt.show()
I used the codes provided in this answer.
yy = sin4
tt = x
res = fit_sin(tt, yy)
print(str(i), "Amplitude=%(amp)s, Angular freq.=%(omega)s, phase=%(phase)s, offset=%(offset)s, Max. Cov.=%(maxcov)s" % res )
fit_values=res["fitfunc"](tt)
Frequenc_fit= res['freq']
print(i, Frequenc_fit)
Frequenc_fit=Frequenc_fit
Amp_fit=res['amp']
Omega_fit=res['omega']
Phase_fit=res['phase']
Offset_fit=res['offset']
maxcov_fit=res['maxcov']
plt.plot(tt, yy, "-k", label="y", linewidth=2)
plt.plot(tt,fit_values, "r-", label="y fit curve", linewidth=2)
plt.legend(loc="best")
plt.show()
I got a fitted sine curve with a single frequency and amplitude as follows:
2 Amplitude=1.0149282025860233, Angular freq.=2.01112187048004, phase=-0.2730905030152767, offset=0.003304158823058212, Max. Cov.=0.0015266032307905222
2 0.3200799868471169
Is there a method to obtain fitted curve matches with the original one?

Supposing that the function to be fitted is
y(x)=a * sin( w * x )+b * sin( W * x )
the principle of the method below is explained in https://fr.scribd.com/doc/14674814/Regressions-et-equations-integrales
The graphical representation of the result is :
Blue curve : From data obtained by scanning the graph given in the question.
Black curve : From the above calculus.
The available data was not accurate because it comes from scanning of the original figure. The deviation is mainly due to the numerical integrations in computing the values of SS and SSSS (Four successive numerical integrations is not accurate especially with biaised data).
Probably the correct result should be : w=2 , W=1 , a=1 , b=1.
NOTE : The above method is not iterative and thus doesn't requires guessed values of the parameters to start an iterative process. The approximate results of the parameters can be good initial values in order to use an iterative non-linear regression process.
NOTE : If the values of w and W where known a-priori the solving thanks to linear regression would be very simple and much accurate (Only the last 2X2 matrix calculus shown above).

How to compute and plot the pdf from the empirical cdf?

I have two numpy arrays, one is an array of x values and the other an array of y values and together they give me the empirical cdf. E.g.:
plt.plot(xvalues, yvalues)
plt.show()
I assume the data needs to be smoothed somehow in order to give a smooth pdf.
I would like to plot the pdf. How can I do that?
The raw data is at: http://dpaste.com/1HVK5DR .

There are two main problems: Your data seems to be quite noisy, and it is not equally spaced: The points at the low end are sampled quite densly, while the ponts at the high end are sampled quite sparsely. This can cause numerical issues.
So first I suggest resampling the data using a linear interpolation to get equaly spaced samples: (Note that all the snippets appended to eachother form the content of one python file.)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from data import xvalues, yvalues #load data from file
print("#datapoints: {}".format(len(xvalues)))
#don't use every point if your computer is not very fast
xv = np.array(xvalues)[::5]
yv = np.array(yvalues)[::5]
#interpolate to have evenly space data
xi = np.linspace(xv.min(), xv.max(), 400)
yi = np.interp(xi, xv, yv)
Then, to smoothen the data, I suggest performing a RBF regression (=using an "RBF Network"). The idea is fiting a curve of the form
c(t) = sum a(i) * phi(t - x(i)) #(not part of the program)
where phi is some radial basis function. (In theory we could use any functions.) To have a very smooth result I choose a very smooth function, namely a gaussian: phi(x) = exp( - x^2/sigma^2) where sigma is yet to be determined. The x(i) are just some nodes that we can define. If we have a smooth function, we just need a few nodes. The number of nodes also determines how much computation needs to be done. The a(i) are the coefficients we can optimize to get the best fit. In this case I just use a least squares approach.
Note that IF we can write a function in the form above, it is very easy to compute the derivative, it is just
c(t) = sum a(i) * phi'(t - x(i))
where phi' is the derivative of phi. #(not part of the program)
Regarding sigma: It is usually a good idea to choose it as a multiple of the step between the nodes we chose. The greater we choose sigma, the smoother the resulting function gets.
#set up rbf network
rbf_nodes = xv[::50][None, :]#use a subset of the x-values as rbf nodes
print("#rbfs: {}".format(rbf_nodes.shape[1]))
#estimate width of kernels:
sigma = 20 #greater = smoother, this is the primary parameter to play with
sigma *= np.max(np.abs(rbf_nodes[0,1:]-rbf_nodes[0,:-1]))
# kernel & derivative
rbf = lambda r:1/(1+(r/sigma)**2)
Drbf = lambda r: -2*r*sigma**2/(sigma**2 + r**2)**2
#compute coefficients of rbf network
r = np.abs(xi[:, None]-rbf_nodes)
A = rbf(r)
coeffs = np.linalg.lstsq(A, yi, rcond=None)[0]
print(coeffs)
#evaluate rbf network
N=1000
xe = np.linspace(xi.min(), xi.max(), N)
Ae = rbf(xe[:, None] - rbf_nodes)
ye = Ae # coeffs
#evaluate derivative
N=1000
xd = np.linspace(xi.min(), xi.max(), N)
Bd = Drbf(xe[:, None] - rbf_nodes)
yd = Bd # coeffs
fig,ax = plt.subplots()
ax2 = ax.twinx()
ax.plot(xv, yv, '-')
ax.plot(xi, yi, '-')
ax.plot(xe, ye, ':')
ax2.plot(xd, yd, '-')
fig.savefig('graph.png')
print('done')

You need the derivative to go from CDF to PDF
PDF(x) = d CDF(x)/ dx
With NumPy, you could use gradient
pdf = np.gradient(yvalues, xvalues)
plt.plot(xvalues, pdf)
plt.show()
or manual differential
pdf = np.diff(yvalues)/np.diff(xvalues)
l = np.asarray(xvalues[:-1])
r = np.asarray(xvalues[1:])
plt.plot((l+r)/2.0, pdf) # points in the middle of interval
plt.show()
Both produce something like, updated picture it got botched somehow

Python - curve fit producing incorrect fit

I'm trying to fit a sine wave curve this data distribution, but for some reason, the fit is incorrect:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import scipy as sp
from scipy.optimize import curve_fit
#=======================
#====== Analysis =======
#=======================
# sine curve fit
def fit_Sin(t, A, b, C):
return A* np.sin(t*b) + C
## The Data extraciton
t,y,y1 = np.loadtxt("new10_CoCore_5to20_BL.txt", unpack=True)
xdata = t
popt, pcov = curve_fit(fit_Sin, t, y)
print "A = %s , b = %s, C = %s" % (popt[0], popt[1], popt[2])
#=======================
#====== Plotting =======
#=======================
fig1 = plt.figure()
ax1 = fig1.add_subplot(111)
ax1.plot(t, y, ".")
ax1.plot(t, fit_Sin(t, *popt))
plt.show()
In which this fit makes an extreme underestimation of the data. Any ideas why that is?
Here is the data provided here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/72jnpkkk0jf3sjg/AAAb17JSPbqhQOWnI68xK7sMa?dl=0
Any idea why this is producing this?

Sine waves are extremely difficult to fit if your frequency guess is off. That is because with a sufficient number of cycles in the data, the guess will be out of phase with half the data and in phase with half of it for even a small error in the frequency. At that point, a straight line offers a better fit than a sine wave of different frequency. That is how Fourier transforms work by the way.
I can think of three ways to estimate the frequency well enough to allow a non linear least squares algorithm to take over:
Eyeball it. Subtract the x-values of two peaks in the GUI or even in the command line. If you have very low noise data, you can automate this process quite easily.
Use a Discrete Fourier transform. If your data is a sine wave of one component, the first non-constant peak will give you the frequency. I have found this to require some additional tweaking since the frequency of the sampling is often not a multiple of the sine wave frequency. A parabolic fit to the three points around the peak (three including the peak) can help in this situation.
Find where your data crosses the vertical offset. This is similar to #1 but is easier to automate for relatively non-noisy data. The wavelength is twice the distance between a pair of intersections.
Using #1, I can clearly see that your wavelength is 50. The initial guess for b should therefore be 2*np.pi/50. Also, don't forget to add a phase shift parameter to allow the fit to slide horizontally: A*sin(b*t + d) + C.
You will need to pass in an initial guess via the p0 parameter to curve_fit. A good eyeball estimate is p0=(0.55, np.pi/25, 0.0, -np.pi/25*12.5). The phase shift in your data appears to be a quarter period to the right, hence the 12.5.
I am currently in the process of writing an algorithm for fitting noisy sine waves with a single frequency component that I will submit to SciPy. Will update when I finish.

Fourier smoothing of data set

I am following this link to do a smoothing of my data set.
The technique is based on the principle of removing the higher order terms of the Fourier Transform of the signal, and so obtaining a smoothed function.
This is part of my code:
N = len(y)
y = y.astype(float) # fix issue, see below
yfft = fft(y, N)
yfft[31:] = 0.0 # set higher harmonics to zero
y_smooth = fft(yfft, N)
ax.errorbar(phase, y, yerr = err, fmt='b.', capsize=0, elinewidth=1.0)
ax.plot(phase, y_smooth/30, color='black') #arbitrary normalization, see below
However some things do not work properly.
Indeed, you can check the resulting plot :
The blue points are my data, while the black line should be the smoothed curve.
First of all I had to convert my array of data y by following this discussion.
Second, I just normalized arbitrarily to compare the curve with data, since I don't know why the original curve had values much higher than the data points.
Most importantly, the curve is like "specular" to the data point, and I don't know why this happens.
It would be great to have some advices especially to the third point, and more generally how to optimize the smoothing with this technique for my particular data set shape.

Your problem is probably due to the shifting that the standard FFT does. You can read about it here.
Your data is real, so you can take advantage of symmetries in the FT and use the special function np.fft.rfft
import numpy as np
x = np.arange(40)
y = np.log(x + 1) * np.exp(-x/8.) * x**2 + np.random.random(40) * 15
rft = np.fft.rfft(y)
rft[5:] = 0 # Note, rft.shape = 21
y_smooth = np.fft.irfft(rft)
plt.plot(x, y, label='Original')
plt.plot(x, y_smooth, label='Smoothed')
plt.legend(loc=0)
plt.show()
If you plot the absolute value of rft, you will see that there is almost no information in frequencies beyond 5, so that is why I choose that threshold (and a bit of playing around, too).
Here the results:

From what I can gather you want to build a low pass filter by doing the following:
Move to the frequency domain. (Fourier transform)
Remove undesired frequencies.
Move back to the time domain. (Inverse fourier transform)
Looking at your code, instead of doing 3) you're just doing another fourier transform. Instead, try doing an actual inverse fourier transform to move back to the time domain:
y_smooth = ifft(yfft, N)
Have a look at scipy signal to see a bunch of already available filters.
(Edit: I'd be curious to see the results, do share!)

I would be very cautious in using this technique. By zeroing out frequency components of the FFT you are effectively constructing a brick wall filter in the frequency domain. This will result in convolution with a sinc in the time domain and likely distort the information you want to process. Look up "Gibbs phenomenon" for more information.
You're probably better off designing a low pass filter or using a simple N-point moving average (which is itself a LPF) to accomplish the smoothing.