Module containing functionality for conjugate gradients.

Conjugate gradients is motivated from a first order Taylor expansion of the objective:

$f(\theta_t + \alpha_t d_t) \approx f(\theta_t) + \alpha_td_t^Tf'(\theta_t).$

To locally decrease the objective, it is optimal to set $$d_t \propto -f'(\theta_t)$$ and find $$\alpha_t$$ with a line search algorithm, which is known as steepest descent. Yet, a well known disadvantage of this approach is that directions found at $$t$$ will often interfere with directions found for $$t' < t$$.

The solution to this problem is to chose $$d_t$$ in a way that it does not interfere with previous updates. If the dimensions of our problem were independent, we could just move along these dimensions. If they were independent up to rotation, we would have to chose directions which are orthogonal to each other. This is exactly the case when the Hessian of the problem, $$A$$ is diagonal. If it is not diagonal, we have to move along directions which are called conjugate to each other with respect to the matrix $$A$$.

The conjugate gradients algorithms provide methods to do so efficiently. The linear conjugate gradients algorithm assumes that the objective is a quadratic and can thus determine $$\alpha$$ exactly. Nonlinear conjugate gradients works on arbitrary functions (yet, the Taylor expansion assumption above has to be reasonable). Since the Hessian $$A$$ is not constant in this case, the previous directions (to which a new direction has to be conjugate) have to be reset from time to time. Additionally, we need to perform a line search to solve for $$\alpha_t$$.

class climin.cg.ConjugateGradient(wrt, H=None, b=None, f_Hp=None, min_grad=1e-14, precond=None)

Minimize a quadratic objective of the form

$f(\theta) = {1 \over 2} \theta^TA\theta + \theta^Tb + c.$

The minimization will take place by moving along conjugate directions of steepest decrease in the error. This will take at most as many steps as the dimensionality of the problem.

Note

In most cases it is better to use scipy.optimize.solve. Only use this function if you want to monitor intermediate quantities and are not entirely interested in optimization of a quadratic objective, but in a different error measure. E.g. as in Hessian free optimization.

Attributes

 wrt (array_like) Parameters of the problem. H (array_like, 2 dimensional, square) Curvature term of the quadratic, the Hessian. b (array_like) Linear term of the quadratic. f_Hp (callable) Function to calculcate the dot product of a Hessian with an arbitrary vector. min_grad (float, optional, default: 1e-14) If all components of the gradient fall below this threshold, stop optimization. precond (array_like) Matrix to precondition the problem. If a vector, is taken to represent a diagonal matrix.

Methods

__init__(wrt, H=None, b=None, f_Hp=None, min_grad=1e-14, precond=None)

Parameters: wrt : array_like Parameters of the problem. H : array_like, 2 dimensional, square Curvature term of the quadratic, the Hessian. b : array_like Linear term of the quadratic. f_Hp : callable Function to calculcate the dot product of a Hessian with an arbitrary vector. min_grad : float, optional, default: 1e-14 If all components of the gradient fall below this threshold, stop optimization. precond : array_like Matrix to precondition the problem. If a vector, is taken to represent a diagonal matrix.
class climin.cg.NonlinearConjugateGradient(wrt, f, fprime, min_grad=1e-06, args=None)

NCG minimizes functions by following directions which are conjugate to each other with respect to the Hessian. Since the curvature changes if the objective is nonquadratic, the Hessian will not be accurate and thus the conjugacy of successive search directions as well. Furthermore, the optimal step length cannot be found in closed form and has to be obtained with a line search.

During optimization, we sometimes perform a restart. That means we give up on trying to find conjugate directions and use the gradient as a new search direction. This is done whenever two successive directions are far from orthogonal, an indicator that the quadratic assumption is either inaccurate or the Hessian has changed too much lately.

Attributes

 wrt (array_like) Array of parameters of the problem. f (callable) Objective function. fprime (callable) First derivative of the objective function. min_grad (float) If all components of the gradient fall below this value, stop minimization. line_search (LineSearch object.) Line search object to perform line searches with. args (iterable) Iterable of arguments passed on to the objective function and its derivatives.

Methods

__init__(wrt, f, fprime, min_grad=1e-06, args=None)