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(zdog) Re: (4) Estimating continuous functions

by zdog (Priest)
on Mar 30, 2004 at 07:39 UTC ( [id://340879]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: (zdog) Re: (2) Estimating continuous functions
in thread Estimating continuous functions

I took (or tried to take) a look at cubic spline interpolation, and a lot of the implementations seem to be for sets of (x, y) pairs. Adding the additional dimensions scared me off a bit.

Either way, I do have some sort of idea of what the first function I have to do this for looks like. I'll describe it as best as I can (perhaps someone can help me improve my terminology to do so) .. but here it goes:

This particular function has 3 independent variables, so it would look something like this: F(x, y, z). (Later on, I will need something that can handle even more.) As x is varied and the other variables are kept constant, the function is logarithmic. And as either y or z are varied and the other variables are kept constant, the function takes on a form similar to e**(k/x).

Any ideas or pointers where to go from here?

Zenon Zabinski | zdog | zdog@perlmonk.org


  • Comment on (zdog) Re: (4) Estimating continuous functions

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Re: (zdog) Re: (4) Estimating continuous functions
by Itatsumaki (Friar) on Mar 30, 2004 at 09:01 UTC

    If you know the rough form of the functional dependencies, try a multiple linear regression. You can even do that in Excel, and with only three independent variables you would only need a few parameters. Try regressing this:

    F(x,y,z) = a0 + (a1 x log(x)) + (a2 x exp{a3/y}) + (a4 x exp{a5/z})

    With any luck at all that will give you a reasonably good approximation while only fitting six parameters (a0..a5). YOu didn't indicate how *much* data you have, and if you need to interpolate or extrapolate, which are really important factors in selecting a method.

    Other options include finding a multi-dimensional spline libraries (Matlab has one, I think) somewhere. Alternatively, Tilly's suggestion reminded me of the loess smoothers. Those work by considering a span of "nearby" data-points to estimate the local shape curve. There is a multi-dimensional implementation built into the R programming language. The major problem with loess is that memory usage is a quadratic function (O(n2)) of the number of data-points.

    -Tats
Re: (zdog) Re: (4) Estimating continuous functions
by tilly (Archbishop) on Mar 30, 2004 at 17:17 UTC
    First of all for the general case, some back of the envelope estimates suggest to me that 1/distance is a better weighting than my original 1/distance**2.

    As for your specific function, you may find it worthwhile to do some transformations first. For instance if I understand your description, then log(F(x,y,z)) is roughly of the form K*log(log(x))/(y*z). So log(F(x,y,z))*y*z/log(log(x)) is roughly a constant.

    This is good because the estimator that I provided is going to give the best results when approximating functions that are roughly constant. (Cubic splines, etc, give very good results at approximating functions that locally look like low-degree polynomials.) And estimating this "rough constant" gives you (after reversing the above calculation) your original function F.

    In general a judicious application of general theory and specific knowledge about your situation is more effective than abstract theory by itself...

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