--- title: "Generalized Cross-Validation with Origami" author: "Jeremy Coyle & Nima Hejazi" date: "`r Sys.Date()`" output: rmarkdown::html_vignette bibliography: refs.bib vignette: > %\VignetteIndexEntry{Generalized Cross-Validation with Origami} %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} --- ## Introduction Cross-validation is an essential tool for evaluating how any given data analytic procedure extends from a sample to the target population from which the sample is derived. It has seen widespread application in all facets of statistics, perhaps most notably statistical machine learning. When used for model selection, cross-validation has powerful optimality properties [@vaart2006oracle], [@vdl2007super]. Cross-validation works by partitioning a sample into complementary subsets, applying a particular data analytic (statistical) routine on a subset (the "training" set), and evaluating the routine of choice on the complementary subset (the "testing" set). This procedure is repeated across multiple partitions of the data. A variety of different partitioning schemes exist, such as V-fold cross-validation and bootstrap cross-validation, many of which are supported by `origami`. The `origami` package provides a suite of tools that generalize the application of cross-validation to arbitrary data analytic procedures. The use of `origami` is best illustrated by example. --- ## Cross-validation with linear regression We'll start by examining a fairly simple data set: ```{r load_data} data(mtcars) head(mtcars) ``` One might be interested in examining how the efficiency of a car, as measured by miles-per-gallon (mpg), is explained by various technical aspects of the car, with data across a variety of different models of cars. Linear regression is perhaps the simplest statistical procedure that could be used to make such deductions. Let's try it out: ```{r linear_mod} lm_mod <- lm(mpg ~ ., data = mtcars) summary(lm_mod) ``` We can assess how well the model fits the data by comparing the predictions of the linear model to the true outcomes observed in the data set. This is the well known (and standard) mean squared error. We can extract that from the `lm` model object like so: ```{r get_naive_error} err <- mean(resid(lm_mod)^2) ``` The mean squared error is `r err`. There is an important problem that arises when we assess the model in this way -- that is, we have trained our linear regression model on the full data set and assessed the error on the full data set, using up all of our data. We, of course, are generally not interested in how well the model explains variation in the observed data; rather, we are interested in how the explanation provided by the model generalizes to a target population from which the sample is presumably derived. Having used all of our available data, we cannot honestly evaluate how well the model fits (and thus explains) variation at the population level. To resolve this issue, cross-validation allows for a particular procedure (e.g., linear regression) to be implemented over subsets of the data, evaluating how well the procedure fits on a testing ("validation") set, thereby providing an honest evaluation of the error. We can easily add cross-validation to our linear regression procedure using `origami`. First, let us define a new function to perform linear regression on a specific partition of the data (called a "fold"): ```{r define_fun_cv_lm} cv_lm <- function(fold, data, reg_form) { # get name and index of outcome variable from regression formula out_var <- as.character(unlist(str_split(reg_form, " "))[1]) out_var_ind <- as.numeric(which(colnames(data) == out_var)) # split up data into training and validation sets train_data <- training(data) valid_data <- validation(data) # fit linear model on training set and predict on validation set mod <- lm(as.formula(reg_form), data = train_data) preds <- predict(mod, newdata = valid_data) # capture results to be returned as output out <- list(coef = data.frame(t(coef(mod))), SE = ((preds - valid_data[, out_var_ind])^2)) return(out) } ``` Our `cv_lm` function is rather simple: we merely split the available data into a training and validation sets, using the eponymous functions provided in `origami`, fit the linear model on the training set, and evaluate the model on the testing set. This is a simple example of what `origami` considers to be `cv_fun`s -- functions for using cross-validation to perform a particular routine over an input data set. Having defined such a function, we can simply generate a set of partitions using `origami`'s `make_folds` function, and apply our `cv_lm` function over the resultant `folds` object. Below, we replicate the resubstitution estimate of the error -- we did this "by hand" above -- using the functions `make_folds` and `cv_lm`. ```{r load_pkgs} library(origami) library(stringr) # used in defining the cv_lm function above ``` ```{r cv_lm_resub} # resubstitution estimate resub <- make_folds(mtcars, fold_fun = folds_resubstitution)[[1]] resub_results <- cv_lm(fold = resub, data = mtcars, reg_form = "mpg ~ .") mean(resub_results$SE) ``` This (very nearly) matches the estimate of the error that we obtained above. We can more honestly evaluate the error by _V-fold cross-validation_, which partitions the data into __v subsets__, fitting the model on $v - 1$ of the subsets and evaluating on the subset that was held out for testing. This is repeated such that each subset is used for testing. We can easily apply our `cv_lm` function using `origami`'s `cross_validate` (n.b., by default this performs 10-fold cross-validation): ```{r cv_lm_cross_valdate} # cross-validated estimate folds <- make_folds(mtcars) cvlm_results <- cross_validate(cv_fun = cv_lm, folds = folds, data = mtcars, reg_form = "mpg ~ .") mean(cvlm_results$SE) ``` Having performed 10-fold cross-validation, we quickly notice that our previous estimate of the model error (by resubstitution) was quite optimistic. The honest estimate of the error is several times larger. --- ## General workflow Generally, `cross_validate` usage will mirror the workflow in the above example. First, the user must define folds and a function that operates on each fold. Once these are passed to `cross_validate`, the function will map the function across the folds, and combine the results in a reasonable way. More details on each step of this process will be given below. ### Define folds The `folds` object passed to `cross_validate` is a list of folds. Such lists can be generated using the `make_folds` function. Each `fold` consists of a list with a `training` index vector, a `validation` index vector, and a `fold_index` (its order in the list of folds). This function supports a variety of cross-validation schemes including _v-fold_ and _bootstrap_ cross-validation as well as time series methods like _"Rolling Window"_. It can balance across levels of a variable (`stratify_ids`), and it can also keep all observations from the same independent unit together (`cluster_ids`). See the documentation of the `make_folds` function for details about supported cross-validation schemes and arguments. ### Define fold function The `cv_fun` argument to `cross_validate` is a function that will perform some operation on each fold. The first argument to this function must be `fold`, which will receive an individual fold object to operate on. Additional arguments can be passed to `cv_fun` using the `...` argument to `cross_validate`. Within this function, the convenience functions `training`, `validation` and `fold_index` can return the various components of a fold object. They do this by retrieving the `fold` object from their calling environment. It can also be specified directly. If `training` or `validation` is passed an object, it will index into it in a sensible way. For instance, if it is a vector, it will index the vector directly. If it is a `data.frame` or `matrix`, it will index rows. This allows the user to easily partition data into training and validation sets. This fold function must return a named list of results containing whatever fold-specific outputs are generated. ### Apply `cross_validate` After defining folds, `cross_validate` can be used to map the `cv_fun` across the `folds` using `future_lapply`. This means that it can be easily parallelized by specifying a parallelization scheme (i.e., a `plan`). See the [`future` package](https://github.com/HenrikBengtsson/future) for more details. The application of `cross_validate` generates a list of results. As described above, each call to `cv_fun` itself returns a list of results, with different elements for each type of result we care about. The main loop generates a list of these individual lists of results (a sort of "meta-list"). This "meta-list" is then inverted such that there is one element per result type (this too is a list of the results for each fold). By default, `combine_results` is used to combine these results type lists. For instance, in the above `mtcars` example, the results type lists contains one `coef` `data.frame` from each fold. These are `rbind`ed together to form one `data.frame` containing the `coefs` from all folds in different rows. How results are combined is determined automatically by examining the data types of the results from the first fold. This can be modified by specifying a list of arguments to `.combine_control`. See the help for `combine_results` for more details. In most cases, the defaults should suffice. --- ## Cross-validation with random forests To examine `origami` further, let us return to our example analysis using the `mtcars` data set. Here, we will write a new `cv_fun` type object. As an example, we will use L. Breiman's `randomForest`: ```{r cv_fun_randomForest} cv_rf <- function(fold, data, reg_form) { # get name and index of outcome variable from regression formula out_var <- as.character(unlist(str_split(reg_form, " "))[1]) out_var_ind <- as.numeric(which(colnames(data) == out_var)) # define training and validation sets based on input object of class "folds" train_data <- training(data) valid_data <- validation(data) # fit Random Forest regression on training set and predict on holdout set mod <- randomForest(formula = as.formula(reg_form), data = train_data) preds <- predict(mod, newdata = valid_data) # define output object to be returned as list (for flexibility) out <- list(coef = data.frame(mod$coefs), SE = ((preds - valid_data[, out_var_ind])^2)) return(out) } ``` Above, in writing our `cv_rf` function to cross-validate `randomForest`, we used our previous function `cv_lm` as an example. For now, individual `cv_fun`s must be written by hand; however, in future releases, a wrapper may be available to support auto-generating `cv_fun`s to be used with `origami`. Below, we use `cross_validate` to apply our new `cv_rf` function over the `folds` object generated by `make_folds`. ```{r} library(randomForest) folds <- make_folds(mtcars) cvrf_results <- cross_validate(cv_fun = cv_rf, folds = folds, data = mtcars, reg_form = "mpg ~ .") mean(cvrf_results$SE) ``` Using 10-fold cross-validation (the default), we obtain an honest estimate of the prediction error of random forests. From this, we gather that the use of `origami`'s `cross_validate` procedure can be generalized to arbitrary esimation techniques, given availability of an appropriate `cv_fun` function. --- ## Cross-validation with dependence: time series Cross-validation can also be used for forecast model selection in a time series setting. Here, the partitioning scheme mirrors the application of the forecasting model: We'll train the data on past observations (either all available or a recent subset), and then use the model forecast (predict), the next few observations. Consider the `AirPassengers` dataset, a monthly time series of passenger air traffic in thousands of people. ```{r} data(AirPassengers) print(AirPassengers) ``` Suppose we want to pick between two forecasting models, `stl`, and `arima` (the details of these models are not important for this example). We can do that by evaluating their forecasting performance. ```{r} library(forecast) folds = make_folds(AirPassengers, fold_fun=folds_rolling_origin, first_window = 36, validation_size = 24) fold = folds[[1]] # function to calculate cross-validated squared error cv_forecasts <- function(fold, data) { train_data <- training(data) valid_data <- validation(data) valid_size <- length(valid_data) train_ts <- ts(log10(train_data), frequency = 12) # borrowed from AirPassengers help arima_fit <- arima(train_ts, c(0, 1, 1), seasonal = list(order = c(0, 1, 1), period = 12)) raw_arima_pred <- predict(arima_fit, n.ahead = valid_size) arima_pred <- 10^raw_arima_pred$pred arima_MSE <- mean((arima_pred - valid_data)^2) # stl model stl_fit <- stlm(train_ts, s.window = 12) raw_stl_pred = forecast(stl_fit, h = valid_size) stl_pred <- 10^raw_stl_pred$mean stl_MSE <- mean((stl_pred - valid_data)^2) out <- list(mse = data.frame(fold = fold_index(), arima = arima_MSE, stl = stl_MSE)) return(out) } mses = cross_validate(cv_fun = cv_forecasts, folds = folds, data = AirPassengers)$mse colMeans(mses[, c("arima", "stl")]) ``` --- ## Session Information ```{r sessionInfo, echo=FALSE} sessionInfo() ``` --- ## References