[SciPy-Dev] scipy.stats: algorithm to for ticket 1493

[josef.pktd at gmail.com]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 8:27 PM,  <josef.pktd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 2:42 PM, nicky van foreest <vanforeest at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I just realized, xa may be too large... hence we should search such
>> that cdf(left) < q < cdf(right).
>>
>> *Assuming* that xa < 0 and xb > 0 the following should be better
>>
>> def findppf(q):
>>    # search  until cdf(left) < q < cdf(right)
>>    left, right = invnorm.xa, invnorm.xb
>>    while invnorm.cdf(left, 7.24000019602, scale=2.51913630166) > q:
>>        right = left
>>        left *= 2
>>    while invnorm.cdf(right, 7.24000019602, scale=2.51913630166) < q:
>>        left = right
>>        right *= 2
>>    return optimize.brentq(lambda x: \
>>                           invnorm.cdf(x, 7.24000019602,
>> scale=2.51913630166) - q,\
>>                           left, right)
>>
>> Should a test on xa < 0 and xb>0 be added?
>
> for xa, xb it doesn't matter whether they are larger or smaller than
> zero, so I don't think we need a special check
>
> it looks good in a few more example cases.
>
> The difficult cases will be where cdf also doesn't exist and we need
> to get it through integrate.quad, but I don't remember which
> distribution is a good case.
> There is a testcase in the test suite, where I tried to roundtrip
> close to the 0, 1 boundary before running into failures with some
> distributions
> https://github.com/scipy/scipy/blob/master/scipy/stats/tests/test_continuous_basic.py#L307
>
> to try out how well tyour solution works, the roundtrip could be done
> with, for example, q= [1e-8, 1-1e-8] and see at which distribution it
> breaks and why (if any)

I might not have been clear. I think the patch is good, and a good
improvement over the current situation with fixed xa, xb.
I just think that we are not able to reach the q=0, q=1 boundaries,
since for some distributions we will run into other numerical
problems. And I'm curious how far we can get with this.

I don't have much of an opinion about the factor, times 2 or larger.
Similarly, I don't know whether the default xa and xb are good. I
changed them for a few distributions, but only where I saw obvious
improvements.
(There is a similar expansion of the trial space in the discrete
distributions where I also was just guessing how fast to go and when
to stop.)

Josef

>
> Note: I removed the scale in your example, because internal _ppf works
> on the standard distribution, loc=0, scale=1. loc and scale are added
> generically in .ppf
>
> Thanks,
>
> Josef
>
>
> from scipy import stats, optimize
>
> def findppf(dist, q, *args):
>    # search  until cdf(left) < q < cdf(right)
>
>    left, right = dist.xa, dist.xb
>
>    counter = 0
>    while dist.cdf(left, *args) > q:
>        right = left
>        left *= 2
>        counter += 1
>        print counter, left, right
>
>    while dist.cdf(right, *args) < q:
>        left = right
>        right *= 2
>        counter += 1
>        print counter, left, right
>
>    return optimize.brentq(lambda x: dist.cdf(x, *args) - q, left, right)
>
> print
> print 'invgauss'
> s = 7.24000019602
> sol =  findppf(stats.invgauss, 0.8455, s)
> print sol
> sol = findppf(stats.invgauss, 1-1e-8, s)
> print 'roundtrip', 1-1e-8, sol, stats.invgauss.cdf(sol, s)
> print 1e-30, stats.invgauss.cdf(findppf(stats.invgauss, 1e-30, s), s)
>
> print '\nt'
> print  findppf(stats.t, 1-1e-8, s), stats.t.ppf(1-1e-8, s)
> print  findppf(stats.t, 1e-8, s), stats.t.ppf(1e-8, s)
> print '\ncauchy'
> print  findppf(stats.cauchy, 1e-8), stats.cauchy.ppf(1e-8)
> print '\nf'
> print findppf(stats.f, 1-1e-8, 2, 10), stats.f.ppf(1-1e-8, 2, 10)
>
>
>
>
>> _______________________________________________
>> SciPy-Dev mailing list
>> SciPy-Dev at scipy.org
>> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev