Analysis with Programming

One of the problems often dealt in Statistics is minimization of the objective function. And contrary to the linear models, there is no analytical solution for models that are nonlinear on the parameters such as logistic regression, neural networks, and nonlinear regression models (like Michaelis-Menten model). In this situation, we have to use mathematical programming or optimization. And one popular optimization algorithm is the gradient descent , which we're going to illustrate here. To start with, let's consider a simple function with closed-form solution given by \begin{equation} f(\beta) \triangleq \beta^4 - 3\beta^3 + 2. \end{equation} We want to minimize this function with respect to $\beta$. The quick solution to this, as what calculus taught us, is to compute for the first derivative of the function, that is \begin{equation} \frac{\text{d}f(\beta)}{\text{d}\beta}=4\beta^3-9\beta^2. \end{equation} Setting this to 0 to obtain the stationary point gives us \begin{align}...

Ever wonder what's the mathematics behind face recognition on most gadgets like digital camera and smartphones? Well for most part it has something to do with statistics. One statistical tool that is capable of doing such feature is the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). In this post, however, we will not do (sorry to disappoint you) face recognition as we reserve this for future post while I'm still doing research on it. Instead, we go through its basic concept and use it for data reduction on spectral bands of the image using R. Let's view it mathematically Consider a line $L$ in a parametric form described as a set of all vectors $k\cdot\mathbf{u}+\mathbf{v}$ parameterized by $k\in \mathbb{R}$, where $\mathbf{v}$ is a vector orthogonal to a normalized vector $\mathbf{u}$. Below is the graphical equivalent of the statement:

Enough with the theory we recently published, let's take a break and have fun on the application of Statistics used in Data Mining and Machine Learning, the k -Means Clustering. k-means clustering is a method of vector quantization , originally from signal processing, that is popular for cluster analysis in data mining. k -means clustering aims to partition n observations into k clusters in which each observation belongs to the cluster with the nearest mean, serving as a prototype of the cluster. (Wikipedia, Ref 1.) We will apply this method to an image, wherein we group the pixels into k different clusters. Below is the image that we are going to use, Colorful Bird From Wall321 We will utilize the following packages for input and output: jpeg - Read and write JPEG images; and, ggplot2 - An implementation of the Grammar of Graphics.