number of instruments GMM estimator in R - dynamic

I have one question, maybe very simple. In Stata in dynamic panel data model (GMM estimator) you recieve a "number of instruments". In turn, in R you recieve AR test, sargan test but the "number of instruments" is nor displayed. How to obtain number of isntruments in R?
Thank you for helping

If you used all the 99 lags available for the instrumental variable, the number of instruments (for each instrumental variable) will be:
(0,5 x t-1 x t-2) + the number of time dummies you used.
(t is the time span of your data).
If you used less the all available lags, I don’t know how to calculate the number of instruments. If someone knows, please tell me!!

Related

X and Y inputs in LabVIEW

I am new to LabVIEW and I am trying to read a code written in LabVIEW. The block diagram is this:
This is the program to input x and y functions into the voltage input. It is meant to give an input voltage in different forms (sine, heartshape , etc.) into the fast-steering mirror or galvano mirror x and y axises.
x and y function controls are for inputting a formula for a function, and then we use "evaluation single value" function to input into a daq assistant.
I understand that { 2*(|-Mpi|)/N }*i + -Mpi*pi goes into the x value. However, I dont understand why we use this kind of formula. Why we need to assign a negative value and then do the absolute value of -M*pi. Also, I don`t understand why we need to divide to N and then multiply by i. And finally, why need to add -Mpi again? If you provide any hints about this I would really appreciate it.
This is just a complicated way to write the code/formula. Given what the code looks like (unnecessary wire bends, duplicate loop-input-tunnels, hidden wires, unnecessary coercion dots, failure to use appropriate built-in 'negate' function) not much care has been given in writing it. So while it probably yields the correct results you should not expect it to do so in the most readable way.
To answer you specific questions:
Why we need to assign a negative value and then do the absolute value
We don't. We can just move the negation immediately before the last addition or change that to a subtraction:
{ 2*(|Mpi|)/N }*i - Mpi*pi
And as #yair pointed out: We are not assigning a value here, we are basically flipping the sign of whatever value the user entered.
Why we need to divide to N and then multiply by i
This gives you a fraction between 0 and 1, no matter how many steps you do in your for-loop. Think of N as a sampling rate. I.e. your mirrors will always do the same movement, but a larger N just produces more steps in between.
Why need to add -Mpi again
I would strongly assume this is some kind of quick-and-dirty workaround for a bug that has not been fixed properly. Looking at the code it seems this +Mpi*pi has been added later on in the development process. And while I don't know what the expected values are I would believe that multiplying only one of the summands by Pi is probably wrong.

Randomly increasing sequence- Wolfram Mathematica

Good afternoon, I have a problem making recurrence table with randomly increasing sequence. I want it to return an increasing sequence with a random difference between two elements. Right now I've got:
RecurrenceTable[{a[k+1]==a[k] + RandomInteger[{0,4}], a[1]==-12},a,{k,1,5}]
But it returns me an arithmetic progression with chosen d for all k (e.g. {-12,-8,-4,0,4,8,12,16,20,24}).
Also, I will be really grateful for explaining why if I replace every k in my code with n I get:
RecurrenceTable[{4+a[n] == a[n],a[1] == -12},a,{n,1,10}]
Thank You very much for Your time!
I don't believe that RecurrenceTable is what you are looking for.
Try this instead
FoldList[Plus,-12,RandomInteger[{0,4},5]]
which returns, this time,
{-12,-8,-7,-3,1,2}
and returns, this time,
{-12,-9,-5,-3,0,1}

Enumerable.Count not working

I am monitoring the power of a laser and I want to know when n consecutive measurements are outside a safe range. I have a Queue(Of Double) which has n items (2 in my example) at the time it's being checked. I want to check that all items in the queue satisfy a condition, so I pass the items through a Count() with a predicate. However, the count function always returns the number of items in the queue, even if they don't all satisfy the predicate.
ElseIf _consecutiveMeasurements.AsEnumerable().Count(Function(m) m <= Me.CriticalLowLevel) = ConsecutiveCount Then
_ownedISetInstrument.Disable()
' do other things
A view of the debugger with the execution moving into the If.
Clearly, there are two measurements in the queue, and they are both greater than the CriticalLowLevel, so the count should be zero. I first tried Enumerable.Where(predicate).Count() and I got the same result. What's going on?
Edit:
Of course the values are below the CriticalLowLevel, which I had mistakenly set to 598 instead of 498 for testing. I had over-complicated the problem by focusing my attention on the code when it was my test case which was faulty. I guess I couldn't see the forest for the trees, so they say. Thanks Eric for pointing it out.
Based on your debug snapshot, it looks like both of your measurements are less than the critical level of 598.0, so I would expect the count to match the queue length.
Both data points are <= Me.CriticalLowLevel.
Can you share an example where one of the data points is > Me.CriticalLowLevel that still exhibits this behavior?

Can I run a GA to optimize wavelet transform?

I am running a wavelet transform (cmor) to estimate damping and frequencies that exists in a signal.cmor has 2 parameters that I can change them to get more accurate results. center frequency(Fc) and bandwidth frequency(Fb). If I construct a signal with few freqs and damping then I can measure the error of my estimation(fig 2). but in actual case I have a signal and I don't know its freqs and dampings so I can't measure the error.so a friend in here suggested me to reconstruct the signal and find error by measuring the difference between the original and reconstructed signal e(t)=|x(t)−x^(t)|.
so my question is:
Does anyone know a better function to find the error between reconstructed and original signal,rather than e(t)=|x(t)−x^(t)|.
can I use GA to search for Fb and Fc? or do you know a better search method?
Hope this picture shows what I mean, the actual case is last one. others are for explanations
Thanks in advance
You say you don't know the error until after running the wavelet transform, but that's fine. You just run a wavelet transform for every individual the GA produces. Those individuals with lower errors are considered fitter and survive with greater probability. This may be very slow, but conceptually at least, that's the idea.
Let's define a Chromosome datatype containing an encoded pair of values, one for the frequency and another for the damping parameter. Don't worry too much about how their encoded for now, just assume it's an array of two doubles if you like. All that's important is that you have a way to get the values out of the chromosome. For now, I'll just refer to them by name, but you could represent them in binary, as an array of doubles, etc. The other member of the Chromosome type is a double storing its fitness.
We can obviously generate random frequency and damping values, so let's create say 100 random Chromosomes. We don't know how to set their fitness yet, but that's fine. Just set it to zero at first. To set the real fitness value, we're going to have to run the wavelet transform once for each of our 100 parameter settings.
for Chromosome chr in population
chr.fitness = run_wavelet_transform(chr.frequency, chr.damping)
end
Now we have 100 possible wavelet transforms, each with a computed error, stored in our set called population. What's left is to select fitter members of the population, breed them, and allow the fitter members of the population and offspring to survive into the next generation.
while not done
offspring = new_population()
while count(offspring) < N
parent1, parent2 = select_parents(population)
child1, child2 = do_crossover(parent1, parent2)
mutate(child1)
mutate(child2)
child1.fitness = run_wavelet_transform(child1.frequency, child1.damping)
child2.fitness = run_wavelet_transform(child2.frequency, child2.damping)
offspring.add(child1)
offspring.add(child2)
end while
population = merge(population, offspring)
end while
There are a bunch of different ways to do the individual steps like select_parents, do_crossover, mutate, and merge here, but the basic structure of the GA stays pretty much the same. You just have to run a brand new wavelet decomposition for every new offspring.

How can I compare two NSImages for differences?

I'm attempting to gauge the percentage difference between two images.
Having done a lot of reading I seem to have a number of options but I'm not sure what the best method to follow for:
Ease of coding
Performance.
The methods I've seen are:
Non language specific - academic Image comparison - fast algorithm and Mac specific direct pixel access http://www.markj.net/iphone-uiimage-pixel-color/
Does anyone have any advice about what solutions make most sense for the above two cases and have code samples to show how to apply them?
I've had success calculating the difference between two images using the histogram technique mentioned here. redmoskito's answer in the SO question you linked to was actually my inspiration!
The following is an overview of the algorithm I used:
Convert the images to grayscale—compare one channel instead of three.
Divide each image into an n * n grid of "subimages". Then, for subimage pair:
Calculate their colour composition histograms.
Calculate the absolute difference between the two histograms.
The maximum difference found between two subimages is a measure of the two images' difference. Other metrics could also be used (e.g. the average difference betwen subimages).
As tskuzzy noted in his answer, if your ultimate goal is a binary "yes, these two images are (roughly) the same" or "no, they're not", you need some meaningful threshold value. You could produce such a value by passing images into the algorithm and tweaking the threshold based on its output and how similar you think the images are. A form of machine learning, I suppose.
I recently wrote a blog post on this very topic, albeit as part of a larger goal. I also created a simple iPhone app to demonstrate the algorithm. You can find the source on GitHub; perhaps it will help?
It is really difficult to suggest something when you don't tell us more about the images or the variations. Are they shapes? Are they the different objects and you want to know what class of objects? Are they the same object and you want to distinguish the object instance? Are they faces? Are they fingerprints? Are the objects in the same pose? Under the same illumination?
When you say performance, what exactly do you mean? How large are the images? All in all it really depends. With what you've said if it is only ease of coding and performance I would suggest to just find the absolute value of the difference of pixels. That is super easy to code and about as fast as it gets, but really unlikely to work for anything other than the most synthetic examples.
That being said I would like to point you to: DHOG, GLOH, SURF and SIFT.
You can use fairly basic subtraction technique that the lads above suggested. #carlosdc has hit the nail on the head with regard to the type of image this basic technique can be used for. I have attached an example so you can see the results for yourself.
The first shows a image from a simulation at some time t. A second image was subtracted away from the first which was taken some (simulation) time later t + dt. The subtracted image (in black and white for clarity) then shows how the simulation has changed in that time. This was done as described above and is very powerful and easy to code.
Hope this aids you in some way
This is some old nasty FORTRAN, but should give you the basic approach. It is not that difficult at all. Due to the fact that I am doing it on a two colour pallette you would do this operation for R, G and B. That is compute the intensities or values in each cell/pixal, store them in some array. Do the same for the other image, and subtract one array from the other, this will leave you with some coulorfull subtraction image. My advice would be to do as the lads suggest above, compute the magnitude of the sum of the R, G and B componants so you just get one value. Write that to array, do the same for the other image, then subtract. Then create a new range for either R, G or B and map the resulting subtracted array to this, the will enable a much clearer picture as a result.
* =============================================================
SUBROUTINE SUBTRACT(FNAME1,FNAME2,IOS)
* This routine writes a model to files
* =============================================================
* Common :
INCLUDE 'CONST.CMN'
INCLUDE 'IO.CMN'
INCLUDE 'SYNCH.CMN'
INCLUDE 'PGP.CMN'
* Input :
CHARACTER fname1*(sznam),fname2*(sznam)
* Output :
integer IOS
* Variables:
logical glue
character fullname*(szlin)
character dir*(szlin),ftype*(3)
integer i,j,nxy1,nxy2
real si1(2*maxc,2*maxc),si2(2*maxc,2*maxc)
* =================================================================
IOS = 1
nomap=.true.
ftype='map'
dir='./pictures'
! reading first image
if(.not.glue(dir,fname2,ftype,fullname))then
write(*,31) fullname
return
endif
OPEN(unit2,status='old',name=fullname,form='unformatted',err=10,iostat=ios)
read(unit2,err=11)nxy2
read(unit2,err=11)rad,dxy
do i=1,nxy2
do j=1,nxy2
read(unit2,err=11)si2(i,j)
enddo
enddo
CLOSE(unit2)
! reading second image
if(.not.glue(dir,fname1,ftype,fullname))then
write(*,31) fullname
return
endif
OPEN(unit2,status='old',name=fullname,form='unformatted',err=10,iostat=ios)
read(unit2,err=11)nxy1
read(unit2,err=11)rad,dxy
do i=1,nxy1
do j=1,nxy1
read(unit2,err=11)si1(i,j)
enddo
enddo
CLOSE(unit2)
! substracting images
if(nxy1.eq.nxy2)then
nxy=nxy1
do i=1,nxy1
do j=1,nxy1
si(i,j)=si2(i,j)-si1(i,j)
enddo
enddo
else
print *,'SUBSTRACT: Different sizes of image arrays'
IOS=0
return
endif
* normal finishing
IOS=0
nomap=.false.
return
* exceptional finishing
10 write (*,30) fullname
return
11 write (*,32) fullname
return
30 format('Cannot open file ',72A)
31 format('Improper filename ',72A)
32 format('Error reading from file ',72A)
end
! =============================================================
Hope this is of some use. All the best.
Out of the methods described in your first link, the histogram comparison method is by far the simplest to code and the fastest. However key point matching will provide far more accurate results since you want to know a precise number describing the difference between two images.
To implement the histogram method, I would do the following:
Compute the red, green, and blue histograms of each image
Add up the differences between each bucket
If the difference is above a certain threshold, then the percentage is 0%
Otherwise the colors found in the images are similar. So then do a pixel by pixel comparison and convert the difference into a percentage.
I don't know any precise algorithms for finding the key points of an image. However once you find them for each image you can do a pixel by pixel comparison for each of the key points.