AnyLogic running a model with random variables several times - variables

If you run the same model 10 consecutive times in AnyLogic, inorder to plot graphs. You will see at the bottom of the screen "Run: 10". Does that mean that the graph on Run:10 is averaging the values with the 9 previous Runs? Or is it just creating a new random graph each time I press run?
Thank you for your help

If your runs come in succession (first run 0, then run 1 when run 0 finishes and so on...) you can save the results of each run in your Simulation Experiment and, eventually, plot the average values.
You can store your data (the output of each run) in a StatisticsDiscrete object (which easily return statistics like min, max, mean, stDev etc...), in a DataSet, in a Collection or everything else that suits your requirements.

Related

should I shift a dataset to use it for regression with LSTM?

Maybe this is a silly question but I didn't find much about it when I google it.
I have a dataset and I use it for regression but a normal regression with FFNN didn't worked so I thought why not try an LSTM since my data is time dependent I think because it was token from a vehicle while driving so the data is monotonic and maybe I can use LSTM in this Case to do a regression to predict a continuous value (if this doesn't make sense please tell me).
Now the first step is to prepare my data for using LSTM, since I ll predict the future I think my target(Ground truth or labels) should be shifted to the up, am I right?
So if I have a pandas dataframe where each row hold the features and the target(at the end of the row), I assume that the features should stay where they are and the target would be shifted it one step up so that the features in the first row will correspond to the target of the second row (am I wrong).
This way the LSTM will be able to predict the future value from those features.
I didn't find much about this in the internet so please can you provide me how can I do this with some Code?
I also know what I can use pandas.DataFrame.shift to shift a dataset but the last value will hold a NaN I think! how to deal with this? it would be great if you show me some examples or code.
We might need a bit more information regarding the data you are using. Also, I would suggest starting with a more simple recurrent neural network before you start going for LSTMs. The way these networks work is by you feeding the first bit of information, then the next bit of information, then the next bit etc. Let's say that when you feed the first bit of information in, it occurs at time t, then the second bit of information is fed at time t+1 ... etc. up until time t+n.
You can have the neural network output a value at each time step (so a value is outputted at time t, t+1... t+n after each respective input has been fed in). This is a many-to-many network. Or you can have the neural network output a value after all inputs have been provided (i.e. the value is outputted at time t+n). This is called a many-to-one network. What you need is dependednt on your use-case.
For example, say you were recording vehicle behaviour every 100ms and after 10 seconds (i.e. the 100th time step), you wanted to predict the likelihood that the driver was under the influence of alcohol. In this case, you would use a many-to-one network where you put in subsequent vehicle behaviour recordings at subsequent time steps (the first recording at time t, then the next recording at time t+1 etc.) and then the final timestep has the probability value outputted.
If you want a value outputted after every time step, you use a many-to-many design. It's also possible to output a value every k timesteps.

test set for time series forecasting

The example in the link below has a training and validation set from time series data. There is no mention of a test set. Why isn't there one and what would it entail to have one for a dataset whose time series data is being generated on the fly in real time?
I have 3hrs of data collected at 1s interval. I would like to predict the next 30 min before it becomes available. What should be the train/validate/test split look like? Can test set be skipped?
https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/structured_data/time_series
It is never recommended to skip the test set. In the TensorFlow example, the purpose was to demonstrate how you can play with time series; you can test on the 'test set' just like you do with your validation, with the constraint that the test set is completely unknown: here we come to your second question.
With regard to the test set, in your use case, like you said, the test set is the data generated on the fly.
You can, of course, split your initial dataset into train/val/test. But the second test set which evidently coincides with your model 'live deployment' would be to predict on 'on-the-fly-generated-dataset' => this means you would feed the data real-time to your model.
The train-val-test split depends on how you want to create your model: how many time-steps you want to use(how many seconds to take into account when prediction the next step etc, how many variables you are trying to predict, how many time-steps ahead you want to predict(in your case 30 minutes would be 30*60 = 1800, since your dataset signals frequency is in seconds). It's a very broad question and refers more on how to create a dataset for time series analysis for multi-step prediction.

Limiting the number of items in a tf.data.Dataset

tl;dr; Can I limit the number of elements in a tf.data.Dataset?
A have a training and evaluation loop which processes the entire given dataset. This is not ideal for testing since it takes forever to go through the whole dataset. I can test this code by creating a Mock dataset or by limiting the number of elements of the dataset so the code only goes through, let's say, the first 10 datapoints. How can I do the second one?
Thanks
The simplest way to take only a fixed number of elements n from a Dataset is to use Dataset.take(n). For example:
large_dataset = ...
small_dataset = large_dataset.take(10)

Tensorflow RNN Input shape

Updated question: This is a good resource: http://machinelearningmastery.com/understanding-stateful-lstm-recurrent-neural-networks-python-keras/
See the section on "LSTM State Within A Batch".
If I interpret this correctly, the author did not need to reshape the data as x,y,z (as he did in the preceding example); he just increased the batch size. So an LSTM cells hidden state (the one that gets passed from one time step to the next) started at row 0, and keeps getting updated until all rows in the batch have finished? is that right?
If that is correct then why does one ever need to have a time step greater than 1? Could I not just stack all my time-series rows in order, and feed them as a single batch?
Original question:
I'm getting myself into an absolute muddle trying to understand the correct way to shape my data for tensorflow, particularly around time_steps. Reading around has only confused me further, so I thought I'd cave in and ask.
I'm trying to model time series data in which the data at time t is a 5 columns in width (5 features , 1 label).
So then t-1 will also have another 5 features, and 1 label
Here is an example with 2 rows.
x=[1,1,1,1,1] y=[5]
x=[2,2,2,2,2] y=[15]
I've got an RNN model to work by feeding in a 1x1x5 matrix into my x variable. Which implies my 'time step' has a dimension of 1. However as with the above example, the second line I feed in is correlated to the first (15 = 5 +(2+2+2+2+20 in case you haven't spotted it)
So is the way I'm currently entering it correct? How does the time stamp dimension work?
Or should I be thinking of it as batch size, rows, cols in my head?
Either way can someone tell me what are the dimensions are I should be reshaping my input data to? For sake of argument assume I've split the data into batches of 1000. So within those 1000 rows I want a prediction for every row, but the RNN should be look to the row above it in my batch to figure out the answer.
x1=[1,1,1,1,1] y=[5]
x2=[2,2,2,2,2] y=[15]
...
etc.

Finding Optimal Parameters In A "Black Box" System

I'm developing machine learning algorithms which classify images based on training data.
During the image preprocessing stages, there are several parameters which I can modify that affect the data I feed my algorithms (for example, I can change the Hessian Threshold when extracting SURF features). So the flow thus far looks like:
[param1, param2, param3...] => [black box] => accuracy %
My problem is: with so many parameters at my disposal, how can I systematically pick values which give me optimized results/accuracy? A naive approach is to run i nested for-loops (assuming i parameters) and just iterate through all parameter combinations, but if it takes 5 minute to calculate an accuracy from my "black box" system this would take a long, long time.
This being said, are there any algorithms or techniques which can search for optimal parameters in a black box system? I was thinking of taking a course in Discrete Optimization but I'm not sure if that would be the best use of my time.
Thank you for your time and help!
Edit (to answer comments):
I have 5-8 parameters. Each parameter has its own range. One parameter can be 0-1000 (integer), while another can be 0 to 1 (real number). Nothing is stopping me from multithreading the black box evaluation.
Also, there are some parts of the black box that have some randomness to them. For example, one stage is using k-means clustering. Each black box evaluation, the cluster centers may change. I run k-means several times to (hopefully) avoid local optima. In addition, I evaluate the black box multiple times and find the median accuracy in order to further mitigate randomness and outliers.
As a partial solution, a grid search of moderate resolution and range can be recursively repeated in the areas where the n-parameters result in the optimal values.
Each n-dimensioned result from each step would be used as a starting point for the next iteration.
The key is that for each iteration the resolution in absolute terms is kept constant (i.e. keep the iteration period constant) but the range decreased so as to reduce the pitch/granular step size.
I'd call it a ‘contracting mesh’ :)
Keep in mind that while it avoids full brute-force complexity it only reaches exhaustive resolution in the final iteration (this is what defines the final iteration).
Also that the outlined process is only exhaustive on a subset of the points that may or may not include the global minimum - i.e. it could result in a local minima.
(You can always chase your tail though by offsetting the initial grid by some sub-initial-resolution amount and compare results...)
Have fun!
Here is the solution to your problem.
A method behind it is described in this paper.