## Posts Tagged ‘scala’

23/02/2014

### Introduction

In previous posts I have discussed general issues regarding parallel MCMC and examined in detail parallel Monte Carlo on a multicore laptop. In those posts I used the C programming language in conjunction with the MPI parallel library in order to illustrate the concepts. In this post I want to take the example from the second post and re-examine it using the Scala programming language.

The toy problem considered in the parallel Monte Carlo post used $10^9$ $U(0,1)$ random quantities to construct a Monte Carlo estimate of the integral

$\displaystyle I=\int_0^1\exp\{-u^2\}du$.

A very simple serial program to implement this algorithm is given below:

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom
import scala.math.exp
import scala.annotation.tailrec

object MonteCarlo {

@tailrec
def sum(its: Long,acc: Double): Double = {
if (its==0)
(acc)
else {
sum(its-1,acc+exp(-u*u))
}
}

def main(args: Array[String]) = {
println("Hello")
val iters=1000000000
val result=sum(iters,0.0)
println(result/iters)
println("Goodbye")
}

}


Note that ThreadLocalRandom is a parallel random number generator introduced into recent versions of the Java programming language, which can be easily utilised from Scala code. Assuming that Scala is installed, this can be compiled and run with commands like

scalac monte-carlo.scala
time scala MonteCarlo


This program works, and the timings (in seconds) for three runs are 57.79, 57.77 and 57.55 on the same laptop considered in the previous post. The first thing to note is that this Scala code is actually slightly faster than the corresponding C+MPI code in the single processor special case! Now that we have a good working implementation we should think how to parallelise it…

### Parallel implementation

Before constructing a parallel implementation, we will first construct a slightly re-factored serial version that will be easier to parallelise. The simplest way to introduce parallelisation into Scala code is to parallelise a map over a collection. We therefore need a collection and a map to apply to it. Here we will just divide our $10^9$ iterations into $N=4$ separate computations, and use a map to compute the required Monte Carlo sums.

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom
import scala.math.exp
import scala.annotation.tailrec

object MonteCarlo {

@tailrec
def sum(its: Long,acc: Double): Double = {
if (its==0)
(acc)
else {
sum(its-1,acc+exp(-u*u))
}
}

def main(args: Array[String]) = {
println("Hello")
val N=4
val iters=1000000000
val its=iters/N
val sums=(1 to N).toList map {x => sum(its,0.0)}
val result=sums.reduce(_+_)
println(result/iters)
println("Goodbye")
}

}


Running this new code confirms that it works and gives similar estimates for the Monte Carlo integral as the previous version. The timings for 3 runs on my laptop were 57.57, 57.67 and 57.80, similar to the previous version of the code. So far so good. But how do we make it parallel? Like this:

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom
import scala.math.exp
import scala.annotation.tailrec

object MonteCarlo {

@tailrec
def sum(its: Long,acc: Double): Double = {
if (its==0)
(acc)
else {
sum(its-1,acc+exp(-u*u))
}
}

def main(args: Array[String]) = {
println("Hello")
val N=4
val iters=1000000000
val its=iters/N
val sums=(1 to N).toList.par map {x => sum(its,0.0)}
val result=sums.reduce(_+_)
println(result/iters)
println("Goodbye")
}

}


That’s it! It’s now parallel. Studying the above code reveals that the only difference from the previous version is the introduction of the 4 characters .par in line 22 of the code. R programmers will find this very much analagous to using lapply() versus mclapply() in R code. The function par converts the collection (here an immutable List) to a parallel collection (here an immutable parallel List), and then subsequent maps, filters, etc., can be computed in parallel on appropriate multicore architectures. Timings for 3 runs on my laptop were 20.74, 20.82 and 20.88. Note that these timings are faster than the timings for N=4 processors for the corresponding C+MPI code…

### Varying the size of the parallel collection

We can trivially modify the previous code to make the size of the parallel collection, N, a command line argument:

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom
import scala.math.exp
import scala.annotation.tailrec

object MonteCarlo {

@tailrec
def sum(its: Long,acc: Double): Double = {
if (its==0)
(acc)
else {
sum(its-1,acc+exp(-u*u))
}
}

def main(args: Array[String]) = {
println("Hello")
val N=args(0).toInt
val iters=1000000000
val its=iters/N
val sums=(1 to N).toList.par map {x => sum(its,0.0)}
val result=sums.reduce(_+_)
println(result/iters)
println("Goodbye")
}

}


We can now run this code with varying sizes of N in order to see how the runtime of the code changes as the size of the parallel collection increases. Timings on my laptop are summarised in the table below.

 N     T1     T2     T3
1   57.67  57.62  57.83
2   32.20  33.24  32.76
3   26.63  26.60  26.63
4   20.99  20.92  20.75
5   20.13  18.70  18.76
6   16.57  16.52  16.59
7   15.72  14.92  15.27
8   13.56  13.51  13.32
9   18.30  18.13  18.12
10   17.25  17.33  17.22
11   17.04  16.99  17.09
12   15.95  15.85  15.91

16   16.62  16.68  16.74
32   15.41  15.54  15.42
64   15.03  15.03  15.28


So we see that the timings decrease steadily until the size of the parallel collection hits 8 (the number of processors my hyper-threaded quad-core presents via Linux), and then increases very slightly, but not much as the size of the collection increases. This is better than the case of C+MPI where performance degrades noticeably if too many processes are requested. Here, the Scala compiler and JVM runtime manage an appropriate number of threads for the collection irrespective of the actual size of the collection. Also note that all of the timings are faster than the corresponding C+MPI code discussed in the previous post.

However, the notion that the size of the collection is irrelevant is only true up to a point. Probably the most natural way to code this algorithm would be as:

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom
import scala.math.exp

object MonteCarlo {

def main(args: Array[String]) = {
println("Hello")
val iters=1000000000
val sums=(1 to iters).toList map {x => ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextDouble()} map {x => exp(-x*x)}
val result=sums.reduce(_+_)
println(result/iters)
println("Goodbye")
}

}


or as the parallel equivalent

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom
import scala.math.exp

object MonteCarlo {

def main(args: Array[String]) = {
println("Hello")
val iters=1000000000
val sums=(1 to iters).toList.par map {x => ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextDouble()} map {x => exp(-x*x)}
val result=sums.reduce(_+_)
println(result/iters)
println("Goodbye")
}

}


Although these algorithms are in many ways cleaner and more natural, they will bomb out with a lack of heap space unless you have a huge amount of RAM, as they rely on having all $10^9$ realisations in RAM simultaneously. The lesson here is that even though functional languages make it very easy to write clean, efficient parallel code, we must still be careful not to fill up the heap with gigantic (immutable) data structures…

30/12/2013

### Introduction

In the previous post I outlined why I think Scala is a good language for statistical computing and data science. In this post I want to give a quick taste of Scala and the Breeze numerical library to whet the appetite of the uninitiated. This post certainly won’t provide enough material to get started using Scala in anger – but I’ll try and provide a few pointers along the way. It also won’t be very interesting to anyone who knows Scala – I’m not introducing any of the very cool Scala stuff here – I think that some of the most powerful and interesting Scala language features can be a bit frightening for new users.

To reproduce the examples, you need to install Scala and Breeze. This isn’t very tricky, but I don’t want to get bogged down with a detailed walk-through here – I want to concentrate on the Scala language and Breeze library. You just need to install a recent version of Java, then Scala, and then Breeze. You might also want SBT and/or the ScalaIDE, though neither of these are necessary. Then you need to run the Scala REPL with the Breeze library in the classpath. There are several ways one can do this. The most obvious is to just run scala with the path to Breeze manually specified (or specified in an environment variable). Alternatively, you could run a console from an sbt session with a Breeze dependency (which is what I actually did for this post), or you could use a Scala Worksheet from inside a ScalaIDE project with a Breeze dependency.

### A Scala REPL session

#### A first glimpse of Scala

We’ll start with a few simple Scala concepts that are not dependent on Breeze. For further information, see the Scala documentation.

Welcome to Scala version 2.10.3 (OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM, Java 1.7.0_25).
Type in expressions to have them evaluated.

scala> val a = 5
a: Int = 5

scala> a
res0: Int = 5


So far, so good. Using the Scala REPL is much like using the Python or R command line, so will be very familiar to anyone used to these or similar languages. The first thing to note is that labels need to be declared on first use. We have declared a to be a val. These are immutable values, which can not be just re-assigned, as the following code illustrates.

scala> a = 6
<console>:8: error: reassignment to val
a = 6
^
scala> a
res1: Int = 5


Immutability seems to baffle people unfamiliar with functional programming. But fear not, as Scala allows declaration of mutable variables as well:

scala> var b = 7
b: Int = 7

scala> b
res2: Int = 7

scala> b = 8
b: Int = 8

scala> b
res3: Int = 8


The Zen of functional programming is to realise that immutability is generally a good thing, but that really isn’t the point of this post. Scala has excellent support for both mutable and immutable collections as part of the standard library. See the API docs for more details. For example, it has immutable lists.

scala> val c = List(3,4,5,6)
c: List[Int] = List(3, 4, 5, 6)

scala> c(1)
res4: Int = 4

scala> c.sum
res5: Int = 18

scala> c.length
res6: Int = 4

scala> c.product
res7: Int = 360


Again, this should be pretty familiar stuff for anyone familiar with Python. Note that the sum and product methods are special cases of reduce operations, which are well supported in Scala. For example, we could compute the sum reduction using

scala> c.foldLeft(0)((x,y) => x+y)
res8: Int = 18


or the slightly more condensed form given below, and similarly for the product reduction.

scala> c.foldLeft(0)(_+_)
res9: Int = 18

scala> c.foldLeft(1)(_*_)
res10: Int = 360


Scala also has a nice immutable Vector class, which offers a range of constant time operations (but note that this has nothing to do with the mutable Vector class that is part of the Breeze library).

scala> val d = Vector(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
d: scala.collection.immutable.Vector[Int] = Vector(2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

scala> d
res11: scala.collection.immutable.Vector[Int] = Vector(2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

scala> d.slice(3,6)
res12: scala.collection.immutable.Vector[Int] = Vector(5, 6, 7)

scala> val e = d.updated(3,0)
e: scala.collection.immutable.Vector[Int] = Vector(2, 3, 4, 0, 6, 7, 8, 9)

scala> d
res13: scala.collection.immutable.Vector[Int] = Vector(2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

scala> e
res14: scala.collection.immutable.Vector[Int] = Vector(2, 3, 4, 0, 6, 7, 8, 9)


Note that when e is created as an updated version of d the whole of d is not copied – only the parts that have been updated. And we don’t have to worry that aspects of d and e point to the same information in memory, as they are both immutable… As should be clear by now, Scala has excellent support for functional programming techniques. In addition to the reduce operations mentioned already, maps and filters are also well covered.

scala> val f=(1 to 10).toList
f: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

scala> f
res15: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

scala> f.map(x => x*x)
res16: List[Int] = List(1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100)

scala> f map {x => x*x}
res17: List[Int] = List(1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100)

scala> f filter {_ > 4}
res18: List[Int] = List(5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)


Note how Scala allows methods with a single argument to be written as an infix operator, making for more readable code.

#### A first look at Breeze

The next part of the session requires the Breeze library – see the Breeze quickstart guide for further details. We begin by taking a quick look at everyone’s favourite topic of non-uniform random number generation. Let’s start by generating a couple of draws from a Poisson distribution with mean 3.

scala> import breeze.stats.distributions._
import breeze.stats.distributions._

scala> val poi = Poisson(3.0)
poi: breeze.stats.distributions.Poisson = Poisson(3.0)

scala> poi.draw
res19: Int = 2

scala> poi.draw
res20: Int = 3


If more than a single draw is required, an iid sample can be obtained.

scala> val x = poi.sample(10)
x: IndexedSeq[Int] = Vector(2, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 1, 2, 4, 2)

scala> x
res21: IndexedSeq[Int] = Vector(2, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 1, 2, 4, 2)

scala> x.sum
res22: Int = 25

scala> x.length
res23: Int = 10

scala> x.sum.toDouble/x.length
res24: Double = 2.5


Note that this Vector is mutable. The probability mass function (PMF) of the Poisson distribution is also available.

scala> poi.probabilityOf(2)
res25: Double = 0.22404180765538775

scala> x map {x => poi.probabilityOf(x)}
res26: IndexedSeq[Double] = Vector(0.22404180765538775, 0.22404180765538775, 0.22404180765538775, 0.16803135574154085, 0.22404180765538775, 0.22404180765538775, 0.14936120510359185, 0.22404180765538775, 0.16803135574154085, 0.22404180765538775)

scala> x map {poi.probabilityOf(_)}
res27: IndexedSeq[Double] = Vector(0.22404180765538775, 0.22404180765538775, 0.22404180765538775, 0.16803135574154085, 0.22404180765538775, 0.22404180765538775, 0.14936120510359185, 0.22404180765538775, 0.16803135574154085, 0.22404180765538775)


Obviously, Gaussian variables (and Gamma, and several others) are supported in a similar way.

scala> val gau=Gaussian(0.0,1.0)
gau: breeze.stats.distributions.Gaussian = Gaussian(0.0, 1.0)

scala> gau.draw
res28: Double = 1.606121255846881

scala> gau.draw
res29: Double = -0.1747896055492152

scala> val y=gau.sample(20)
y: IndexedSeq[Double] = Vector(-1.3758577012869702, -1.2148314970824652, -0.022501190144116855, 0.3244006323566883, 0.35978577573558407, 0.9651857500320781, -0.40834034207848985, 0.11583348205331555, -0.8797699986810634, -0.33609738668214695, 0.7043252811790879, -1.2045594639823656, 0.19442688045065826, -0.31442160076087067, 0.06313451540562891, -1.5304745838587115, -1.2372764884467027, 0.5875490994217284, -0.9385520597707431, -0.6647903243363228)

scala> y
res30: IndexedSeq[Double] = Vector(-1.3758577012869702, -1.2148314970824652, -0.022501190144116855, 0.3244006323566883, 0.35978577573558407, 0.9651857500320781, -0.40834034207848985, 0.11583348205331555, -0.8797699986810634, -0.33609738668214695, 0.7043252811790879, -1.2045594639823656, 0.19442688045065826, -0.31442160076087067, 0.06313451540562891, -1.5304745838587115, -1.2372764884467027, 0.5875490994217284, -0.9385520597707431, -0.6647903243363228)

scala> y.sum/y.length
res31: Double = -0.34064156102380994

scala> y map {gau.logPdf(_)}
res32: IndexedSeq[Double] = Vector(-1.8654307403000054, -1.6568463163564844, -0.9191916849836235, -0.9715564183413823, -0.9836614354155007, -1.3847302992371653, -1.0023094506890617, -0.9256472309869705, -1.3059361584943119, -0.975419259871957, -1.1669755840586733, -1.6444202843394145, -0.93783943912556, -0.9683690047171869, -0.9209315167224245, -2.090114759123421, -1.6843650876361744, -1.0915455053203147, -1.359378517654625, -1.1399116208702693)

scala> Gamma(2.0,3.0).sample(5)
res33: IndexedSeq[Double] = Vector(2.38436441278546, 2.125017198373521, 2.333118708811143, 5.880076392566909, 2.0901427084667503)


This is all good stuff for those of us who like to do Markov chain Monte Carlo. There are not masses of statistical data analysis routines built into Breeze, but a few basic tools are provided, including some basic summary statistics.

scala> import breeze.stats.DescriptiveStats._
import breeze.stats.DescriptiveStats._

scala> mean(y)
res34: Double = -0.34064156102380994

scala> variance(y)
res35: Double = 0.574257149387757

scala> meanAndVariance(y)
res36: (Double, Double) = (-0.34064156102380994,0.574257149387757)


Support for linear algebra is an important part of any scientific library. Here the Breeze developers have made the wise decision to provide a nice Scala interface to netlib-java. This in turn calls out to any native optimised BLAS or LAPACK libraries installed on the system, but will fall back to Java code if no optimised libraries are available. This means that linear algebra code using Scala and Breeze should run as fast as code written in any other language, including C, C++ and Fortran, provided that optimised libraries are installed on the system. For further details see the Breeze linear algebra guide. Let’s start by creating and messing with a dense vector.

scala> import breeze.linalg._
import breeze.linalg._

scala> val v=DenseVector(y.toArray)
v: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(-1.3758577012869702, -1.2148314970824652, -0.022501190144116855, 0.3244006323566883, 0.35978577573558407, 0.9651857500320781, -0.40834034207848985, 0.11583348205331555, -0.8797699986810634, -0.33609738668214695, 0.7043252811790879, -1.2045594639823656, 0.19442688045065826, -0.31442160076087067, 0.06313451540562891, -1.5304745838587115, -1.2372764884467027, 0.5875490994217284, -0.9385520597707431, -0.6647903243363228)

scala> v(1) = 0

scala> v
res38: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(-1.3758577012869702, 0.0, -0.022501190144116855, 0.3244006323566883, 0.35978577573558407, 0.9651857500320781, -0.40834034207848985, 0.11583348205331555, -0.8797699986810634, -0.33609738668214695, 0.7043252811790879, -1.2045594639823656, 0.19442688045065826, -0.31442160076087067, 0.06313451540562891, -1.5304745838587115, -1.2372764884467027, 0.5875490994217284, -0.9385520597707431, -0.6647903243363228)

scala> v(1 to 3) := 1.0
res39: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(1.0, 1.0, 1.0)

scala> v
res40: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(-1.3758577012869702, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.35978577573558407, 0.9651857500320781, -0.40834034207848985, 0.11583348205331555, -0.8797699986810634, -0.33609738668214695, 0.7043252811790879, -1.2045594639823656, 0.19442688045065826, -0.31442160076087067, 0.06313451540562891, -1.5304745838587115, -1.2372764884467027, 0.5875490994217284, -0.9385520597707431, -0.6647903243363228)

scala> v(1 to 3) := DenseVector(1.0,1.5,2.0)
res41: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(1.0, 1.5, 2.0)

scala> v
res42: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(-1.3758577012869702, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 0.35978577573558407, 0.9651857500320781, -0.40834034207848985, 0.11583348205331555, -0.8797699986810634, -0.33609738668214695, 0.7043252811790879, -1.2045594639823656, 0.19442688045065826, -0.31442160076087067, 0.06313451540562891, -1.5304745838587115, -1.2372764884467027, 0.5875490994217284, -0.9385520597707431, -0.6647903243363228)

scala> v :> 0.0
res43: breeze.linalg.BitVector = BitVector(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17)

scala> (v :> 0.0).toArray
res44: Array[Boolean] = Array(false, true, true, true, true, true, false, true, false, false, true, false, true, false, true, false, false, true, false, false)


Next let’s create and mess around with some dense matrices.

scala> val m = new DenseMatrix(5,4,linspace(1.0,20.0,20).toArray)
m: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
1.0  6.0   11.0  16.0
2.0  7.0   12.0  17.0
3.0  8.0   13.0  18.0
4.0  9.0   14.0  19.0
5.0  10.0  15.0  20.0

scala> m
res45: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
1.0  6.0   11.0  16.0
2.0  7.0   12.0  17.0
3.0  8.0   13.0  18.0
4.0  9.0   14.0  19.0
5.0  10.0  15.0  20.0

scala> m.rows
res46: Int = 5

scala> m.cols
res47: Int = 4

scala> m(::,1)
res48: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0)

scala> m(1,::)
res49: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] = 2.0  7.0  12.0  17.0

scala> m(1,::) := linspace(1.0,2.0,4)
res50: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] = 1.0  1.3333333333333333  1.6666666666666665  2.0

scala> m
res51: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
1.0  6.0                 11.0                16.0
1.0  1.3333333333333333  1.6666666666666665  2.0
3.0  8.0                 13.0                18.0
4.0  9.0                 14.0                19.0
5.0  10.0                15.0                20.0

scala>

scala> val n = m.t
n: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
1.0   1.0                 3.0   4.0   5.0
6.0   1.3333333333333333  8.0   9.0   10.0
11.0  1.6666666666666665  13.0  14.0  15.0
16.0  2.0                 18.0  19.0  20.0

scala> n
res52: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
1.0   1.0                 3.0   4.0   5.0
6.0   1.3333333333333333  8.0   9.0   10.0
11.0  1.6666666666666665  13.0  14.0  15.0
16.0  2.0                 18.0  19.0  20.0

scala> val o = m*n
o: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
414.0              59.33333333333333  482.0              516.0              550.0
59.33333333333333  9.555555555555555  71.33333333333333  77.33333333333333  83.33333333333333
482.0              71.33333333333333  566.0              608.0              650.0
516.0              77.33333333333333  608.0              654.0              700.0
550.0              83.33333333333333  650.0              700.0              750.0

scala> o
res53: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
414.0              59.33333333333333  482.0              516.0              550.0
59.33333333333333  9.555555555555555  71.33333333333333  77.33333333333333  83.33333333333333
482.0              71.33333333333333  566.0              608.0              650.0
516.0              77.33333333333333  608.0              654.0              700.0
550.0              83.33333333333333  650.0              700.0              750.0

scala> val p = n*m
p: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
52.0                117.33333333333333  182.66666666666666  248.0
117.33333333333333  282.77777777777777  448.22222222222223  613.6666666666667
182.66666666666666  448.22222222222223  713.7777777777778   979.3333333333334
248.0               613.6666666666667   979.3333333333334   1345.0

scala> p
res54: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
52.0                117.33333333333333  182.66666666666666  248.0
117.33333333333333  282.77777777777777  448.22222222222223  613.6666666666667
182.66666666666666  448.22222222222223  713.7777777777778   979.3333333333334
248.0               613.6666666666667   979.3333333333334   1345.0


So, messing around with vectors and matrices is more-or-less as convenient as in well-known dynamic and math languages. To conclude this section, let us see how to simulate some data from a regression model and then solve the least squares problem to obtain the estimated regression coefficients. We will simulate 1,000 observations from a model with 5 covariates.

scala> val X = new DenseMatrix(1000,5,gau.sample(5000).toArray)
X: breeze.linalg.DenseMatrix[Double] =
-0.40186606934180685  0.9847148198711287    ... (5 total)
-0.4760404521336951   -0.833737041320742    ...
-0.3315199616926892   -0.19460446824586297  ...
-0.14764615494496836  -0.17947658245206904  ...
-0.8357372755800905   -2.456222113596015    ...
-0.44458309216683184  1.848007773944826     ...
0.060314034896221065  0.5254462055311016    ...
0.8637867740789016    -0.9712570453363925   ...
0.11620167261655819   -1.2231380938032232   ...
-0.3335514290842617   -0.7487303696662753   ...
-0.5598937433421866   0.11083382409013512   ...
-1.7213395389510568   1.1717491221846357    ...
-1.078873342208984    0.9386859686451607    ...
-0.7793854546738327   -0.9829373863442161   ...
-1.054275201631216    0.10100826507456745   ...
-0.6947188686537832   1.215...
scala> val b0 = linspace(1.0,2.0,5)
b0: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0)

scala> val y0 = X * b0
y0: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(0.08200546839589107, -0.5992571365601228, -5.646398002309553, -7.346136663325798, -8.486423788193362, 1.451119214541837, -0.25792385841948406, 2.324936340609002, -1.2285599639827862, -4.030261316643863, -4.1732627416377674, -0.5077151099958077, -0.2087263741903591, 0.46678616461409383, 2.0244342278575975, 1.775756468177401, -4.799821190728213, -1.8518388060564481, 1.5892306875621767, -1.6528539564387008, 1.4064864330994125, -0.8734630221484178, -7.75470002781836, -0.2893619536998493, -5.972958583649336, -4.952666733286302, 0.5431255990489059, -2.477076684976403, -0.6473617571867107, -0.509338416957489, -1.5415350935719594, -0.47068802465681125, 2.546118380362026, -7.940401988804477, -1.037049442788122, -1.564016663370888, -3.3147087994...
scala> val y = y0 + DenseVector(gau.sample(1000).toArray)
y: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(-0.572127338358624, -0.16481167194161406, -4.213873268823003, -10.142015065601388, -7.893898543052863, 1.7881055848475076, -0.26987820512025357, 3.3289433195054148, -2.514141419925489, -4.643625974157769, -3.8061000214061886, 0.6462624993109218, 0.23603338389134149, 1.0211137806779267, 2.0061727641393317, 0.022624943149799348, -5.429601401989341, -1.836181225242386, 1.0265599173053048, -0.1673732536615371, 0.8418249443853956, -1.1547110533101967, -8.392100167478764, -1.1586377992526877, -6.400362975646245, -5.487018086963841, 0.3038055584347069, -1.2247410435868684, -0.06476921390724344, -1.5039074374120407, -1.0189111630970076, 1.307339668865724, 2.048320821568789, -8.769328824477714, -0.9104251029228555, -1.3533910178496698, -2.178788...
scala> val b = X \ y  // defaults to a QR-solve of the least squares problem
b: breeze.linalg.DenseVector[Double] = DenseVector(0.9952708232116663, 1.2344546192238952, 1.5543512339052412, 1.744091673457169, 1.9874158953720507)


So all of the most important building blocks for statistical computing are included in the Breeze library.

At this point it is really worth reminding yourself that Scala is actually a statically typed language, despite the fact that in this session we have not explicitly declared the type of anything at all! This is because Scala has type inference, which makes type declarations optional when it is straightforward for the compiler to figure out what the types must be. For example, for our very first expression, val a = 5, because the RHS is an Int, it is clear that the LHS must also be an Int, and so the compiler infers that the type of a must be an Int, and treats the code as if the type had been declared as val a: Int = 5. This type inference makes Scala feel very much like a dynamic language in general use. Typically, we carefully specify the types of function arguments (and often the return type of the function, too), but then for the main body of each function, just let the compiler figure out all of the types and write code as if the language were dynamic. To me, this seems like the best of all worlds. The convenience of dynamic languages with the safety of static typing.

Declaring the types of function arguments is not usually a big deal, as the following simple example demonstrates.

scala> def mean(arr: Array[Int]): Double = {
|   arr.sum.toDouble/arr.length
| }
mean: (arr: Array[Int])Double

scala> mean(Array(3,1,4,5))
res55: Double = 3.25


### A complete Scala program

For completeness, I will finish this post with a very simple but complete Scala/Breeze program. In a previous post I discussed a simple Gibbs sampler in Scala, but in that post I used the Java COLT library for random number generation. Below is a version using Breeze instead.

object BreezeGibbs {

import breeze.stats.distributions._
import scala.math.sqrt

class State(val x: Double, val y: Double)

def nextIter(s: State): State = {
val newX = Gamma(3.0, 1.0 / ((s.y) * (s.y) + 4.0)).draw()
new State(newX, Gaussian(1.0 / (newX + 1), 1.0 / sqrt(2 * newX + 2)).draw())
}

def nextThinnedIter(s: State, left: Int): State = {
if (left == 0) s
else nextThinnedIter(nextIter(s), left - 1)
}

def genIters(s: State, current: Int, stop: Int, thin: Int): State = {
if (!(current > stop)) {
println(current + " " + s.x + " " + s.y)
genIters(nextThinnedIter(s, thin), current + 1, stop, thin)
} else s
}

def main(args: Array[String]) {
println("Iter x y")
genIters(new State(0.0, 0.0), 1, 50000, 1000)
}

}


### Summary

In this post I’ve tried to give a quick taste of the Scala language and the Breeze library for those used to dynamic languages for statistical computing. Hopefully I’ve illustrated that the basics don’t look too different, so there is no reason to fear Scala. It is perfectly possible to start using Scala as a better and faster Python or R. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can then start exploring the full power of the language. There’s loads of introductory Scala material to be found on-line. It probably makes sense to start with the links I’ve highlighted above. After that, just start searching – there’s an interesting set of tutorials I noticed just the other day. A very time-efficient way to learn Scala quickly is to do the FP with Scala course on Coursera, but whether this makes sense will depend on when it is next running. For those who prefer real books, the book Programming in Scala is the standard reference, and I’ve also found Functional programming in Scala to be useful (free text of the first edition of the former and a draft of the latter can be found on-line).

### REPL Script

Below is a copy of the complete REPL script, for reference.

// start with non-Breeze stuff

val a = 5
a
a = 6
a

var b = 7
b
b = 8
b

val c = List(3,4,5,6)
c(1)
c.sum
c.length
c.product
c.foldLeft(0)((x,y) => x+y)
c.foldLeft(0)(_+_)
c.foldLeft(1)(_*_)

val d = Vector(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
d
d.slice(3,6)
val e = d.updated(3,0)
d
e

val f=(1 to 10).toList
f
f.map(x => x*x)
f map {x => x*x}
f filter {_ > 4}

// introduce breeze through random distributions
// https://github.com/scalanlp/breeze/wiki/Quickstart

import breeze.stats.distributions._
val poi = Poisson(3.0)
poi.draw
poi.draw
val x = poi.sample(10)
x
x.sum
x.length
x.sum.toDouble/x.length
poi.probabilityOf(2)
x map {x => poi.probabilityOf(x)}
x map {poi.probabilityOf(_)}

val gau=Gaussian(0.0,1.0)
gau.draw
gau.draw
val y=gau.sample(20)
y
y.sum/y.length
y map {gau.logPdf(_)}

Gamma(2.0,3.0).sample(5)

import breeze.stats.DescriptiveStats._
mean(y)
variance(y)
meanAndVariance(y)

// move on to linear algebra
// https://github.com/scalanlp/breeze/wiki/Breeze-Linear-Algebra

import breeze.linalg._
val v=DenseVector(y.toArray)
v(1) = 0
v
v(1 to 3) := 1.0
v
v(1 to 3) := DenseVector(1.0,1.5,2.0)
v
v :> 0.0
(v :> 0.0).toArray

val m = new DenseMatrix(5,4,linspace(1.0,20.0,20).toArray)
m
m.rows
m.cols
m(::,1)
m(1,::)
m(1,::) := linspace(1.0,2.0,4)
m

val n = m.t
n
val o = m*n
o
val p = n*m
p

// regression and QR solution

val X = new DenseMatrix(1000,5,gau.sample(5000).toArray)
val b0 = linspace(1.0,2.0,5)
val y0 = X * b0
val y = y0 + DenseVector(gau.sample(1000).toArray)
val b = X \ y  // defaults to a QR-solve of the least squares problem

// a simple function example

def mean(arr: Array[Int]): Double = {
arr.sum.toDouble/arr.length
}

mean(Array(3,1,4,5))


### Scala as a platform for statistical computing and data science

23/12/2013

There has been a lot of discussion on-line recently about languages for data analysis, statistical computing, and data science more generally. I don’t really want to go into the detail of why I believe that all of the common choices are fundamentally and unfixably flawed – language wars are so unseemly. Instead I want to explain why I’ve been using the Scala programming language recently and why, despite being far from perfect, I personally consider it to be a good language to form a platform for efficient and scalable statistical computing. Obviously, language choice is to some extent a personal preference, implicitly taking into account subjective trade-offs between features different individuals consider to be important. So I’ll start by listing some language/library/ecosystem features that I think are important, and then explain why.

## A feature wish list

It should:

• be a general purpose language with a sizable user community and an array of general purpose libraries, including good GUI libraries, networking and web frameworks
• be free, open-source and platform independent
• be fast and efficient
• have a good, well-designed library for scientific computing, including non-uniform random number generation and linear algebra
• have a strong type system, and be statically typed with good compile-time type checking and type safety
• have reasonable type inference
• have a REPL for interactive use
• have good tool support (including build tools, doc tools, testing tools, and an intelligent IDE)
• have excellent support for functional programming, including support for immutability and immutable data structures and “monadic” design
• allow imperative programming for those (rare) occasions where it makes sense
• be designed with concurrency and parallelism in mind, having excellent language and library support for building really scalable concurrent and parallel applications

The not-very-surprising punch-line is that Scala ticks all of those boxes and that I don’t know of any other languages that do. But before expanding on the above, it is worth noting a couple of (perhaps surprising) omissions. For example:

• have excellent data viz capability built-in
• have vast numbers of statistical routines in the standard library

The above are points (and there are other similar points) where other languages (for example, R), currently score better than Scala. It is not that these things are not important – indeed, they are highly desirable. But I consider them to be of lesser importance as they are much easier to fix, given a suitable platform, than fixing an unsuitable language and platform. Visualisation is not trivial, but it is not fantastically difficult in a language with excellent GUI libraries. Similarly, most statistical routines are quite straightforward to implement for anyone with reasonable expertise in scientific and statistical computing and numerical linear algebra. These are things that are relatively easy for a community to contribute to. Building a great programming language, on the other hand, is really, really, difficult.

I will now expand briefly on each point in turn.

#### be a general purpose language with a sizable user community and an array of general purpose libraries, including good GUI libraries, networking and web frameworks

History has demonstrated, time and time again, that domain specific languages (DSLs) are synonymous with idiosyncratic, inconsistent languages that are terrible for anything other than what they were specifically designed for. They can often be great for precisely the thing that they were designed for, but people always want to do other things, and that is when the problems start. For the avoidance of controversy I won’t go into details, but the whole Python versus R thing is a perfect illustration of this general versus specific trade-off. Similarly, although there has been some buzz around another new language recently, which is faster than R and Python, my feeling is that the last thing the world needs right now is Just Unother Language for Indexed Arrays…

In this day-and-age it is vital that statistical code can use a variety of libraries, and communicate with well-designed network libraries and web frameworks, as statistical analysis does not exist in a vacuum. Scala certainly fits the bill here, being used in a large number of important high-profile systems, ensuring a lively, well-motivated ecosystem. There are numerous well-maintained libraries for almost any task. Picking on web frameworks, for example, there are a number of excellent libraries, including Lift and Play. Scala also has the advantage of offering seamless Java integration, for those (increasingly rare) occasions when a native Scala library for the task at hand doesn’t exist.

#### be free, open-source and platform independent

This hardly needs expanding upon, other than to observe that there are a few well-known commercial software solutions for scientific, statistical and mathematical computing. There are all kinds of problems with using closed proprietary systems, including transparency and reproducibility, but also platform and scalability problems. eg. running code requiring a license server in the cloud. The academic statistical community has largely moved away from commercial software, and I don’t think there is any going back. Scala is open source and runs on the JVM, which is about as platform independent as it is possible to get.

#### be fast and efficient

Speed and efficiency continue to be important, despite increasing processor speeds. Computationally intensive algorithms are being pushed to ever larger and more complex models and data sets. Compute cycles and memory efficiency really matter, and can’t be ignored. This doesn’t mean that we all have to code in C/C++/Fortran, but we can’t afford to code in languages which are orders of magnitude slower. This will always be a problem. Scala code generally runs well within a factor of 2 of comparable native code – see my Gibbs sampler post for a simple example including timings.

#### have a good, well-designed library for scientific computing, including non-uniform random number generation and linear algebra

I hesitated about including this in my list of essentials, because it is certainly something that can, in principle, be added to a language at a later date. However, building such libraries is far from trivial, and they need to be well-designed, comprehensive and efficient. For Scala, Breeze is rapidly becoming the standard scientific library, including special functions, non-uniform random number generation and numerical linear algebra. For a data library, there is Saddle, and for a scalable analytics library there is Spark. These libraries certainly don’t cover everything that can be found in R/CRAN, but they provide a fairly solid foundation on which to build.

#### have a strong type system, and be statically typed with good compile-time type checking and type safety

I love dynamic languages – they are fun and exciting. It is fun to quickly throw together a few functions in a scripting language without worrying about declaring the types of anything. And it is exciting to see the myriad of strange and unanticipated ways your code can crash-and-burn at runtime! ;-) But this excitement soon wears off, and you end up adding lots of boilerplate argument checking code that would not only be much cleaner and simpler in a statically typed language, but would be checked at compile-time, making the static code faster and more efficient. For messing about prototyping, dynamic languages are attractive, but as a solid platform for statistical computing, they really don’t make sense. Scala has a strong type system offering a high degree of compile-time checking, making it a safe and efficient language.

#### have reasonable type inference

A common issue with statically typed languages is that they lead to verbose code containing many redundant type declarations that the compiler ought to be able to check. This doesn’t just mean more typing – it leads to verbose code that can hide the program logic. Languages with type inference offer the best of both worlds – the safety of static typing without the verbosity. Scala does a satisfactory job here.

#### have a REPL for interactive use

One thing that dynamic languages have taught us is that it is actually incredibly useful to have a REPL for interactive analysis. This is true generally, but especially so for statistical computing, where human intervention is often desirable. Again, Scala has a nice REPL.

#### have good tool support (including build tools, doc tools, testing tools, and an intelligent IDE)

Tools matter. Scala has an excellent build tool in the SBT. It has code documentation in the form of scaladoc (similar to javadoc). It has a unit testing framework, and a reasonably intelligent IDE in the form of the Scala IDE (based on Eclipse).

#### have excellent support for functional programming, including support for immutability and immutable data structures and “monadic” design

I, like many others, am gradually coming to realise that functional programming offers many advantages over other programming styles. In particular, it provides best route to building scalable software, in terms of both program complexity and data size/complexity. Scala has good support for functional programming, including immutable named values, immutable data structures and for-comprehensions. And if off-the-shelf Scala isn’t sufficiently functional already, libraries such as scalaz make it even more so.

#### allow imperative programming for those (rare) occasions where it makes sense

Although most algorithms in scientific computing are typically conceived of and implemented in an imperative style, I’m increasingly convinced that most can be recast in a pure functional way without significant loss of efficiency, and with significant benefits. That said, there really are some problems that are more efficient to implement in an imperative framework. It is therefore important that the language is not so “pure” functional that this is forbidden. Again, Scala fits the bill.

#### be designed with concurrency and parallelism in mind, having excellent language and library support for building really scalable concurrent and parallel applications

These days scalability typically means exploiting concurrency and parallelism. In an imperative world this is hard, and libraries such as MPI prove that it is difficult to bolt parallelism on top of a language post-hoc. Check-points, communication overhead, deadlocks and race conditions make it very difficult to build codes that scale well to more than a few processors. Concurrency is more straightforward in functional languages, and this is one of the reasons for the recent resurgence of functional languages and programming. Scala has good concurrency support built-in, and libraries such as Akka make it relatively easy to build truly scalable software.

## Summary

The Scala programming language ticks many boxes when it comes to forming a nice solid foundation for building a platform for efficient scalable statistical computing. Although I still use R and Python almost every day, I’m increasingly using Scala for serious algorithm development. In the short term I can interface to my Scala code from R using jvmr, but in the longer term I hope that Scala will become a complete framework for statistics and data science. In a subsequent post I will attempt to give a very brief introduction to Scala and the Breeze numerical library.

### A functional Gibbs sampler in Scala

04/10/2013

For many years I’ve had a passing interest in functional programming and languages which support functional programming approaches. I’m also quite interested in MOOCs and their future role in higher education. So I recently signed up for my first on-line course, Functional Programming Principles in Scala, via Coursera. I’m around half way through the course at the time of writing, and I’m enjoying it very much. I knew that I didn’t know much about Scala before starting the course, but during the course I’ve also learned that I didn’t know as much about functional programming as I thought I did, either! ;-) The course itself is very interesting, the assignments are well designed and appropriately challenging, and the web infrastructure to support the course is working well. I suspect I’ll try other on-line courses in the future.

Functional programming emphasises immutability, and discourages imperative programming approaches that use variables that can be modified during run-time. There are many advantages to immutability, especially in the context of parallel and concurrent programming, which is becoming increasingly important as multi-core systems become the norm. I’ve always found functional programming to be intellectually appealing, but have often worried about the practicalities of using functional programming in the context of scientific computing where many algorithms are iterative in nature, and are typically encoded using imperative approaches. The Scala programming language is appealing to me as it supports both imperative and functional styles of programming, as well as object oriented approaches. However, as a result of taking this course I am now determined to pursue functional approaches further, and get more of a feel for how practical they are for scientific computing applications.

For my first experiment, I’m going back to my post describing a Gibbs sampler in various languages. See that post for further details of the algorithm. In that post I did have an example implementation in Scala, which looked like this:

object GibbsSc {

import cern.jet.random.tdouble.engine.DoubleMersenneTwister
import cern.jet.random.tdouble.Normal
import cern.jet.random.tdouble.Gamma
import Math.sqrt
import java.util.Date

def main(args: Array[String]) {
val N=50000
val thin=1000
val rngEngine=new DoubleMersenneTwister(new Date)
val rngN=new Normal(0.0,1.0,rngEngine)
val rngG=new Gamma(1.0,1.0,rngEngine)
var x=0.0
var y=0.0
println("Iter x y")
for (i <- 0 until N) {
for (j <- 0 until thin) {
x=rngG.nextDouble(3.0,y*y+4)
y=rngN.nextDouble(1.0/(x+1),1.0/sqrt(2*x+2))
}
println(i+" "+x+" "+y)
}
}

}


At the time I wrote that post I knew even less about Scala than I do now, so I created the code by starting from the Java version and removing all of the annoying clutter! ;-) Clearly this code has an imperative style, utilising variables (declared with var) x and y having mutable state that is updated by a nested for loop. This algorithm is typical of the kind I use every day, so if I can’t re-write this in a more functional style, removing all mutable variables from my code, then I’m not going to get very far with functional programming!

In fact it is very easy to re-write this in a more functional style without utilising mutable variables. One possible approach is presented below.

object FunGibbs {

import cern.jet.random.tdouble.engine.DoubleMersenneTwister
import cern.jet.random.tdouble.Normal
import cern.jet.random.tdouble.Gamma
import java.util.Date
import scala.math.sqrt

val rngEngine=new DoubleMersenneTwister(new Date)
val rngN=new Normal(0.0,1.0,rngEngine)
val rngG=new Gamma(1.0,1.0,rngEngine)

class State(val x: Double,val y: Double)

def nextIter(s: State): State = {
val newX=rngG.nextDouble(3.0,(s.y)*(s.y)+4.0)
new State(newX,
rngN.nextDouble(1.0/(newX+1),1.0/sqrt(2*newX+2)))
}

def nextThinnedIter(s: State,left: Int): State = {
if (left==0) s
else nextThinnedIter(nextIter(s),left-1)
}

def genIters(s: State,current: Int,stop: Int,thin: Int): State = {
if (!(current>stop)) {
println(current+" "+s.x+" "+s.y)
genIters(nextThinnedIter(s,thin),current+1,stop,thin)
}
else s
}

def main(args: Array[String]) {
println("Iter x y")
genIters(new State(0.0,0.0),1,50000,1000)
}

}


Although it is a few lines longer, it is a fairly clean implementation, and doesn’t look like a hack. Like many functional programs, this one makes extensive use of recursion. This is one of the things that has always concerned me about functional programming – many scientific computing applications involve lots of iteration, and that can potentially translate into very deep recursion. The above program has an apparent recursion depth of 50 million! However, it runs fine without crashing despite the fact that most programming languages will crash out with a stack overflow with recursion depths of more than a couple of thousand. So why doesn’t this crash? It runs fine because the recursion I used is a special form of recursion known as a tail call. Most functional (and some imperative) programming languages automatically perform tail call elimination which essentially turns the tail call into an iteration which runs very fast without creating new stack frames. In fact, this functional version of the code runs at roughly the same speed as the iterative version I presented first (perhaps just a few percent slower – I haven’t done careful timings), and runs well within a factor of 2 of imperative C code. So actually this seems perfectly practical so far, and I’m looking forward to experimenting more with functional programming approaches to statistical computation over the coming months…

16/07/2011

### Introduction

Regular readers of this blog will know that in April 2010 I published a short post showing how a trivial bivariate Gibbs sampler could be implemented in the four languages that I use most often these days (R, python, C, Java), and I discussed relative timings, and how one might start to think about trading off development time against execution time for more complex MCMC algorithms. I actually wrote the post very quickly one night while I was stuck in a hotel room in Seattle – I didn’t give much thought to it, and the main purpose was to provide simple illustrative examples of simple Monte Carlo codes using non-uniform random number generators in the different languages, as a starting point for someone thinking of switching languages (say, from R to Java or C, for efficiency reasons). It wasn’t meant to be very deep or provocative, or to start any language wars. Suffice to say that this post has had many more hits than all of my other posts combined, is still my most popular post, and still attracts comments and spawns other posts to this day. Several people have requested that I re-do the post more carefully, to include actual timings, and to include a few additional optimisations. Hence this post. For reference, the original post is here. A post about it from the python community is here, and a recent post about using Rcpp and inlined C++ code to speed up the R version is here.

### The sampler

So, the basic idea was to construct a Gibbs sampler for the bivariate distribution

$f(x,y) = kx^2\exp\{-xy^2-y^2+2y-4x\},\qquad x>0,y\in\Bbb{R}$

with unknown normalising constant $k>0$ ensuring that the density integrates to one. Unfortunately, in the original post I dropped a factor of 2 constructing one of the full conditionals, which meant that none of the samplers actually had exactly the right target distribution (thanks to Sanjog Misra for bringing this to my attention). So actually, the correct full conditionals are

$\displaystyle x|y \sim Ga(3,y^2+4)$

$\displaystyle y|x \sim N\left(\frac{1}{1+x},\frac{1}{2(1+x)}\right)$

Note the factor of two in the variance of the full conditional for $y$. Given the full conditionals, it is simple to alternately sample from them to construct a Gibbs sampler for the target distribution. We will run a Gibbs sampler with a thin of 1000 and obtain a final sample of 50000.

### Implementations

#### R

Let’s start with R again. The slightly modified version of the code from the old post is given below

gibbs=function(N,thin)
{
mat=matrix(0,ncol=3,nrow=N)
mat[,1]=1:N
x=0
y=0
for (i in 1:N) {
for (j in 1:thin) {
x=rgamma(1,3,y*y+4)
y=rnorm(1,1/(x+1),1/sqrt(2*x+2))
}
mat[i,2:3]=c(x,y)
}
mat=data.frame(mat)
names(mat)=c("Iter","x","y")
mat
}

writegibbs=function(N=50000,thin=1000)
{
mat=gibbs(N,thin)
write.table(mat,"data.tab",row.names=FALSE)
}

writegibbs()


I’ve just corrected the full conditional, and I’ve increased the sample size and thinning to 50k and 1k, respectively, to allow for more accurate timings (of the faster languages). This code can be run from the (Linux) command line with something like:

time Rscript gibbs.R


I discuss timings in detail towards the end of the post, but this code is slow, taking over 7 minutes on my (very fast) laptop. Now, the above code is typical of the way code is often structured in R – doing as much as possible in memory, and writing to disk only if necessary. However, this can be a bad idea with large MCMC codes, and is less natural in other languages, anyway, so below is an alternative version of the code, written in more of a scripting language style.

gibbs=function(N,thin)
{
x=0
y=0
cat(paste("Iter","x","y","\n"))
for (i in 1:N) {
for (j in 1:thin) {
x=rgamma(1,3,y*y+4)
y=rnorm(1,1/(x+1),1/sqrt(2*x+2))
}
cat(paste(i,x,y,"\n"))
}
}

gibbs(50000,1000)


This can be run with a command like

time Rscript gibbs-script.R > data.tab


This code actually turns out to be a slightly slower than the in-memory version for this simple example, but for larger problems I would not expect that to be the case. I always analyse MCMC output using R, whatever language I use for running the algorithm, so for completeness, here is a bit of code to load up the data file, do some plots and compute summary statistics.

fun=function(x,y)
{
x*x*exp(-x*y*y-y*y+2*y-4*x)
}

compare<-function(file="data.tab")
{
op=par(mfrow=c(2,1))
x=seq(0,3,0.1)
y=seq(-1,3,0.1)
z=outer(x,y,fun)
contour(x,y,z,main="Contours of actual (unnormalised) distribution")
require(KernSmooth)
fit=bkde2D(as.matrix(mat[,2:3]),c(0.1,0.1))
contour(fit$x1,fit$x2,fit$fhat,main="Contours of empirical distribution") par(op) print(summary(mat[,2:3])) } compare()  #### Python Another language I use a lot is Python. I don’t want to start any language wars, but I personally find python to be a better designed language than R, and generally much nicer for the development of large programs. A python script for this problem is given below import random,math def gibbs(N=50000,thin=1000): x=0 y=0 print "Iter x y" for i in range(N): for j in range(thin): x=random.gammavariate(3,1.0/(y*y+4)) y=random.gauss(1.0/(x+1),1.0/math.sqrt(2*x+2)) print i,x,y gibbs()  It can be run with a command like time python gibbs.py > data.tab  This code turns out to be noticeably faster than the R versions, taking around 4 minutes on my laptop (again, detailed timing information below). However, there is a project for python known as the PyPy project, which is concerned with compiling regular python code to very fast byte-code, giving significant speed-ups on certain problems. For this post, I downloaded and install version 1.5 of the 64-bit linux version of PyPy. Once installed, I can run the above code with the command time pypy gibbs.py > data.tab  To my astonishment, this “just worked”, and gave very impressive speed-up over regular python, running in around 30 seconds. This actually makes python a much more realistic prospect for the development of MCMC codes than I imagined. However, I need to understand the limitations of PyPy better – for example, why doesn’t everyone always use PyPy for everything?! It certainly seems to make python look like a very good option for prototyping MCMC codes. #### C Traditionally, I have mainly written MCMC codes in C, using the GSL. C is a fast, efficient, statically typed language, which compiles to native code. In many ways it represents the “gold standard” for speed. So, here is the C code for this problem. #include <stdio.h> #include <math.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <gsl/gsl_rng.h> #include <gsl/gsl_randist.h> void main() { int N=50000; int thin=1000; int i,j; gsl_rng *r = gsl_rng_alloc(gsl_rng_mt19937); double x=0; double y=0; printf("Iter x y\n"); for (i=0;i<N;i++) { for (j=0;j<thin;j++) { x=gsl_ran_gamma(r,3.0,1.0/(y*y+4)); y=1.0/(x+1)+gsl_ran_gaussian(r,1.0/sqrt(2*x+2)); } printf("%d %f %f\n",i,x,y); } }  It can be compiled and run with command like gcc -O4 -lgsl -lgslcblas gibbs.c -o gibbs time ./gibbs > datac.tab  This runs faster than anything else I consider in this post, taking around 8 seconds. #### Java I’ve recently been experimenting with Java for MCMC codes, in conjunction with Parallel COLT. Java is a statically typed object-oriented (O-O) language, but is usually compiled to byte-code to run on a virtual machine (known as the JVM). Java compilers and virtual machines are very fast these days, giving “close to C” performance, but with a nicer programming language, and advantages associated with virtual machines. Portability is a huge advantage of Java. For example, I can easily get my Java code to run on almost any University Condor pool, on both Windows and Linux clusters – they all have a recent JVM installed, and I can easily bundle any required libraries with my code. Suffice to say that getting GSL/C code to run on generic Condor pools is typically much less straightforward. Here is the Java code: import java.util.*; import cern.jet.random.tdouble.*; import cern.jet.random.tdouble.engine.*; class Gibbs { public static void main(String[] arg) { int N=50000; int thin=1000; DoubleRandomEngine rngEngine=new DoubleMersenneTwister(new Date()); Normal rngN=new Normal(0.0,1.0,rngEngine); Gamma rngG=new Gamma(1.0,1.0,rngEngine); double x=0; double y=0; System.out.println("Iter x y"); for (int i=0;i<N;i++) { for (int j=0;j<thin;j++) { x=rngG.nextDouble(3.0,y*y+4); y=rngN.nextDouble(1.0/(x+1),1.0/Math.sqrt(2*x+2)); } System.out.println(i+" "+x+" "+y); } } }  It can be compiled and run with javac Gibbs.java time java Gibbs > data.tab  This takes around 11.6s seconds on my laptop. This is well within a factor of 2 of the C version, and around 3 times faster than even the PyPy python version. It is around 40 times faster than R. Java looks like a good choice for implementing MCMC codes that would be messy to implement in C, or that need to run places where it would be fiddly to get native codes to run. #### Scala Another language I’ve been taking some interest in recently is Scala. Scala is a statically typed O-O/functional language which compiles to byte-code that runs on the JVM. Since it uses Java technology, it can seamlessly integrate with Java libraries, and can run anywhere that Java code can run. It is a much nicer language to program in than Java, and feels more like a dynamic language such as python. In fact, it is almost as nice to program in as python (and in some ways nicer), and will run in a lot more places than PyPy python code. Here is the scala code (which calls Parallel COLT for random number generation): object GibbsSc { import cern.jet.random.tdouble.engine.DoubleMersenneTwister import cern.jet.random.tdouble.Normal import cern.jet.random.tdouble.Gamma import Math.sqrt import java.util.Date def main(args: Array[String]) { val N=50000 val thin=1000 val rngEngine=new DoubleMersenneTwister(new Date) val rngN=new Normal(0.0,1.0,rngEngine) val rngG=new Gamma(1.0,1.0,rngEngine) var x=0.0 var y=0.0 println("Iter x y") for (i <- 0 until N) { for (j <- 0 until thin) { x=rngG.nextDouble(3.0,y*y+4) y=rngN.nextDouble(1.0/(x+1),1.0/sqrt(2*x+2)) } println(i+" "+x+" "+y) } } }  It can be compiled and run with scalac GibbsSc.scala time scala GibbsSc > data.tab  This code takes around 11.8s on my laptop – almost as fast as the Java code! So, on the basis of this very simple and superficial example, it looks like scala may offer the best of all worlds – a nice, elegant, terse programming language, functional and O-O programming styles, the safety of static typing, the ability to call on Java libraries, great speed and efficiency, and the portability of Java! Very interesting. #### Groovy James Durbin has kindly sent me a Groovy version of the code, which he has also discussed in his own blog post. Groovy is a dynamic O-O language for the JVM, which, like Scala, can integrate nicely with Java applications. It isn’t a language I have examined closely, but it seems quite nice. The code is given below: import cern.jet.random.tdouble.engine.* import cern.jet.random.tdouble.* N=50000 thin=1000 rngEngine= new DoubleMersenneTwister(new Date()) rngN=new Normal(0.0,1.0,rngEngine) rngG=new Gamma(1.0,1.0,rngEngine) x=0.0 y=0.0 println("Iter x y") for(i in 1..N){ for(j in 1..thin){ x=rngG.nextDouble(3.0,y*y+4) y=rngN.nextDouble(1.0/(x+1),1.0/Math.sqrt(2*x+2)) } println("$i $x$y")
}


It can be run with a command like:

time groovy Gibbs.gv > data.tab


Again, rather amazingly, this code runs in around 35 seconds – very similar to the speed of PyPy. This makes Groovy also seem like a potential very attractive environment for prototyping MCMC codes, especially if I’m thinking about ultimately porting to Java.

### Timings

The laptop I’m running everything on is a Dell Precision M4500 with an Intel i7 Quad core (x940@2.13Ghz) CPU, running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 11.04. I’m running stuff from the Ubuntu (Unity) desktop, and running several terminals and applications, but the machine is not loaded at the time each job runs. I’m running each job 3 times and taking the arithmetic mean real elapsed time. All timings are in seconds.

 R 2.12.1 (in memory) 435 R 2.12.1 (script) 450.2 Python 2.7.1+ 233.5 PyPy 1.5 32.2 Groovy 1.7.4 35.4 Java 1.6.0 11.6 Scala 2.7.7 11.8 C (gcc 4.5.2) 8.1

If we look at speed-up relative to the R code (in-memory version), we get:

 R (in memory) 1 R (script) 0.97 Python 1.86 PyPy 13.51 Groovy 12.3 Java 37.5 Scala 36.86 C 53.7

Alternatively, we can look at slow-down relative to the C version, to get:

 R (in memory) 53.7 R (script) 55.6 Python 28.8 PyPy 4 Groovy 4.4 Java 1.4 Scala 1.5 C 1

### Discussion

The findings here are generally consistent with those of the old post, but consideration of PyPy, Groovy and Scala does throw up some new issues. I was pretty stunned by PyPy. First, I didn’t expect that it would “just work” – I thought I would either have to spend time messing around with my configuration settings, or possibly even have to modify my code slightly. Nope. Running python code with pypy appears to be more than 10 times faster than R, and only 4 times slower than C. I find it quite amazing that it is possible to get python code to run just 4 times slower than C, and if that is indicative of more substantial examples, it really does open up the possibility of using python for “real” problems, although library coverage is currently a problem. It certainly solves my “prototyping problem”. I often like to prototype algorithms in very high level dynamic languages like R and python before porting to a more efficient language. However, I have found that this doesn’t always work well with complex MCMC codes, as they just run too slowly in the dynamic languages to develop, test and debug conveniently. But it looks now as though PyPy should be fast enough at least for prototyping purposes, and may even be fast enough for production code in some circumstances. But then again, exactly the same goes for Groovy, which runs on the JVM, and can access any existing Java library… I haven’t yet looked into Groovy in detail, but it appears that it could be a very nice language for prototyping algorithms that I intend to port to Java.

The results also confirm my previous findings that Java is now “fast enough” that one shouldn’t worry too much about the difference in speed between it and native code written in C (or C++). The Java language is much nicer than C or C++, and the JVM platform is very attractive in many situations. However, the Scala results were also very surprising for me. Scala is a really elegant language (certainly on a par with python), comes with all of the advantages of Java, and appears to be almost as fast as Java. I’m really struggling to come up with reasons not to use Scala for everything!

#### Speeding up R

MCMC codes are used by a range of different scientists for a range of different problems. However, they are very (most?) often used by Bayesian statisticians who use the algorithms to target a Bayesian posterior distribution. For various (good) reasons, many statisticians are heavily invested in R, like to use R as much as possible, and do as much as possible from within the R environment. These results show why R is not a good language in which to implement MCMC algorithms, so what is an R-dependent statistician supposed to do? One possibility would be to byte-code compile R code in an analogous way to python and pypy. The very latest versions of R support such functionality, but the post by Dirk Eddelbuettel suggests that the current version of cmpfun will only give a 40% speedup on this problem, which is still slower than regular python code. Short of a dramatic improvement in this technology, the only way forward seems to be to extend R using code from another language. It is easy to extend R using C, C++ and Java. I have shown in previous posts how to do this using Java and using C, and the recent post by Dirk shows how to extend using C++. Although interesting, this doesn’t really have much bearing on the current discussion. If you extend using Java you get Java-like speedups, and if you extend using C you get C-like speedups. However, in case people are interested, I intend to gather up these examples into one post and include detailed timing information in a subsequent post.

The stupidest thing...

Statistics, genetics, programming, academics

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an attempt at bloggin, nothing more...

Normal Deviate

Thoughts on Statistics and Machine Learning