[R] The effect of tolerance in all.equal()

Ashim Kapoor ashimkapoor at gmail.com
Mon May 1 06:01:03 CEST 2017


On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 10:05 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 30/04/2017 12:26 PM, Ashim Kapoor wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> This answer is very clear. Many thanks.
>>
>> I am now confused about how str*ucture works. Where can I read more about
>> when does it  return language / logical / chr ? I would want to read that
>> so I can interpret the result of structure. I don't think ?str contains
>> this.To me, logical and chr make sense, what does language mean? I think I
>> need to read some more.
>>
>
> I would read the R Language Definition manual, and then bits and pieces of
> R Internals, as necessary.  These are both included with R.  There are also
> books separate from R that talk about these things, but I don't know which
> to recommend.
>
> Can you please name those books ?


> Duncan Murdoch
>
>
>> Many thanks,
>> Ashim
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 3:14 PM, Martin Maechler <
>> maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>
>> Ashim Kapoor <ashimkapoor at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>     on Tue, 25 Apr 2017 14:02:18 +0530 writes:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>     > Dear all,
>>>     > I am not able to understand the interplay of absolute vs relative
>>> and
>>>     > tolerance in the use of all.equal
>>>
>>>     > If I want to find out if absolute differences between 2
>>> numbers/vectors are
>>>     > bigger than a given tolerance I would do:
>>>
>>>     > all.equal(1,1.1,scale=1,tol= .1)
>>>
>>>     > If I want to find out if relative differences between 2
>>> numbers/vectors are
>>>     > bigger than a given tolerance I would do :
>>>
>>>     > all.equal(1,1.1,tol=.1)
>>>
>>>     > ############################################################
>>> ######################################################################
>>>
>>>     > I can also do :
>>>
>>>     > all.equal(1,3,tol=1)
>>>
>>>     > to find out if the absolute difference is bigger than 1.But here I
>>> won't be
>>>     > able to detect absolute differences smaller than 1 in this case,so
>>> I
>>> don't
>>>     > think that this is a good way.
>>>
>>>     > My query is: what is the reasoning behind all.equal returning the
>>> absolute
>>>     > difference if the tolerance >= target and relative difference if
>>> tolerance
>>>     > < target?
>>> (above, it is    tol  >/<=  |target|  ie. absolute value)
>>>
>>>
>>> The following are desiderata / restrictions :
>>>
>>> 1) Relative tolerance is needed to keep things scale-invariant
>>>    i.e.,  all.equal(x, y)  and  all.equal(1000 * x, 1000 * y)
>>>    should typically be identical for (almost) all (x,y).
>>>
>>>    ==> "the typical behavior should use relative error tolerance"
>>>
>>> 2) when x or y (and typically both!) are very close to zero it
>>>    is typically undesirable to keep relative tolerances (in the
>>>    boundary case, they _are_ zero exactly, and "relative error" is
>>> undefined).
>>>    E.g., for most purposes, 3.45e-15 and 1.23e-17 should be counted as
>>>    equal to zero and hence to themselves.
>>>
>>> 1) and 2) are typically reconciled by switching from relative to absolute
>>> when the arguments are close to zero (*).
>>>
>>> The exact cutoff at which to switch from relative to absolute
>>> (or a combination of the two) is somewhat arbitrary(*2) and for
>>> all.equal() has been made in the 1980's (or even slightly
>>> earlier?) when all.equal() was introduced into the S language at
>>> Bell labs AFAIK. Maybe John Chambers (or Rick Becker or ...,
>>> but they may not read R-help) knows more.
>>> *2) Then, the choice for all.equal() is in some way "least arbitrary",
>>>     using c = 1 in the more general   tolerance >= c*|target|  framework.
>>>
>>> *) There have been alternatives in "the (applied numerical
>>>  analysis / algorithm) literature" seen in published algorithms,
>>>  but I don't have any example ready.
>>>  Notably some of these alternatives are _symmetric_ in (x,y)
>>>  where all.equal() was designed to be asymmetric using names
>>>  'target' and 'current'.
>>>
>>> The alternative idea is along the following thoughts:
>>>
>>> Assume that for "equality" we want _both_ relative and
>>> absolute (e := tolerance) "equality"
>>>
>>>    |x - y| < e (|x|+|y|)/2  (where you could use |y| or |x|
>>>                              instead of their mean; all.equal()
>>>                              uses |target|)
>>>    |x - y| < e * e1          (where e1 = 1, or e1 = 10^-7..)
>>>
>>> If you add the two inequalities you get
>>>
>>>    |x - y| < e (e1 + |x+y|/2)
>>>
>>> as check which is a "mixture" of relative and absolute tolerance.
>>>
>>> With a somewhat long history, my gut feeling would nowadays
>>> actually prefer this (I think with a default of e1 = e) - which
>>> does treat x and y symmetrically.
>>>
>>> Note that convergence checks in good algorithms typically check
>>> for _both_ relative and absolute difference (each with its
>>> tolerance providable by the user), and the really good ones for
>>> minimization do  check for (approximate) gradients also being
>>> close to zero - as old timers among us should have learned from
>>> Doug Bates ... but now I'm really diverging.
>>>
>>> Last but not least some  R  code at the end,  showing that the
>>> *asymmetric*
>>> nature of all.equal() may lead to somewhat astonishing (but very
>>> logical and as documented!) behavior.
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>     > Best Regards,
>>>     > Ashim
>>>
>>>
>>> ## The "data" to use:
>>>> epsQ <- lapply(seq(12,18,by=1/2), function(P) bquote(10^-.(P)));
>>>>
>>> names(epsQ) <- sapply(epsQ, deparse); str(epsQ)
>>> List of 13
>>>  $ 10^-12  : language 10^-12
>>>  $ 10^-12.5: language 10^-12.5
>>>  $ 10^-13  : language 10^-13
>>>  $ 10^-13.5: language 10^-13.5
>>>  $ 10^-14  : language 10^-14
>>>  $ 10^-14.5: language 10^-14.5
>>>  $ 10^-15  : language 10^-15
>>>  $ 10^-15.5: language 10^-15.5
>>>  $ 10^-16  : language 10^-16
>>>  $ 10^-16.5: language 10^-16.5
>>>  $ 10^-17  : language 10^-17
>>>  $ 10^-17.5: language 10^-17.5
>>>  $ 10^-18  : language 10^-18
>>>
>>> str(lapply(epsQ, function(tl) all.equal(3.45e-15, 1.23e-17, tol =
>>>>
>>> eval(tl))))
>>> List of 13
>>>  $ 10^-12  : logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-12.5: logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-13  : logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-13.5: logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-14  : logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-14.5: chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>  $ 10^-15  : chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>  $ 10^-15.5: chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>  $ 10^-16  : chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>  $ 10^-16.5: chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>  $ 10^-17  : chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>  $ 10^-17.5: chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>  $ 10^-18  : chr "Mean relative difference: 0.9964348"
>>>
>>> ## Now swap `target` and `current` :
>>>> str(lapply(epsQ, function(tl) all.equal(1.23e-17, 3.45e-15, tol =
>>>>
>>> eval(tl))))
>>> List of 13
>>>  $ 10^-12  : logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-12.5: logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-13  : logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-13.5: logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-14  : logi TRUE
>>>  $ 10^-14.5: chr "Mean absolute difference: 3.4377e-15"
>>>  $ 10^-15  : chr "Mean absolute difference: 3.4377e-15"
>>>  $ 10^-15.5: chr "Mean absolute difference: 3.4377e-15"
>>>  $ 10^-16  : chr "Mean absolute difference: 3.4377e-15"
>>>  $ 10^-16.5: chr "Mean absolute difference: 3.4377e-15"
>>>  $ 10^-17  : chr "Mean relative difference: 279.4878"
>>>  $ 10^-17.5: chr "Mean relative difference: 279.4878"
>>>  $ 10^-18  : chr "Mean relative difference: 279.4878"
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>
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>>
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>>
>

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