James D. McCaffrey

Bottom line: I refactored my C# implementation of trimmed kernel ridge regression to approximate support vector regression. The refactoring works fine, but the code is so long, there are multiple ways to organize it, and so I might have to refactor at some point in the future.

As is often the case with interesting topics, explaining what the problem is, takes longer than explaining the solution. So bear with me.

The goal of a machine learning regression problem is to predict a single numeric value. For example, a bank might want to predict a maximum loan amount based on applicant age, sex, annual income, debt, and so on.

Common regression techniques include linear regression, quadratic regression, nearest neighbors regression, kernel ridge regression, Gaussian process regression, kernel support vector regression, neural network regression, random forest regression, and gradient boost regression. Each technique has dozens of variations, and each technique has pros and cons.

Two closely related machine learning regression techniques are kernel ridge regression (KRR) and support vector regression (SVR). Both techniques use a kernel function (usually the radial basis function, RBF) to compare two data items for similarity. Both techniques must store training data in order to make predictions, but KRR must store all training items, while SVR eliminates some of the items during training, leaving just the “support vectors” that need to be stored.

On the other hand, the loss function used by SVR is not differentiable, so SVR cannot be trained using stochastic gradient descent, and therefore, SVR does not scale well to very large datasets.

Note: In addition to the kernel support vector regression technique discussed in this blog post, there is a linear support vector regression technique which is absolutely useless in practice.

KRR often gives slightly better prediction accuracy than SVR, is easier to train than SVR, can handle very large datasets via SGD training, and is much, much easier to implement than SVR.

One morning before work, I got the idea of combining KRR and SVR. Briefly, I train a KRR model as normal using all data. Then I identify training data items that are predicted “too well” and remove them, leaving just pseudo support vectors. The somewhat counterintuitive SVR idea is that items that are predicted too well don’t help model accuracy very much. Then I retrain a new KRR model using only the reduced training data. This gives a trimmed/sparse KRR model that approximates an SVR model.

In my mind, this technique gives the advantages of KRR (ability to handle very large datasets) and the advantages of SVR (fewer stored model items and weights than KRR). I first implemented the idea using the scikit KernelRidge module and the idea worked well. Then I implemented the idea using C#, just to see if I could — using C# I had to implent a lot of code from scratch that is built-in to Python and scikit. The C# code worked but it was clunky so — the point of this blog post — I refactored the clunky C# code to make it more rational.

Let me point out that the idea of trimming a KRR model to approximate an SVR model is fairly obvious, and so I’m reasonably sure other people have used the idea, but I could find no examples or discussion on the Internet.

The output of the new, refactored C# demo is:

Begin kernel ridge regression trim 
approximation to SVR using C#

Loading train (200) and test (40) data
Done

First three X predictors:
  -0.1660   0.4406  -0.9998  -0.3953  -0.7065
   0.0776  -0.1616   0.3704  -0.5911   0.7562
  -0.9452   0.3409  -0.1654   0.1174  -0.7192

First three target y:
  0.4840
  0.1568
  0.8054

Creating KRR model
Setting RBF gamma = 0.30
Done

Setting lrnRate = 0.0500
Setting maxEpochs = 5000
Setting alpha decay =  0.00001
Setting auto-exit tol = 0.0010
Setting trim epsilon = 0.0035

Training model
epoch =      0 MSE = 0.0181 acc = 0.1700
Auto-exit at epoch 723
Auto-exit at epoch 707
Done

Final model weights:
 -0.7406  -0.4260  -0.3825 . . .
. . .      0.3299   0.8800

Evaluating trimmed KRR model
Number model item/weights = 109

Train acc = 0.9817
Test acc = 0.9500

Train MSE = 0.0001
Test MSE = 0.0003

End KRR trim/prune demo

The demo data is synthetic demo. There are 200 training items and 40 test items. The demo data was generated by a neural network with random weights and biases. The data is normalized, which is strogly recommended for KRR and SVR because items are compared mathematically and you don’t want a column with huge magnitudes to dominate.

Both KRR and SVR can handle non-numeric data, but that’s another story.

The key calling statements are:

KRR krr = new KRR(gamma);

double lrnRate = 0.05;
int maxEpochs = 5000;
double alpha = 1.0e-5;  // wt decay regularization
double exitTol = 0.001;  // auto-exit
double epsilon = 0.0035; // trimming
// larger epsilon: fewer wts retained
// smaller epsilon: more wts retained
krr.Train(trainX, trainY, lrnRate, maxEpochs, alpha,
  exitTol, epsilon);

The large number of parameters is a significant weakness of KRR (and SVR too).

After training on 200 data items, those items that were predicted with a small error of less than 0.0035 were removed. There were 91 such well-predicted items, leaving a reduced training dataset of 109 items. These would be called the support vectors in SVR. After training a new model on the reduced dataset, the sparse model scored 98.17% accuracy on the reduced training data (107 out of 109 correct) and 95.00% accuracy on the test data (38 out of 40 correct). Nice!

To validate my C# trimmed KRR approximation to SVR, I ran the data through the scikit SVR module. A grid-search optimized scikit SVR model created 90 support vectors (better than the trimmed KRR 109 items), with 96.50% accuracy on the training data (not quite as good as the C# trimmed KRR model), and 95.00% accuracy on the test data (identical to the sparse KRR model). In short, the C# trimmed KRR model and the SVR model are very similar. The large number of hyperparameters involved with KRR and SVR makes exact comparison impossible in practice.

An interesting experiment.

Like most people I know, I get obsessed with all kinds of strange things. I have been obsessed with machine learning for many years.

Right: I avoided watching “Predator: Badlands” (2025) for a long time because all of the previous Predator movies were awful (except for the first in 1987). My good friend Ken L convinced me to watch “Badlands” in his fancy home theater. It was really good, and on top of that, it was a bonanza of “chittering”. The very first opening scene had a small chittering creature and then on the Death Plant, basically every plant and animal was a chitterer.

The (refacored) C# trimmed KRR demo program. Replace “lt” (less than), “gt”, “lte”, “gte” with Boolean operator symbols. (My blog editor chokes on symbols).

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace KernelRidgeRegressionTrim
{
  internal class KernelRidgeRegressionProgram
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("\nBegin kernel ridge " +
        "regression trim approximation to SVR using C# ");

      Console.WriteLine("\nLoading train (200) and" +
        " test (40) data ");
      string trainFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_train_200.txt";
      double[][] trainX =
        Utils.MatLoad(trainFile,
        new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 }, ',', "#");
      double[] trainY =
        Utils.MatToVec(Utils.MatLoad(trainFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));

      string testFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_test_40.txt";
      double[][] testX =
        Utils.MatLoad(testFile,
        new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 }, ',', "#");
      double[] testY =
        Utils.MatToVec(Utils.MatLoad(testFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three X predictors: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        Utils.VecShow(trainX[i], 4, 9);
      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three target y: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        Console.WriteLine(trainY[i].ToString("F4").
          PadLeft(8));

      Console.WriteLine("\nCreating KRR model ");
      double gamma = 0.3;    // RBF param
      Console.WriteLine("Setting RBF gamma = " +
        gamma.ToString("F2"));
      KRR krr = new KRR(gamma);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      double lrnRate = 0.05;
      int maxEpochs = 5000;
      double alpha = 1.0e-5;  // wt decay regularization
      double exitTol = 0.001;  // auto-exit
      double epsilon = 0.0035; // trimming
      // larger epsilon: more wts retained
      // smaller epsilon: fewer wts retained
      Console.WriteLine("\nSetting lrnRate = " +
        lrnRate.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Setting maxEpochs = " + maxEpochs);
      Console.WriteLine("Setting alpha decay =  " +
        alpha.ToString("F5"));
      Console.WriteLine("Setting auto-exit tol = " +
        exitTol.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Setting trim epsilon = " +
        epsilon.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("\nTraining model ");
      krr.Train(trainX, trainY, lrnRate, maxEpochs, alpha,
        exitTol, epsilon);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");
      Console.WriteLine("\nFinal model weights: ");
      Utils.VecShow(krr.wts, 4, 9);

      Console.WriteLine("\nEvaluating trimmed KRR model ");
      Console.WriteLine("Number model item/weights = " +
        krr.wts.Length);
      double trainAcc = 
        krr.Accuracy(krr.trainX, krr.trainY, 0.10);
      double testAcc = krr.Accuracy(testX, testY, 0.10);

      Console.WriteLine("\nTrain acc = " +
        trainAcc.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Test acc = " +
        testAcc.ToString("F4"));

      double trainMSE = krr.MSE(krr.trainX, krr.trainY);
      double testMSE = krr.MSE(testX, testY);

      Console.WriteLine("\nTrain MSE = " +
        trainMSE.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Test MSE = " +
        testMSE.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nEnd KRR trim/prune demo ");
      Console.ReadLine();
    } // Main()

  } // class Program

  /*
  Creating scikit SVR model
  Setting gamma = 0.1000
  Setting C = 10.0000
  Setting epsilon = 0.0100

  Number support vectors = 90
  Accuracy (within 0.10) train = 0.9650
  Accuracy (within 0.10) test = 0.9500
  MSE train = 0.0001
  MSE test = 0.0002 
  */

  // ========================================================

  public class KRR
  {
    public double gamma;  // for RBF kernel
    public double[][] trainX;  // need for prediction
    public double[] trainY; // not used this version
    public double[] wts;  // one per trainX item
    public Random rnd; // for SGD

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public KRR(double gamma, int seed = 1)
    {
      this.gamma = gamma;
      this.trainX = new double[0][];
      this.trainY = new double[0];
      this.wts = new double[0];
      this.rnd = new Random(seed);  // shuffle train order
    } // ctor

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private void Shuffle(int[] indices)
    {
      // Fisher-Yates for SGD
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" indices.Length; ++i)
      {
        int ri = this.rnd.Next(i, indices.Length);
        int tmp = indices[i];
        indices[i] = indices[ri];
        indices[ri] = tmp;
      }
    } // Shuffle

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public void Train(double[][] trainX, double[] trainY,
     double lrnRate, int maxEpochs, double alpha,
     double exitTol, double epsilon)
    {
      int N = trainX.Length; // not used this version
      int freq = maxEpochs / 5;  // when to show progress

      // 0. store trainX -- needed by Predict()
      // copy by value for safety. change to copy
      // by ref if short of memory.
      this.trainX = new double[trainX.Length][];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
        this.trainX[i] = new double[trainX[0].Length];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" trainX[0].Length; ++j)
          this.trainX[i][j] = trainX[i][j];

      this.trainY = new double[trainY.Length];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" this.trainY.Length; ++i)
        this.trainY[i] = trainY[i];

      // 1. init weights
      this.wts = new double[trainX.Length];
      double lo = -0.10; double hi = 0.10;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" this.wts.Length; ++i)
        this.wts[i] = (hi - lo) *
          this.rnd.NextDouble() + lo;

      // 2. set up indices for shuffling
      int[] indices = new int[trainX.Length];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" indices.Length; ++i)
        indices[i] = i;

      // 3. set up prev weights for auto-exit
      double[] prevWeights = new double[trainX.Length];
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" trainX.Length; ++j)
        prevWeights[j] = this.wts[j];

      // 4. SGD prelim train
      for (int epoch = 0; epoch "lt" maxEpochs; ++epoch)
      {
        Shuffle(indices);
        for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
        {
          int idx = indices[i];
          double[] x = trainX[idx];
          double predY = this.Predict(x);
          double actualY = trainY[idx];

          // update wt assoc with x
          this.wts[idx] -= lrnRate * (predY - actualY);
        } // each item

        if (epoch % freq == 0)
        {
          double rmse = this.MSE(trainX, trainY);
          double acc = this.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
          string s1 = "epoch = " +
            epoch.ToString().PadLeft(6);
          string s2 = " MSE = " +
            rmse.ToString("F4");
          string s3 = " acc = " + acc.ToString("F4");
          Console.WriteLine(s1 + s2 + s3);
        }
                
        // if max_change_in_wts / max_weights "lt" tol
        int numWts = this.wts.Length;
        double[] weightDeltas = new double[numWts];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          weightDeltas[j] = 
            Math.Abs(prevWeights[j] - this.wts[j]);
        double maxChange = weightDeltas[0];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          if (weightDeltas[j] "gt" maxChange)
            maxChange = weightDeltas[j];

        double maxWeightMag = Math.Abs(this.wts[0]);
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          if (Math.Abs(this.wts[j]) "gt" maxWeightMag)
            maxWeightMag = Math.Abs(this.wts[j]);

        if (maxWeightMag != 0.0 &&
          (maxChange / maxWeightMag) "lt" exitTol)
        {
          Console.WriteLine("Auto-exit at epoch " + epoch);
          break;
        }

        // an auto-exit didn't happen
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          prevWeights[j] = this.wts[j];
      
      } // each epoch

      // 5. apply one final wt decay regularization
      // as opposed to small decay after every epoch
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" this.wts.Length; ++j)
        this.wts[j] *= (1.0 - alpha);
      
      // trimming phase

      // 6. find idxs of items that are predicted too well
      // 0 = not supp vec == predicted too well.
      // 1 = supp vec == predicts only OK.
      int[] isSupportVec = new int[trainX.Length]; 
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
      {
        if (Math.Abs(this.Predict(trainX[i]) - 
          trainY[i]) "gt" epsilon)
          isSupportVec[i] = 1; // just OK prediction
      }
      
      // 7. create a new, smaller training dataset
      List"lt"double[]"gt" tmpTrainX = 
        new List"lt"double[]"gt"();
      List"lt"double"gt" tmpTrainY = 
        new List"lt"double"gt"();
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
      {
        if (isSupportVec[i] == 1)
        {
          tmpTrainX.Add(trainX[i]);
          tmpTrainY.Add(trainY[i]);
        }
      }
      double[][] newTrainX = tmpTrainX.ToArray();
      double[] newTrainY = tmpTrainY.ToArray();

      // 8. re-train using new small dataset
      // store trainX -- needed by Predict()
      this.trainX = newTrainX;  // by ref -- could copy
      this.trainY = newTrainY;  // not used this version

      // re-init new, smaller set of weights
      this.wts = new double[newTrainX.Length];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" this.wts.Length; ++i)
        this.wts[i] = (hi - lo) *
          this.rnd.NextDouble() + lo;

      // set up new, small indices for shuffling
      int[] newIndices = new int[newTrainX.Length];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" newIndices.Length; ++i)
        newIndices[i] = i;

      // set up new prev weights for auto-exit
      double[] newPrevWeights = new double[newTrainX.Length];
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" newTrainX.Length; ++j)
        newPrevWeights[j] = this.wts[j];

      // SGD final train
      for (int epoch = 0; epoch "lt" maxEpochs; ++epoch)
      {
        Shuffle(newIndices);
        for (int i = 0; i "lt" newTrainX.Length; ++i)
        {
          int idx = newIndices[i];
          double[] x = newTrainX[idx];
          double predY = this.Predict(x);
          double actualY = newTrainY[idx];

          // update wt assoc with x
          this.wts[idx] -= lrnRate * (predY - actualY);
        } // each item

        // show progress on second SGD
        //if (epoch % freq == 0)
        //{
        //  double rmse = this.MSE(trainX, trainY);
        //  double acc = this.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
        //  string s1 = "epoch = " +
        //    epoch.ToString().PadLeft(6);
        //  string s2 = " MSE = " +
        //    rmse.ToString("F4");
        //  string s3 = " acc = " + acc.ToString("F4");
        //  Console.WriteLine(s1 + s2 + s3);
        //}
                
        // if max_change_in_wts / max_weights "lt" tol
        int numWts = this.wts.Length;
        double[] weightDeltas = new double[numWts];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          weightDeltas[j] = 
            Math.Abs(newPrevWeights[j] - this.wts[j]);
        double maxChange = weightDeltas[0];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          if (weightDeltas[j] "gt" maxChange)
            maxChange = weightDeltas[j];

        double maxWeightMag = Math.Abs(this.wts[0]);
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          if (Math.Abs(this.wts[j]) "gt" maxWeightMag)
            maxWeightMag = Math.Abs(this.wts[j]);

        if (maxWeightMag != 0.0 &&
          (maxChange / maxWeightMag) "lt" exitTol)
        {
          Console.WriteLine("Auto-exit at epoch " + epoch);
          break;
        }

        // an auto-exit didn't happen
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          newPrevWeights[j] = this.wts[j];
      
      } // each epoch

      // apply one final wt decay regularization
      // as opposed to small decay after every epoch
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" this.wts.Length; ++j)
        this.wts[j] *= (1.0 - alpha);

    } // Train()

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private double Rbf(double[] v1, double[] v2)
    {
      // the gamma version aot len_scale version
      int dim = v1.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dim; ++i)
      {
        sum += (v1[i] - v2[i]) * (v1[i] - v2[i]);
      }
      return Math.Exp(-1 * this.gamma * sum);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Predict(double[] x)
    {
      int N = this.trainX.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" N; ++i)
      {
        double[] xx = this.trainX[i];
        double k = this.Rbf(x, xx);
        sum += this.wts[i] * k;
      }
      return sum;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Accuracy(double[][] dataX,
      double[] dataY, double pctClose)
    {
      int numCorrect = 0; int numWrong = 0;
      int n = dataX.Length;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double[] x = dataX[i];
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(x);
        if (Math.Abs(actualY - predY) "lt"
          Math.Abs(actualY * pctClose))
          ++numCorrect;
        else
          ++numWrong;
      }
      return (numCorrect * 1.0) / n;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double MSE(double[][] dataX, double[] dataY)
    {
      double sum = 0.0;
      int n = dataX.Length;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double[] x = dataX[i];
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(x);
        sum += (actualY - predY) * (actualY - predY);
      }
      return sum / n;
    }
  } // class KRR

  // ========================================================

  public class Utils
  {
    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double[][] MatLoad(string fn,
      int[] usecols, char sep, string comment)
    {
      List"lt"double[]"gt" result = 
        new List"lt"double[]"gt"();
      string line = "";
      FileStream ifs = new FileStream(fn, FileMode.Open);
      StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ifs);
      while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
      {
        if (line.StartsWith(comment) == true)
          continue;
        string[] tokens = line.Split(sep);
        List"lt"double"gt" lst = new List"lt"double"gt"();
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" usecols.Length; ++j)
          lst.Add(double.Parse(tokens[usecols[j]]));
        double[] row = lst.ToArray();
        result.Add(row);
      }
      sr.Close(); ifs.Close();
      return result.ToArray();
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double[] MatToVec(double[][] mat)
    {
      int nRows = mat.Length;
      int nCols = mat[0].Length;
      double[] result = new double[nRows * nCols];
      int k = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nCols; ++j)
          result[k++] = mat[i][j];
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static void MatShow(double[][] m, int dec,
      int wid)
    {
      int nRows = m.Length; int nCols = m[0].Length;
      double small = 1.0 / Math.Pow(10, dec);
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
      {
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nCols; ++j)
        {
          double v = m[i][j];
          if (Math.Abs(v) "lt" small) v = 0.0;
          Console.Write(v.ToString("F" + dec).
            PadLeft(wid));
        }
        Console.WriteLine("");
      }
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static void VecShow(double[] vec, int dec,
      int wid)
    {
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" vec.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(vec[i].ToString("F" + dec).
          PadLeft(wid));
      Console.WriteLine("");
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

  } // class Utils

  // ========================================================

} // ns

Training data:

# synthetic_train_200.txt
#
-0.1660,  0.4406, -0.9998, -0.3953, -0.7065,  0.4840
 0.0776, -0.1616,  0.3704, -0.5911,  0.7562,  0.1568
-0.9452,  0.3409, -0.1654,  0.1174, -0.7192,  0.8054
 0.9365, -0.3732,  0.3846,  0.7528,  0.7892,  0.1345
-0.8299, -0.9219, -0.6603,  0.7563, -0.8033,  0.7955
 0.0663,  0.3838, -0.3690,  0.3730,  0.6693,  0.3206
-0.9634,  0.5003,  0.9777,  0.4963, -0.4391,  0.7377
-0.1042,  0.8172, -0.4128, -0.4244, -0.7399,  0.4801
-0.9613,  0.3577, -0.5767, -0.4689, -0.0169,  0.6861
-0.7065,  0.1786,  0.3995, -0.7953, -0.1719,  0.5569
 0.3888, -0.1716, -0.9001,  0.0718,  0.3276,  0.2500
 0.1731,  0.8068, -0.7251, -0.7214,  0.6148,  0.3297
-0.2046, -0.6693,  0.8550, -0.3045,  0.5016,  0.2129
 0.2473,  0.5019, -0.3022, -0.4601,  0.7918,  0.2613
-0.1438,  0.9297,  0.3269,  0.2434, -0.7705,  0.5171
 0.1568, -0.1837, -0.5259,  0.8068,  0.1474,  0.3307
-0.9943,  0.2343, -0.3467,  0.0541,  0.7719,  0.5581
 0.2467, -0.9684,  0.8589,  0.3818,  0.9946,  0.1092
-0.6553, -0.7257,  0.8652,  0.3936, -0.8680,  0.7018
 0.8460,  0.4230, -0.7515, -0.9602, -0.9476,  0.1996
-0.9434, -0.5076,  0.7201,  0.0777,  0.1056,  0.5664
 0.9392,  0.1221, -0.9627,  0.6013, -0.5341,  0.1533
 0.6142, -0.2243,  0.7271,  0.4942,  0.1125,  0.1661
 0.4260,  0.1194, -0.9749, -0.8561,  0.9346,  0.2230
 0.1362, -0.5934, -0.4953,  0.4877, -0.6091,  0.3810
 0.6937, -0.5203, -0.0125,  0.2399,  0.6580,  0.1460
-0.6864, -0.9628, -0.8600, -0.0273,  0.2127,  0.5387
 0.9772,  0.1595, -0.2397,  0.1019,  0.4907,  0.1611
 0.3385, -0.4702, -0.8673, -0.2598,  0.2594,  0.2270
-0.8669, -0.4794,  0.6095, -0.6131,  0.2789,  0.4700
 0.0493,  0.8496, -0.4734, -0.8681,  0.4701,  0.3516
 0.8639, -0.9721, -0.5313,  0.2336,  0.8980,  0.1412
 0.9004,  0.1133,  0.8312,  0.2831, -0.2200,  0.1782
 0.0991,  0.8524,  0.8375, -0.2102,  0.9265,  0.2150
-0.6521, -0.7473, -0.7298,  0.0113, -0.9570,  0.7422
 0.6190, -0.3105,  0.8802,  0.1640,  0.7577,  0.1056
 0.6895,  0.8108, -0.0802,  0.0927,  0.5972,  0.2214
 0.1982, -0.9689,  0.1870, -0.1326,  0.6147,  0.1310
-0.3695,  0.7858,  0.1557, -0.6320,  0.5759,  0.3773
-0.1596,  0.3581,  0.8372, -0.9992,  0.9535,  0.2071
-0.2468,  0.9476,  0.2094,  0.6577,  0.1494,  0.4132
 0.1737,  0.5000,  0.7166,  0.5102,  0.3961,  0.2611
 0.7290, -0.3546,  0.3416, -0.0983, -0.2358,  0.1332
-0.3652,  0.2438, -0.1395,  0.9476,  0.3556,  0.4170
-0.6029, -0.1466, -0.3133,  0.5953,  0.7600,  0.4334
-0.4596, -0.4953,  0.7098,  0.0554,  0.6043,  0.2775
 0.1450,  0.4663,  0.0380,  0.5418,  0.1377,  0.2931
-0.8636, -0.2442, -0.8407,  0.9656, -0.6368,  0.7429
 0.6237,  0.7499,  0.3768,  0.1390, -0.6781,  0.2185
-0.5499,  0.1850, -0.3755,  0.8326,  0.8193,  0.4399
-0.4858, -0.7782, -0.6141, -0.0008,  0.4572,  0.4197
 0.7033, -0.1683,  0.2334, -0.5327, -0.7961,  0.1776
 0.0317, -0.0457, -0.6947,  0.2436,  0.0880,  0.3345
 0.5031, -0.5559,  0.0387,  0.5706, -0.9553,  0.3107
-0.3513,  0.7458,  0.6894,  0.0769,  0.7332,  0.3170
 0.2205,  0.5992, -0.9309,  0.5405,  0.4635,  0.3532
-0.4806, -0.4859,  0.2646, -0.3094,  0.5932,  0.3202
 0.9809, -0.3995, -0.7140,  0.8026,  0.0831,  0.1600
 0.9495,  0.2732,  0.9878,  0.0921,  0.0529,  0.1289
-0.9476, -0.6792,  0.4913, -0.9392, -0.2669,  0.5966
 0.7247,  0.3854,  0.3819, -0.6227, -0.1162,  0.1550
-0.5922, -0.5045, -0.4757,  0.5003, -0.0860,  0.5863
-0.8861,  0.0170, -0.5761,  0.5972, -0.4053,  0.7301
 0.6877, -0.2380,  0.4997,  0.0223,  0.0819,  0.1404
 0.9189,  0.6079, -0.9354,  0.4188, -0.0700,  0.1907
-0.1428, -0.7820,  0.2676,  0.6059,  0.3936,  0.2790
 0.5324, -0.3151,  0.6917, -0.1425,  0.6480,  0.1071
-0.8432, -0.9633, -0.8666, -0.0828, -0.7733,  0.7784
-0.9444,  0.5097, -0.2103,  0.4939, -0.0952,  0.6787
-0.0520,  0.6063, -0.1952,  0.8094, -0.9259,  0.4836
 0.5477, -0.7487,  0.2370, -0.9793,  0.0773,  0.1241
 0.2450,  0.8116,  0.9799,  0.4222,  0.4636,  0.2355
 0.8186, -0.1983, -0.5003, -0.6531, -0.7611,  0.1511
-0.4714,  0.6382, -0.3788,  0.9648, -0.4667,  0.5950
 0.0673, -0.3711,  0.8215, -0.2669, -0.1328,  0.2677
-0.9381,  0.4338,  0.7820, -0.9454,  0.0441,  0.5518
-0.3480,  0.7190,  0.1170,  0.3805, -0.0943,  0.4724
-0.9813,  0.1535, -0.3771,  0.0345,  0.8328,  0.5438
-0.1471, -0.5052, -0.2574,  0.8637,  0.8737,  0.3042
-0.5454, -0.3712, -0.6505,  0.2142, -0.1728,  0.5783
 0.6327, -0.6297,  0.4038, -0.5193,  0.1484,  0.1153
-0.5424,  0.3282, -0.0055,  0.0380, -0.6506,  0.6613
 0.1414,  0.9935,  0.6337,  0.1887,  0.9520,  0.2540
-0.9351, -0.8128, -0.8693, -0.0965, -0.2491,  0.7353
 0.9507, -0.6640,  0.9456,  0.5349,  0.6485,  0.1059
-0.0462, -0.9737, -0.2940, -0.0159,  0.4602,  0.2606
-0.0627, -0.0852, -0.7247, -0.9782,  0.5166,  0.2977
 0.0478,  0.5098, -0.0723, -0.7504, -0.3750,  0.3335
 0.0090,  0.3477,  0.5403, -0.7393, -0.9542,  0.4415
-0.9748,  0.3449,  0.3736, -0.1015,  0.8296,  0.4358
 0.2887, -0.9895, -0.0311,  0.7186,  0.6608,  0.2057
 0.1570, -0.4518,  0.1211,  0.3435, -0.2951,  0.3244
 0.7117, -0.6099,  0.4946, -0.4208,  0.5476,  0.1096
-0.2929, -0.5726,  0.5346, -0.3827,  0.4665,  0.2465
 0.4889, -0.5572, -0.5718, -0.6021, -0.7150,  0.2163
-0.7782,  0.3491,  0.5996, -0.8389, -0.5366,  0.6516
-0.5847,  0.8347,  0.4226,  0.1078, -0.3910,  0.6134
 0.8469,  0.4121, -0.0439, -0.7476,  0.9521,  0.1571
-0.6803, -0.5948, -0.1376, -0.1916, -0.7065,  0.7156
 0.2878,  0.5086, -0.5785,  0.2019,  0.4979,  0.2980
 0.2764,  0.1943, -0.4090,  0.4632,  0.8906,  0.2960
-0.8877,  0.6705, -0.6155, -0.2098, -0.3998,  0.7107
-0.8398,  0.8093, -0.2597,  0.0614, -0.0118,  0.6502
-0.8476,  0.0158, -0.4769, -0.2859, -0.7839,  0.7715
 0.5751, -0.7868,  0.9714, -0.6457,  0.1448,  0.1175
 0.4802, -0.7001,  0.1022, -0.5668,  0.5184,  0.1090
 0.4458, -0.6469,  0.7239, -0.9604,  0.7205,  0.0779
 0.5175,  0.4339,  0.9747, -0.4438, -0.9924,  0.2879
 0.8678,  0.7158,  0.4577,  0.0334,  0.4139,  0.1678
 0.5406,  0.5012,  0.2264, -0.1963,  0.3946,  0.2088
-0.9938,  0.5498,  0.7928, -0.5214, -0.7585,  0.7687
 0.7661,  0.0863, -0.4266, -0.7233, -0.4197,  0.1466
 0.2277, -0.3517, -0.0853, -0.1118,  0.6563,  0.1767
 0.3499, -0.5570, -0.0655, -0.3705,  0.2537,  0.1632
 0.7547, -0.1046,  0.5689, -0.0861,  0.3125,  0.1257
 0.8186,  0.2110,  0.5335,  0.0094, -0.0039,  0.1391
 0.6858, -0.8644,  0.1465,  0.8855,  0.0357,  0.1845
-0.4967,  0.4015,  0.0805,  0.8977,  0.2487,  0.4663
 0.6760, -0.9841,  0.9787, -0.8446, -0.3557,  0.1509
-0.1203, -0.4885,  0.6054, -0.0443, -0.7313,  0.4854
 0.8557,  0.7919, -0.0169,  0.7134, -0.1628,  0.2002
 0.0115, -0.6209,  0.9300, -0.4116, -0.7931,  0.4052
-0.7114, -0.9718,  0.4319,  0.1290,  0.5892,  0.3661
 0.3915,  0.5557, -0.1870,  0.2955, -0.6404,  0.2954
-0.3564, -0.6548, -0.1827, -0.5172, -0.1862,  0.4622
 0.2392, -0.4959,  0.5857, -0.1341, -0.2850,  0.2470
-0.3394,  0.3947, -0.4627,  0.6166, -0.4094,  0.5325
 0.7107,  0.7768, -0.6312,  0.1707,  0.7964,  0.2757
-0.1078,  0.8437, -0.4420,  0.2177,  0.3649,  0.4028
-0.3139,  0.5595, -0.6505, -0.3161, -0.7108,  0.5546
 0.4335,  0.3986,  0.3770, -0.4932,  0.3847,  0.1810
-0.2562, -0.2894, -0.8847,  0.2633,  0.4146,  0.4036
 0.2272,  0.2966, -0.6601, -0.7011,  0.0284,  0.2778
-0.0743, -0.1421, -0.0054, -0.6770, -0.3151,  0.3597
-0.4762,  0.6891,  0.6007, -0.1467,  0.2140,  0.4266
-0.4061,  0.7193,  0.3432,  0.2669, -0.7505,  0.6147
-0.0588,  0.9731,  0.8966,  0.2902, -0.6966,  0.4955
-0.0627, -0.1439,  0.1985,  0.6999,  0.5022,  0.3077
 0.1587,  0.8494, -0.8705,  0.9827, -0.8940,  0.4263
-0.7850,  0.2473, -0.9040, -0.4308, -0.8779,  0.7199
 0.4070,  0.3369, -0.2428, -0.6236,  0.4940,  0.2215
-0.0242,  0.0513, -0.9430,  0.2885, -0.2987,  0.3947
-0.5416, -0.1322, -0.2351, -0.0604,  0.9590,  0.3683
 0.1055,  0.7783, -0.2901, -0.5090,  0.8220,  0.2984
-0.9129,  0.9015,  0.1128, -0.2473,  0.9901,  0.4776
-0.9378,  0.1424, -0.6391,  0.2619,  0.9618,  0.5368
 0.7498, -0.0963,  0.4169,  0.5549, -0.0103,  0.1614
-0.2612, -0.7156,  0.4538, -0.0460, -0.1022,  0.3717
 0.7720,  0.0552, -0.1818, -0.4622, -0.8560,  0.1685
-0.4177,  0.0070,  0.9319, -0.7812,  0.3461,  0.3052
-0.0001,  0.5542, -0.7128, -0.8336, -0.2016,  0.3803
 0.5356, -0.4194, -0.5662, -0.9666, -0.2027,  0.1776
-0.2378,  0.3187, -0.8582, -0.6948, -0.9668,  0.5474
-0.1947, -0.3579,  0.1158,  0.9869,  0.6690,  0.2992
 0.3992,  0.8365, -0.9205, -0.8593, -0.0520,  0.3154
-0.0209,  0.0793,  0.7905, -0.1067,  0.7541,  0.1864
-0.4928, -0.4524, -0.3433,  0.0951, -0.5597,  0.6261
-0.8118,  0.7404, -0.5263, -0.2280,  0.1431,  0.6349
 0.0516, -0.8480,  0.7483,  0.9023,  0.6250,  0.1959
-0.3212,  0.1093,  0.9488, -0.3766,  0.3376,  0.2735
-0.3481,  0.5490, -0.3484,  0.7797,  0.5034,  0.4379
-0.5785, -0.9170, -0.3563, -0.9258,  0.3877,  0.4121
 0.3407, -0.1391,  0.5356,  0.0720, -0.9203,  0.3458
-0.3287, -0.8954,  0.2102,  0.0241,  0.2349,  0.3247
-0.1353,  0.6954, -0.0919, -0.9692,  0.7461,  0.3338
 0.9036, -0.8982, -0.5299, -0.8733, -0.1567,  0.1187
 0.7277, -0.8368, -0.0538, -0.7489,  0.5458,  0.0830
 0.9049,  0.8878,  0.2279,  0.9470, -0.3103,  0.2194
 0.7957, -0.1308, -0.5284,  0.8817,  0.3684,  0.2172
 0.4647, -0.4931,  0.2010,  0.6292, -0.8918,  0.3371
-0.7390,  0.6849,  0.2367,  0.0626, -0.5034,  0.7039
-0.1567, -0.8711,  0.7940, -0.5932,  0.6525,  0.1710
 0.7635, -0.0265,  0.1969,  0.0545,  0.2496,  0.1445
 0.7675,  0.1354, -0.7698, -0.5460,  0.1920,  0.1728
-0.5211, -0.7372, -0.6763,  0.6897,  0.2044,  0.5217
 0.1913,  0.1980,  0.2314, -0.8816,  0.5006,  0.1998
 0.8964,  0.0694, -0.6149,  0.5059, -0.9854,  0.1825
 0.1767,  0.7104,  0.2093,  0.6452,  0.7590,  0.2832
-0.3580, -0.7541,  0.4426, -0.1193, -0.7465,  0.5657
-0.5996,  0.5766, -0.9758, -0.3933, -0.9572,  0.6800
 0.9950,  0.1641, -0.4132,  0.8579,  0.0142,  0.2003
-0.4717, -0.3894, -0.2567, -0.5111,  0.1691,  0.4266
 0.3917, -0.8561,  0.9422,  0.5061,  0.6123,  0.1212
-0.0366, -0.1087,  0.3449, -0.1025,  0.4086,  0.2475
 0.3633,  0.3943,  0.2372, -0.6980,  0.5216,  0.1925
-0.5325, -0.6466, -0.2178, -0.3589,  0.6310,  0.3568
 0.2271,  0.5200, -0.1447, -0.8011, -0.7699,  0.3128
 0.6415,  0.1993,  0.3777, -0.0178, -0.8237,  0.2181
-0.5298, -0.0768, -0.6028, -0.9490,  0.4588,  0.4356
 0.6870, -0.1431,  0.7294,  0.3141,  0.1621,  0.1632
-0.5985,  0.0591,  0.7889, -0.3900,  0.7419,  0.2945
 0.3661,  0.7984, -0.8486,  0.7572, -0.6183,  0.3449
 0.6995,  0.3342, -0.3113, -0.6972,  0.2707,  0.1712
 0.2565,  0.9126,  0.1798, -0.6043, -0.1413,  0.2893
-0.3265,  0.9839, -0.2395,  0.9854,  0.0376,  0.4770
 0.2690, -0.1722,  0.9818,  0.8599, -0.7015,  0.3954
-0.2102, -0.0768,  0.1219,  0.5607, -0.0256,  0.3949
 0.8216, -0.9555,  0.6422, -0.6231,  0.3715,  0.0801
-0.2896,  0.9484, -0.7545, -0.6249,  0.7789,  0.4370
-0.9985, -0.5448, -0.7092, -0.5931,  0.7926,  0.5402

Test data:

# synthetic_test_40.txt
#
 0.7462,  0.4006, -0.0590,  0.6543, -0.0083,  0.1935
 0.8495, -0.2260, -0.0142, -0.4911,  0.7699,  0.1078
-0.2335, -0.4049,  0.4352, -0.6183, -0.7636,  0.5088
 0.1810, -0.5142,  0.2465,  0.2767, -0.3449,  0.3136
-0.8650,  0.7611, -0.0801,  0.5277, -0.4922,  0.7140
-0.2358, -0.7466, -0.5115, -0.8413, -0.3943,  0.4533
 0.4834,  0.2300,  0.3448, -0.9832,  0.3568,  0.1360
-0.6502, -0.6300,  0.6885,  0.9652,  0.8275,  0.3046
-0.3053,  0.5604,  0.0929,  0.6329, -0.0325,  0.4756
-0.7995,  0.0740, -0.2680,  0.2086,  0.9176,  0.4565
-0.2144, -0.2141,  0.5813,  0.2902, -0.2122,  0.4119
-0.7278, -0.0987, -0.3312, -0.5641,  0.8515,  0.4438
 0.3793,  0.1976,  0.4933,  0.0839,  0.4011,  0.1905
-0.8568,  0.9573, -0.5272,  0.3212, -0.8207,  0.7415
-0.5785,  0.0056, -0.7901, -0.2223,  0.0760,  0.5551
 0.0735, -0.2188,  0.3925,  0.3570,  0.3746,  0.2191
 0.1230, -0.2838,  0.2262,  0.8715,  0.1938,  0.2878
 0.4792, -0.9248,  0.5295,  0.0366, -0.9894,  0.3149
-0.4456,  0.0697,  0.5359, -0.8938,  0.0981,  0.3879
 0.8629, -0.8505, -0.4464,  0.8385,  0.5300,  0.1769
 0.1995,  0.6659,  0.7921,  0.9454,  0.9970,  0.2330
-0.0249, -0.3066, -0.2927, -0.4923,  0.8220,  0.2437
 0.4513, -0.9481, -0.0770, -0.4374, -0.9421,  0.2879
-0.3405,  0.5931, -0.3507, -0.3842,  0.8562,  0.3987
 0.9538,  0.0471,  0.9039,  0.7760,  0.0361,  0.1706
-0.0887,  0.2104,  0.9808,  0.5478, -0.3314,  0.4128
-0.8220, -0.6302,  0.0537, -0.1658,  0.6013,  0.4306
-0.4123, -0.2880,  0.9074, -0.0461, -0.4435,  0.5144
 0.0060,  0.2867, -0.7775,  0.5161,  0.7039,  0.3599
-0.7968, -0.5484,  0.9426, -0.4308,  0.8148,  0.2979
 0.7811,  0.8450, -0.6877,  0.7594,  0.2640,  0.2362
-0.6802, -0.1113, -0.8325, -0.6694, -0.6056,  0.6544
 0.3821,  0.1476,  0.7466, -0.5107,  0.2592,  0.1648
 0.7265,  0.9683, -0.9803, -0.4943, -0.5523,  0.2454
-0.9049, -0.9797, -0.0196, -0.9090, -0.4433,  0.6447
-0.4607,  0.1811, -0.2389,  0.4050, -0.0078,  0.5229
 0.2664, -0.2932, -0.4259, -0.7336,  0.8742,  0.1834
-0.4507,  0.1029, -0.6294, -0.1158, -0.6294,  0.6081
 0.8948, -0.0124,  0.9278,  0.2899, -0.0314,  0.1534
-0.1323, -0.8813, -0.0146, -0.0697,  0.6135,  0.2386

One night, I just couldn’t sleep. So I thought about program design and the C# “dynamic” keyword. (My life would be considered sad by most people, but I’m happy with it).

My standard machine learning regression system implemented in C# looks like:

using Sysem;

class Program
{
  static void Main(string[] args)
  {
    // all IO and control logic here
  }
  // helper methods for Main()
} 

class SomeKindRegressor
{
  // fields here
  public SomeKindRegresssor() { . . } // ctor
  public void Train() { . . }
  public double Predict() { . . }
  public double Accuracy() { . . }
  public double MSE() { . . }
  // helper methods here
}

class HelperClass
{
  // matrix inverse, etc.
}

I put the Accuracy() and MSE() methods inside the regressor class, the idea being that these two methods are essential. So, they might be called like:

. . .
model = SomeKindRegressor();
model.Train(trainX, trainY); // possibly call, display MSE()
double trainAcc = model.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
. . .

But, in addition to Accuracy() and MSE(), there are a lot other evaluation methods that are sometimes needed, for example RootMSE(), BaselineAccuracy(), R2(), and so on. So I decided to implement a demo that puts these secondary evaluation metrics in a separate utility class:

class Evaluation
{
  public static RootMSE(dynamic model,
    double[][] dataX, data[]Y)
  {
    . . 
    double predY = model.Predict(dataX[0]);
    . . 
    return result;
  }

  // other methods here
}

The C# “dynamic” keyword for an arbitrary object is similar to the “var” keyword for an arbitrary data type. This allows one evaluation metric, that can be used by any program-defined regression model object to be defined, instead of a different method for every regressor class. This design assumes that every regression class has a Predict() method.

Then, the evaluation methods would be called like:

model = SomeKindRegressor();
model.Train(trainX, trainY); // possibly call, display MSE()
double trainAcc = model.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
double trainRMSE = Evaluation.RMSE(model, trainX, trainY);
. . .

I put together a demo. The output is:

Begin C# linear regression evaluation metrics

Loading synthetic train (200) and test (40) data
Done

First three train X:
 -0.1660  0.4406 -0.9998 -0.3953 -0.7065
  0.0776 -0.1616  0.3704 -0.5911  0.7562
 -0.9452  0.3409 -0.1654  0.1174 -0.7192

First three train y:
  0.4840
  0.1568
  0.8054

Creating and training  model using SGD

Setting lrnRate = 0.0010
Setting maxEpohcs = 1000
epoch =     0  MSE =   0.1132
epoch =   200  MSE =   0.0026
epoch =   400  MSE =   0.0026
epoch =   600  MSE =   0.0026
epoch =   800  MSE =   0.0026
Done

SGD trained weights:
-0.2656  0.0333  -0.0453  0.0358  -0.1146
Bias/constant: 0.3619

Evaluating SGD model using core metrics

Accuracy train (within 0.10) = 0.4600
Accuracy test (within 0.10) = 0.6500

MSE train = 0.0026
MSE test = 0.0020

Evaluating SGD model using secondary metrics

R2 train = 0.9267
R2 test = 0.9300

Baseline accuracy train (within 0.10) = 0.1100

End demo

An interesting investigation.

I’ve always been fascinated by aircraft design. Here are three designs of U.S. fighter jets that are very beautiful to my eye. Left: North American F-86 Sabre from the 1950s. Center: Lockheed F-104 Starfighter from the 1960s. Right: General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon from the 1970s (and still being made today).

Demo program. Replace “lt” (less than), “gt”, “lte”, “gte” with Boolean operator symbols (my editor chokes on symbols).

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace LinearRegressionEvaluationMetrics
{
  internal class LinearRegressionProgram
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("\nBegin C# linear regression" +
        " evaluation metrics ");

      // 1. load data
      Console.WriteLine("\nLoading synthetic train" +
        " (200) and test (40) data");
      string trainFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_train_200.txt";
      int[] colsX = new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 };
      double[][] trainX =
        MatLoad(trainFile, colsX, ',', "#");
      double[] trainY =
        MatToVec(MatLoad(trainFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));

      string testFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_test_40.txt";
      double[][] testX =
        MatLoad(testFile, colsX, ',', "#");
      double[] testY =
        MatToVec(MatLoad(testFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three train X: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        VecShow(trainX[i], 4, 8);

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three train y: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        Console.WriteLine(trainY[i].ToString("F4").
          PadLeft(8));

      // 2. create and train model
      Console.WriteLine("\nCreating and training" +
        "  model using SGD ");

      double lrnRate = 0.001;
      int maxEpochs = 1000;
      //int seed = 0;
      Console.WriteLine("\nSetting lrnRate = " +
        lrnRate.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Setting maxEpohcs = " +
        maxEpochs);

      LinearRegressor model =
        new LinearRegressor();
      model.TrainSGD(trainX, trainY, lrnRate, maxEpochs);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      // 2b.show model parameters
      Console.WriteLine("\nSGD trained weights: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" model.weights.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(model.weights[i].ToString("F4") + "  ");
      Console.WriteLine("\nBias/constant: " +
        model.bias.ToString("F4"));

      // 3. evaluate model
      Console.WriteLine("\nEvaluating SGD model using" +
        " core metrics ");

      double accTrain = model.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("\nAccuracy train (within 0.10) = " +
        accTrain.ToString("F4"));
      double accTest = model.Accuracy(testX, testY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("Accuracy test (within 0.10) = " +
        accTest.ToString("F4"));

      double mseTrain = model.MSE(trainX, trainY);
      Console.WriteLine("\nMSE train = " +
        mseTrain.ToString("F4"));
      double mseTest = model.MSE(testX, testY);
      Console.WriteLine("MSE test = " +
        mseTest.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nEvaluating SGD model using" +
        " secondary metrics ");

      double r2Train = Eval.R2(model, trainX, trainY);
      Console.WriteLine("\nR2 train = " +
        r2Train.ToString("F4"));
      double r2Test = Eval.R2(model, testX, testY);
      Console.WriteLine("R2 test = " +
        r2Test.ToString("F4"));

      double baseAccTrain =
        Eval.BaselineAccuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("\nBaseline accuracy train " +
        "(within 0.10) = " + baseAccTrain.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nEnd demo ");
      Console.ReadLine();
    } // Main

    // ------------------------------------------------------
    // helpers for Main()
    // ------------------------------------------------------

    static double[][] MatLoad(string fn, int[] usecols,
      char sep, string comment)
    {
      List"lt"double[]"gt" result = 
        new List"lt"double[]"gt"();
      string line = "";
      FileStream ifs = new FileStream(fn, FileMode.Open);
      StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ifs);
      while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
      {
        if (line.StartsWith(comment) == true)
          continue;
        string[] tokens = line.Split(sep);
        List"lt"double"gt" lst = new List"lt"double"gt"();
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" usecols.Length; ++j)
          lst.Add(double.Parse(tokens[usecols[j]]));
        double[] row = lst.ToArray();
        result.Add(row);
      }
      sr.Close(); ifs.Close();
      return result.ToArray();
    }

    static double[] MatToVec(double[][] M)
    {
      int nRows = M.Length;
      int nCols = M[0].Length;
      double[] result = new double[nRows * nCols];
      int k = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nCols; ++j)
          result[k++] = M[i][j];
      return result;
    }

    static void VecShow(double[] vec, int dec, int wid)
    {
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" vec.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(vec[i].ToString("F" + dec).
          PadLeft(wid));
      Console.WriteLine("");
    }
  } // class Program

  public class LinearRegressor
  {
    public double[] weights;
    public double bias;
    private Random rnd;

    public LinearRegressor(int seed = 0)
    {
      this.weights = new double[0]; // keep compiler happy
      this.bias = 0;
      this.rnd = new Random(seed);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public void TrainSGD(double[][] trainX,
      double[] trainY, double lrnRate, int maxEpochs)
    {
      int n = trainX.Length; int dim = trainX[0].Length;
      this.weights = new double[dim];

      // initialize weights and bias
      double low = -0.01; double hi = 0.01;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dim; ++i)
        this.weights[i] = (hi - low) *
          this.rnd.NextDouble() + low;
      this.bias = (hi - low) *
          this.rnd.NextDouble() + low;

      int[] indices = new int[n];  // of train data
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        indices[i] = i;

      for (int epoch = 0; epoch "lt" maxEpochs; ++epoch)
      {
        this.Shuffle(indices);

        for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i) // each train item
        {
          int ii = indices[i];
          double[] x = trainX[ii];
          double predY = this.Predict(x);
          double actualY = trainY[ii];
          for (int j = 0; j "lt" dim; ++j) // each weight
            this.weights[j] -= lrnRate *
              (predY - actualY) * x[j];
          this.bias -= lrnRate * (predY - actualY);
        }
        if (epoch % (int)(maxEpochs / 5) == 0) // progress
        {
          double mse = this.MSE(trainX, trainY); // core
          string s = "";
          s += "epoch = " + epoch.ToString().PadLeft(5);
          s += "  MSE = " + mse.ToString("F4").PadLeft(8);
          Console.WriteLine(s);
        }
      }
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private void Shuffle(int[] indices)
    {
      // Fisher-Yates
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" indices.Length; ++i)
      {
        int ri = this.rnd.Next(i, indices.Length);
        int tmp = indices[i];
        indices[i] = indices[ri];
        indices[ri] = tmp;
      }
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Predict(double[] x)
    {
      double result = 0.0;
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" x.Length; ++j)
        result += x[j] * this.weights[j];
      result += this.bias;
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Accuracy(double[][] dataX, double[] dataY,
      double pctClose)
    {
      int numCorrect = 0; int numWrong = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dataX.Length; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(dataX[i]);
        if (Math.Abs(predY - actualY) "lt"
          Math.Abs(pctClose * actualY))
          ++numCorrect;
        else
          ++numWrong;
      }
      return (numCorrect * 1.0) / (numWrong + numCorrect);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double MSE(double[][] dataX, double[] dataY)
    {
      int n = dataX.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(dataX[i]);
        sum += (actualY - predY) * (actualY - predY);
      }
      return sum / n;
    }

  } // class LinearRegressor

  // ========================================================

  public class Eval
  {
    // secondary model evaluation metrics
    // uses 'dynamic' keyword (C# 4.0, 2010 and later)

    public static double R2(dynamic model,
      double[][] dataX, double[] dataY)
    {
      // R2 = 1.0 – (u / v)
      // where u = sum(y – y')^2 and v = sum(y – y”)^2,
      // y = actual y, y' = predicted y, y'' = mean y
      int n = dataX.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;

      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        sum += dataY[i];
      double meanY = sum / n;

      double sumTop = 0.0; // u
      double sumBot = 0.0; // v
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double predY = model.Predict(dataX[i]);
        sumTop +=
          (dataY[i] - predY) * (dataY[i] - predY);
        sumBot +=
          (dataY[i] - meanY) * (dataY[i] - meanY);
      }
      return 1.0 - (sumTop / sumBot);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double RootMSE(dynamic model,
      double[][] dataX, double[] dataY)
    {
      int n = dataX.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = model.Predict(dataX[i]);
        sum += (actualY - predY) * (actualY - predY);
      }
      double mse = sum / n;
      return Math.Sqrt(mse);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double BaselineAccuracy(double[][] dataX,
      double[] dataY, double pctClose)
    {
      // compute avg of y values
      int n = dataY.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;

      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        sum += dataY[i];
      double meanY = sum / n;

      // always predict the mean
      int numCorrect = 0; int numWrong = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dataX.Length; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = meanY;
        if (Math.Abs(predY - actualY) "lt"
          Math.Abs(pctClose * actualY))
          ++numCorrect;
        else
          ++numWrong;
      }
      return (numCorrect * 1.0) / (numWrong + numCorrect);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double BaselineMSE(double[][] dataX,
      double[] dataY)
    {
      // compute avg of y values
      int n = dataY.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;

      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        sum += dataY[i];
      double meanY = sum / n;

      // always predict the mean
      sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = meanY;
        sum += (actualY - predY) * (actualY - predY);
      }
      return sum / n;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

  } // class Eval

} // ns

Trainining data:

# synthetic_train_200.txt
#
-0.1660,  0.4406, -0.9998, -0.3953, -0.7065,  0.4840
 0.0776, -0.1616,  0.3704, -0.5911,  0.7562,  0.1568
-0.9452,  0.3409, -0.1654,  0.1174, -0.7192,  0.8054
 0.9365, -0.3732,  0.3846,  0.7528,  0.7892,  0.1345
-0.8299, -0.9219, -0.6603,  0.7563, -0.8033,  0.7955
 0.0663,  0.3838, -0.3690,  0.3730,  0.6693,  0.3206
-0.9634,  0.5003,  0.9777,  0.4963, -0.4391,  0.7377
-0.1042,  0.8172, -0.4128, -0.4244, -0.7399,  0.4801
-0.9613,  0.3577, -0.5767, -0.4689, -0.0169,  0.6861
-0.7065,  0.1786,  0.3995, -0.7953, -0.1719,  0.5569
 0.3888, -0.1716, -0.9001,  0.0718,  0.3276,  0.2500
 0.1731,  0.8068, -0.7251, -0.7214,  0.6148,  0.3297
-0.2046, -0.6693,  0.8550, -0.3045,  0.5016,  0.2129
 0.2473,  0.5019, -0.3022, -0.4601,  0.7918,  0.2613
-0.1438,  0.9297,  0.3269,  0.2434, -0.7705,  0.5171
 0.1568, -0.1837, -0.5259,  0.8068,  0.1474,  0.3307
-0.9943,  0.2343, -0.3467,  0.0541,  0.7719,  0.5581
 0.2467, -0.9684,  0.8589,  0.3818,  0.9946,  0.1092
-0.6553, -0.7257,  0.8652,  0.3936, -0.8680,  0.7018
 0.8460,  0.4230, -0.7515, -0.9602, -0.9476,  0.1996
-0.9434, -0.5076,  0.7201,  0.0777,  0.1056,  0.5664
 0.9392,  0.1221, -0.9627,  0.6013, -0.5341,  0.1533
 0.6142, -0.2243,  0.7271,  0.4942,  0.1125,  0.1661
 0.4260,  0.1194, -0.9749, -0.8561,  0.9346,  0.2230
 0.1362, -0.5934, -0.4953,  0.4877, -0.6091,  0.3810
 0.6937, -0.5203, -0.0125,  0.2399,  0.6580,  0.1460
-0.6864, -0.9628, -0.8600, -0.0273,  0.2127,  0.5387
 0.9772,  0.1595, -0.2397,  0.1019,  0.4907,  0.1611
 0.3385, -0.4702, -0.8673, -0.2598,  0.2594,  0.2270
-0.8669, -0.4794,  0.6095, -0.6131,  0.2789,  0.4700
 0.0493,  0.8496, -0.4734, -0.8681,  0.4701,  0.3516
 0.8639, -0.9721, -0.5313,  0.2336,  0.8980,  0.1412
 0.9004,  0.1133,  0.8312,  0.2831, -0.2200,  0.1782
 0.0991,  0.8524,  0.8375, -0.2102,  0.9265,  0.2150
-0.6521, -0.7473, -0.7298,  0.0113, -0.9570,  0.7422
 0.6190, -0.3105,  0.8802,  0.1640,  0.7577,  0.1056
 0.6895,  0.8108, -0.0802,  0.0927,  0.5972,  0.2214
 0.1982, -0.9689,  0.1870, -0.1326,  0.6147,  0.1310
-0.3695,  0.7858,  0.1557, -0.6320,  0.5759,  0.3773
-0.1596,  0.3581,  0.8372, -0.9992,  0.9535,  0.2071
-0.2468,  0.9476,  0.2094,  0.6577,  0.1494,  0.4132
 0.1737,  0.5000,  0.7166,  0.5102,  0.3961,  0.2611
 0.7290, -0.3546,  0.3416, -0.0983, -0.2358,  0.1332
-0.3652,  0.2438, -0.1395,  0.9476,  0.3556,  0.4170
-0.6029, -0.1466, -0.3133,  0.5953,  0.7600,  0.4334
-0.4596, -0.4953,  0.7098,  0.0554,  0.6043,  0.2775
 0.1450,  0.4663,  0.0380,  0.5418,  0.1377,  0.2931
-0.8636, -0.2442, -0.8407,  0.9656, -0.6368,  0.7429
 0.6237,  0.7499,  0.3768,  0.1390, -0.6781,  0.2185
-0.5499,  0.1850, -0.3755,  0.8326,  0.8193,  0.4399
-0.4858, -0.7782, -0.6141, -0.0008,  0.4572,  0.4197
 0.7033, -0.1683,  0.2334, -0.5327, -0.7961,  0.1776
 0.0317, -0.0457, -0.6947,  0.2436,  0.0880,  0.3345
 0.5031, -0.5559,  0.0387,  0.5706, -0.9553,  0.3107
-0.3513,  0.7458,  0.6894,  0.0769,  0.7332,  0.3170
 0.2205,  0.5992, -0.9309,  0.5405,  0.4635,  0.3532
-0.4806, -0.4859,  0.2646, -0.3094,  0.5932,  0.3202
 0.9809, -0.3995, -0.7140,  0.8026,  0.0831,  0.1600
 0.9495,  0.2732,  0.9878,  0.0921,  0.0529,  0.1289
-0.9476, -0.6792,  0.4913, -0.9392, -0.2669,  0.5966
 0.7247,  0.3854,  0.3819, -0.6227, -0.1162,  0.1550
-0.5922, -0.5045, -0.4757,  0.5003, -0.0860,  0.5863
-0.8861,  0.0170, -0.5761,  0.5972, -0.4053,  0.7301
 0.6877, -0.2380,  0.4997,  0.0223,  0.0819,  0.1404
 0.9189,  0.6079, -0.9354,  0.4188, -0.0700,  0.1907
-0.1428, -0.7820,  0.2676,  0.6059,  0.3936,  0.2790
 0.5324, -0.3151,  0.6917, -0.1425,  0.6480,  0.1071
-0.8432, -0.9633, -0.8666, -0.0828, -0.7733,  0.7784
-0.9444,  0.5097, -0.2103,  0.4939, -0.0952,  0.6787
-0.0520,  0.6063, -0.1952,  0.8094, -0.9259,  0.4836
 0.5477, -0.7487,  0.2370, -0.9793,  0.0773,  0.1241
 0.2450,  0.8116,  0.9799,  0.4222,  0.4636,  0.2355
 0.8186, -0.1983, -0.5003, -0.6531, -0.7611,  0.1511
-0.4714,  0.6382, -0.3788,  0.9648, -0.4667,  0.5950
 0.0673, -0.3711,  0.8215, -0.2669, -0.1328,  0.2677
-0.9381,  0.4338,  0.7820, -0.9454,  0.0441,  0.5518
-0.3480,  0.7190,  0.1170,  0.3805, -0.0943,  0.4724
-0.9813,  0.1535, -0.3771,  0.0345,  0.8328,  0.5438
-0.1471, -0.5052, -0.2574,  0.8637,  0.8737,  0.3042
-0.5454, -0.3712, -0.6505,  0.2142, -0.1728,  0.5783
 0.6327, -0.6297,  0.4038, -0.5193,  0.1484,  0.1153
-0.5424,  0.3282, -0.0055,  0.0380, -0.6506,  0.6613
 0.1414,  0.9935,  0.6337,  0.1887,  0.9520,  0.2540
-0.9351, -0.8128, -0.8693, -0.0965, -0.2491,  0.7353
 0.9507, -0.6640,  0.9456,  0.5349,  0.6485,  0.1059
-0.0462, -0.9737, -0.2940, -0.0159,  0.4602,  0.2606
-0.0627, -0.0852, -0.7247, -0.9782,  0.5166,  0.2977
 0.0478,  0.5098, -0.0723, -0.7504, -0.3750,  0.3335
 0.0090,  0.3477,  0.5403, -0.7393, -0.9542,  0.4415
-0.9748,  0.3449,  0.3736, -0.1015,  0.8296,  0.4358
 0.2887, -0.9895, -0.0311,  0.7186,  0.6608,  0.2057
 0.1570, -0.4518,  0.1211,  0.3435, -0.2951,  0.3244
 0.7117, -0.6099,  0.4946, -0.4208,  0.5476,  0.1096
-0.2929, -0.5726,  0.5346, -0.3827,  0.4665,  0.2465
 0.4889, -0.5572, -0.5718, -0.6021, -0.7150,  0.2163
-0.7782,  0.3491,  0.5996, -0.8389, -0.5366,  0.6516
-0.5847,  0.8347,  0.4226,  0.1078, -0.3910,  0.6134
 0.8469,  0.4121, -0.0439, -0.7476,  0.9521,  0.1571
-0.6803, -0.5948, -0.1376, -0.1916, -0.7065,  0.7156
 0.2878,  0.5086, -0.5785,  0.2019,  0.4979,  0.2980
 0.2764,  0.1943, -0.4090,  0.4632,  0.8906,  0.2960
-0.8877,  0.6705, -0.6155, -0.2098, -0.3998,  0.7107
-0.8398,  0.8093, -0.2597,  0.0614, -0.0118,  0.6502
-0.8476,  0.0158, -0.4769, -0.2859, -0.7839,  0.7715
 0.5751, -0.7868,  0.9714, -0.6457,  0.1448,  0.1175
 0.4802, -0.7001,  0.1022, -0.5668,  0.5184,  0.1090
 0.4458, -0.6469,  0.7239, -0.9604,  0.7205,  0.0779
 0.5175,  0.4339,  0.9747, -0.4438, -0.9924,  0.2879
 0.8678,  0.7158,  0.4577,  0.0334,  0.4139,  0.1678
 0.5406,  0.5012,  0.2264, -0.1963,  0.3946,  0.2088
-0.9938,  0.5498,  0.7928, -0.5214, -0.7585,  0.7687
 0.7661,  0.0863, -0.4266, -0.7233, -0.4197,  0.1466
 0.2277, -0.3517, -0.0853, -0.1118,  0.6563,  0.1767
 0.3499, -0.5570, -0.0655, -0.3705,  0.2537,  0.1632
 0.7547, -0.1046,  0.5689, -0.0861,  0.3125,  0.1257
 0.8186,  0.2110,  0.5335,  0.0094, -0.0039,  0.1391
 0.6858, -0.8644,  0.1465,  0.8855,  0.0357,  0.1845
-0.4967,  0.4015,  0.0805,  0.8977,  0.2487,  0.4663
 0.6760, -0.9841,  0.9787, -0.8446, -0.3557,  0.1509
-0.1203, -0.4885,  0.6054, -0.0443, -0.7313,  0.4854
 0.8557,  0.7919, -0.0169,  0.7134, -0.1628,  0.2002
 0.0115, -0.6209,  0.9300, -0.4116, -0.7931,  0.4052
-0.7114, -0.9718,  0.4319,  0.1290,  0.5892,  0.3661
 0.3915,  0.5557, -0.1870,  0.2955, -0.6404,  0.2954
-0.3564, -0.6548, -0.1827, -0.5172, -0.1862,  0.4622
 0.2392, -0.4959,  0.5857, -0.1341, -0.2850,  0.2470
-0.3394,  0.3947, -0.4627,  0.6166, -0.4094,  0.5325
 0.7107,  0.7768, -0.6312,  0.1707,  0.7964,  0.2757
-0.1078,  0.8437, -0.4420,  0.2177,  0.3649,  0.4028
-0.3139,  0.5595, -0.6505, -0.3161, -0.7108,  0.5546
 0.4335,  0.3986,  0.3770, -0.4932,  0.3847,  0.1810
-0.2562, -0.2894, -0.8847,  0.2633,  0.4146,  0.4036
 0.2272,  0.2966, -0.6601, -0.7011,  0.0284,  0.2778
-0.0743, -0.1421, -0.0054, -0.6770, -0.3151,  0.3597
-0.4762,  0.6891,  0.6007, -0.1467,  0.2140,  0.4266
-0.4061,  0.7193,  0.3432,  0.2669, -0.7505,  0.6147
-0.0588,  0.9731,  0.8966,  0.2902, -0.6966,  0.4955
-0.0627, -0.1439,  0.1985,  0.6999,  0.5022,  0.3077
 0.1587,  0.8494, -0.8705,  0.9827, -0.8940,  0.4263
-0.7850,  0.2473, -0.9040, -0.4308, -0.8779,  0.7199
 0.4070,  0.3369, -0.2428, -0.6236,  0.4940,  0.2215
-0.0242,  0.0513, -0.9430,  0.2885, -0.2987,  0.3947
-0.5416, -0.1322, -0.2351, -0.0604,  0.9590,  0.3683
 0.1055,  0.7783, -0.2901, -0.5090,  0.8220,  0.2984
-0.9129,  0.9015,  0.1128, -0.2473,  0.9901,  0.4776
-0.9378,  0.1424, -0.6391,  0.2619,  0.9618,  0.5368
 0.7498, -0.0963,  0.4169,  0.5549, -0.0103,  0.1614
-0.2612, -0.7156,  0.4538, -0.0460, -0.1022,  0.3717
 0.7720,  0.0552, -0.1818, -0.4622, -0.8560,  0.1685
-0.4177,  0.0070,  0.9319, -0.7812,  0.3461,  0.3052
-0.0001,  0.5542, -0.7128, -0.8336, -0.2016,  0.3803
 0.5356, -0.4194, -0.5662, -0.9666, -0.2027,  0.1776
-0.2378,  0.3187, -0.8582, -0.6948, -0.9668,  0.5474
-0.1947, -0.3579,  0.1158,  0.9869,  0.6690,  0.2992
 0.3992,  0.8365, -0.9205, -0.8593, -0.0520,  0.3154
-0.0209,  0.0793,  0.7905, -0.1067,  0.7541,  0.1864
-0.4928, -0.4524, -0.3433,  0.0951, -0.5597,  0.6261
-0.8118,  0.7404, -0.5263, -0.2280,  0.1431,  0.6349
 0.0516, -0.8480,  0.7483,  0.9023,  0.6250,  0.1959
-0.3212,  0.1093,  0.9488, -0.3766,  0.3376,  0.2735
-0.3481,  0.5490, -0.3484,  0.7797,  0.5034,  0.4379
-0.5785, -0.9170, -0.3563, -0.9258,  0.3877,  0.4121
 0.3407, -0.1391,  0.5356,  0.0720, -0.9203,  0.3458
-0.3287, -0.8954,  0.2102,  0.0241,  0.2349,  0.3247
-0.1353,  0.6954, -0.0919, -0.9692,  0.7461,  0.3338
 0.9036, -0.8982, -0.5299, -0.8733, -0.1567,  0.1187
 0.7277, -0.8368, -0.0538, -0.7489,  0.5458,  0.0830
 0.9049,  0.8878,  0.2279,  0.9470, -0.3103,  0.2194
 0.7957, -0.1308, -0.5284,  0.8817,  0.3684,  0.2172
 0.4647, -0.4931,  0.2010,  0.6292, -0.8918,  0.3371
-0.7390,  0.6849,  0.2367,  0.0626, -0.5034,  0.7039
-0.1567, -0.8711,  0.7940, -0.5932,  0.6525,  0.1710
 0.7635, -0.0265,  0.1969,  0.0545,  0.2496,  0.1445
 0.7675,  0.1354, -0.7698, -0.5460,  0.1920,  0.1728
-0.5211, -0.7372, -0.6763,  0.6897,  0.2044,  0.5217
 0.1913,  0.1980,  0.2314, -0.8816,  0.5006,  0.1998
 0.8964,  0.0694, -0.6149,  0.5059, -0.9854,  0.1825
 0.1767,  0.7104,  0.2093,  0.6452,  0.7590,  0.2832
-0.3580, -0.7541,  0.4426, -0.1193, -0.7465,  0.5657
-0.5996,  0.5766, -0.9758, -0.3933, -0.9572,  0.6800
 0.9950,  0.1641, -0.4132,  0.8579,  0.0142,  0.2003
-0.4717, -0.3894, -0.2567, -0.5111,  0.1691,  0.4266
 0.3917, -0.8561,  0.9422,  0.5061,  0.6123,  0.1212
-0.0366, -0.1087,  0.3449, -0.1025,  0.4086,  0.2475
 0.3633,  0.3943,  0.2372, -0.6980,  0.5216,  0.1925
-0.5325, -0.6466, -0.2178, -0.3589,  0.6310,  0.3568
 0.2271,  0.5200, -0.1447, -0.8011, -0.7699,  0.3128
 0.6415,  0.1993,  0.3777, -0.0178, -0.8237,  0.2181
-0.5298, -0.0768, -0.6028, -0.9490,  0.4588,  0.4356
 0.6870, -0.1431,  0.7294,  0.3141,  0.1621,  0.1632
-0.5985,  0.0591,  0.7889, -0.3900,  0.7419,  0.2945
 0.3661,  0.7984, -0.8486,  0.7572, -0.6183,  0.3449
 0.6995,  0.3342, -0.3113, -0.6972,  0.2707,  0.1712
 0.2565,  0.9126,  0.1798, -0.6043, -0.1413,  0.2893
-0.3265,  0.9839, -0.2395,  0.9854,  0.0376,  0.4770
 0.2690, -0.1722,  0.9818,  0.8599, -0.7015,  0.3954
-0.2102, -0.0768,  0.1219,  0.5607, -0.0256,  0.3949
 0.8216, -0.9555,  0.6422, -0.6231,  0.3715,  0.0801
-0.2896,  0.9484, -0.7545, -0.6249,  0.7789,  0.4370
-0.9985, -0.5448, -0.7092, -0.5931,  0.7926,  0.5402

Test data:

# synthetic_test_40.txt
#
 0.7462,  0.4006, -0.0590,  0.6543, -0.0083,  0.1935
 0.8495, -0.2260, -0.0142, -0.4911,  0.7699,  0.1078
-0.2335, -0.4049,  0.4352, -0.6183, -0.7636,  0.5088
 0.1810, -0.5142,  0.2465,  0.2767, -0.3449,  0.3136
-0.8650,  0.7611, -0.0801,  0.5277, -0.4922,  0.7140
-0.2358, -0.7466, -0.5115, -0.8413, -0.3943,  0.4533
 0.4834,  0.2300,  0.3448, -0.9832,  0.3568,  0.1360
-0.6502, -0.6300,  0.6885,  0.9652,  0.8275,  0.3046
-0.3053,  0.5604,  0.0929,  0.6329, -0.0325,  0.4756
-0.7995,  0.0740, -0.2680,  0.2086,  0.9176,  0.4565
-0.2144, -0.2141,  0.5813,  0.2902, -0.2122,  0.4119
-0.7278, -0.0987, -0.3312, -0.5641,  0.8515,  0.4438
 0.3793,  0.1976,  0.4933,  0.0839,  0.4011,  0.1905
-0.8568,  0.9573, -0.5272,  0.3212, -0.8207,  0.7415
-0.5785,  0.0056, -0.7901, -0.2223,  0.0760,  0.5551
 0.0735, -0.2188,  0.3925,  0.3570,  0.3746,  0.2191
 0.1230, -0.2838,  0.2262,  0.8715,  0.1938,  0.2878
 0.4792, -0.9248,  0.5295,  0.0366, -0.9894,  0.3149
-0.4456,  0.0697,  0.5359, -0.8938,  0.0981,  0.3879
 0.8629, -0.8505, -0.4464,  0.8385,  0.5300,  0.1769
 0.1995,  0.6659,  0.7921,  0.9454,  0.9970,  0.2330
-0.0249, -0.3066, -0.2927, -0.4923,  0.8220,  0.2437
 0.4513, -0.9481, -0.0770, -0.4374, -0.9421,  0.2879
-0.3405,  0.5931, -0.3507, -0.3842,  0.8562,  0.3987
 0.9538,  0.0471,  0.9039,  0.7760,  0.0361,  0.1706
-0.0887,  0.2104,  0.9808,  0.5478, -0.3314,  0.4128
-0.8220, -0.6302,  0.0537, -0.1658,  0.6013,  0.4306
-0.4123, -0.2880,  0.9074, -0.0461, -0.4435,  0.5144
 0.0060,  0.2867, -0.7775,  0.5161,  0.7039,  0.3599
-0.7968, -0.5484,  0.9426, -0.4308,  0.8148,  0.2979
 0.7811,  0.8450, -0.6877,  0.7594,  0.2640,  0.2362
-0.6802, -0.1113, -0.8325, -0.6694, -0.6056,  0.6544
 0.3821,  0.1476,  0.7466, -0.5107,  0.2592,  0.1648
 0.7265,  0.9683, -0.9803, -0.4943, -0.5523,  0.2454
-0.9049, -0.9797, -0.0196, -0.9090, -0.4433,  0.6447
-0.4607,  0.1811, -0.2389,  0.4050, -0.0078,  0.5229
 0.2664, -0.2932, -0.4259, -0.7336,  0.8742,  0.1834
-0.4507,  0.1029, -0.6294, -0.1158, -0.6294,  0.6081
 0.8948, -0.0124,  0.9278,  0.2899, -0.0314,  0.1534
-0.1323, -0.8813, -0.0146, -0.0697,  0.6135,  0.2386

I wrote an article titled “AdaBoost.R2 Regression Using C#” in the June 2026 edition of Microsoft Visual Studio Magazine. See https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2026/06/01/adaboost-r2-regression-using-csharp.aspx.

The goal of a machine learning regression problem is to predict a single numeric value. For example, a bank might want to predict the maximum safe loan amount for a customer based on age, account balance, current debt, and so on. Regression techniques fall into two categories: those based on decision tree structures, and those that use non-tree techniques.

In a nutshell:

* AdaBoost.R2 regression is a machine learning technique used to predict a single numeric value
* AdaBoost.R2 builds a sequence of decision tree regressors where each accepted tree improves prediction compared to earlier trees.
* Final AdaBoost.R2 predictions are produced as a weighted median across the decision tree predictions.

Examples of non-tree techniques include linear regression, quadratic regression, kernel ridge regression, nearest neighbors regression, and neural network regression. The three most common tree-based regression techniques are random forest regression (which includes a variant called bagging tree regression), AdaBoost.R2 regression, and gradient boost regression. Each regression technique has pros and cons. If there was one regression technique that worked best for all types of datasets, there would only be one technique, not many.

My article presents a complete demo of AdaBoost.R2 implemented using the C# language. AdaBoost.R2 regression sequentially creates an ensemble (collection) of simple decision trees, where each tree is a bit better at prediction than the previous tree. For a given input x, the predicted y value is the weighted median of the predictions of the collection of decision trees.

The output of the article demo program is:

Begin AdaBoost.R2 (tree) regression from scratch C#

Loading synthetic train (200) and test (40) data

First three train X:
 -0.1660  0.4406 -0.9998 -0.3953 -0.7065
  0.0776 -0.1616  0.3704 -0.5911  0.7562
 -0.9452  0.3409 -0.1654  0.1174 -0.7192

First three train y:
  0.4840
  0.1568
  0.8054

Setting maxLearners = 100
Setting tree maxDepth = 5
Setting tree minSamples = 2
Setting tree minLeaf = 1

Training AdaBoost.R2 model
Done
Created 100 learners

Accuracy train (within 0.10): 0.8250
Accuracy test (within 0.10): 0.5250

MSE train: 0.0004
MSE test: 0.0022

Predicting for x =
 -0.1660  0.4406 -0.9998 -0.3953 -0.7065
Predicted y = 0.4890

End demo

I based my demo program directly on the 1997 source research paper, “Improving Regressors Using Boosting Techniques” (1997), by H. Drucker.

A weight value is assigned to each training data item, where the weight values sum to 1. Initially all training item weights are the same. For the demo data, because there are 200 items, each initial data item weight is 1/200 = 0.005.

Each training data item is fed to the current decision tree and an average loss/error for the current tree is computed. The average loss for the current tree is used to compute a beta value for the tree. A small value for beta means high confidence in the current tree, and vice versa.

The weights associated with each training data item are updated using the beta value for the current tree and the loss/error for each data item. At this point, a new set of training data items is probabilistically created from the source data items, where data items with high error have a greater probability of being selected than data items with small error.

The new training data items are fed to the next decision tree. Because the new training dataset has high-error items, the new tree will concentrate on learning to predict those difficult-to-predict items.

Each new training dataset is constructed probabilistically, and so there is a chance that a newly created decision tree is not better than the previous decision tree. In this case, the newly created decision tree is not added to the collection of trees. This is why the actual number of trees created may be less than the maxLearners parameter.

AdaBoost.R2 regression is not used nearly as often as random forest regression, or gradient boost regression. My AdaBoost.R2 demo is therefore most likely to be used with legacy systems that already use AdaBoost.R2 regression.

Like most of my friends, I get obsessed with all kinds of strange things. I have been obsessed with machine learning for many years.

Right: In the fantasy movie “The Legend of Ochi” (2025), farm girl Yuri discovers a wounded baby primate-like creature and works to return it to its family. She is menaced by a hunting party led by her father and her stepbrother. When Yuri goes through a cave system, some insects are chittering while a bat watches.

As is often the case with interesting topics, explaining what the problem is, takes longer than explaining the solution. So bear with me.

The goal of a machine learning regression problem is to predict a single numeric value. For example, a bank might want to predict a maximum loan amount based on applicant age, sex, annual income, debt, and so on.

Common regression techniques include linear regression, quadratic regression, nearest neighbors regression, kernel ridge regression, Gaussian process regression, kernel support vector regression, neural network regression, random forest regression, and gradient boost regression. Each technique has dozens of variations, and each technique has pros and cons.

Two closely related machine learning regression techniques are kernel ridge regression (KRR) and support vector regression (SVR). Both techniques use a kernel function (usually the radial basis function, RBF) to compare two data items for similarity. Both techniques must store training data in order to make predictions, but KRR must store all training items, while SVR eliminates some of the items during training, leaving just the “support vectors” that need to be stored.

Note: In addition to the kernel support vector regression technique discussed in this blog post, there is a linear support vector regression technique which is essentially useless in practice.

KRR often gives slightly better prediction accuracy than SVR, is easier to train than SVR, can handle very large datasets via SGD training, and is much, much easier to implement than SVR.

One morning before work, I got the idea of combining KRR and SVR. Briefly, I train a KRR model as normal using all data. Then I identify training data items that are predicted “too well” and remove them, leaving just pseudo support vectors. The somewhat counterintuitive SVR idea is that items that are predicted too well don’t help model accuracy very much. Then I retrain a new KRR model using only the reduced training data. This gives a trimmed/sparse KRR model that approximates an SVR model.

In my mind, this technique gives the advantages of KRR (ability to handle very large datasets) and the advantages of SVR (fewer stored model items and weights than KRR) . . . if the technique works. I implemented the idea using the scikit KernelRidge module and the idea seemed to work well.

Let me point out that the idea is fairly obvious so I’m reasonably sure other people have used the idea, but I could find no examples or discussion on the Internet.

So, I decided to continue my investigation by refactoring the scikit Python code to the C# language. The effort was non-trivial.

The output of the C# demo is:

Begin C# kernel ridge regression approximation to SVR

Loading train (200) and test (40) data
Done

First three X predictors:
  -0.1660   0.4406  -0.9998  -0.3953  -0.7065
   0.0776  -0.1616   0.3704  -0.5911   0.7562
  -0.9452   0.3409  -0.1654   0.1174  -0.7192

First three target y:
  0.4840
  0.1568
  0.8054

Creating prelim, full KRR model
Setting RBF gamma = 0.3
Setting alpha decay =  0.00001
Done

Setting lrnRate = 0.0500
Setting maxEpochs = 5000
Setting auto-exit tol = 0.0010

Training model
epoch =      0 MSE = 0.0181 acc = 0.1700
Auto-exit at epoch 723
Done

Prelim model weights:
 -0.5698  -0.3515  -0.0638  . . . 
. . . 
 -0.0605   0.1449   0.6476

Evaluating full KRR model
Number model item/weights = 200

Train acc = 0.9800
Test acc = 0.9500

Train MSE = 0.0001
Test MSE = 0.0002

Begin trim/prune model
Using trim epsilon = 0.003500

Finding pseudo-support vectors
Done

Creating new, smaller train dataset
Done

Begin train new, smaller model
epoch =      0 MSE = 0.0215 acc = 0.1560
Auto-exit at epoch 768
Done

Evaluating new model
Number model items/weights = 109

Train acc = 0.9817
Test acc = 0.9500

Train MSE = 0.0001
Test MSE = 0.0002

End KRR trim/prune demo

The demo data is synthetic demo. There are 200 training items and 40 test items.

After training on 200 data items, those items that were predicted with a small error of less than 0.0035 were removed. There were 91 such well-predicted items, leaving a reduced training dataset of 109 items. After training a new model on the reduced dataset, the sparse model scored 98.17% accuracy on the reduced training data (107 out of 109 correct) and 95.00% accuracy on the test data (38 out of 40 correct).

To validate my C# trimmed KRR approximation to SVR, I ran the data through the scikit SVR module. A grid-search optimized scikit SVR model created 90 support vectors (somewhat better than the sparse KRR 109 items), with 96.50% accuracy on the training data (not quite as good as the C# trimmed KRR model), and 95.00% accuracy on the test data (identical to the sparse KRR model). In short, the C# trimmed KRR model and the SVR model are very similar. The large number of hyperparameters involved with KRR and SVR makes exact comparison impossible in practice.

When I get a chance, I’ll refactor the C# code so that the creation of the preliminary full KRR model, and the creation of a trimmed KRR model are all encapsulated into a single Train() function so the call will look like this:

KRRTrim model = new KRRTrim(gamma, alpha);
model.Train(trainX, trainY, lrnRate, exitTol, epsilon);

An interesting experiment.

Different regression techniques vary across several factors, including ability to handle complex data, ability to handle non-numeric data, predictive power, and explainability. Kernel ridge regression is moderately explainable — the model weights indicate which training items have the most influence.

Right: In “Them!” (1954), Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter, Dr. Pat Medford, explain why giant ants have the potential to completely eradicate all humans within a matter of months. My personal grade = solid A.

The C# trimmed KRR demo program. Replace “lt” (less than), “gt”, “lte”, “gte” with Boolean operator symbols. (My blog editor chokes on symbols).

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace KernelRidgeRegressionSGDTrim
{
  internal class KernelRidgeRegressionSGDProgram
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("\nBegin C# kernel ridge " +
        "regression approximation to SVR ");

      Console.WriteLine("\nLoading train (200) and" +
        " test (40) data ");
      string trainFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_train_200.txt";
      double[][] trainX =
        Utils.MatLoad(trainFile,
        new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 }, ',', "#");
      double[] trainY =
        Utils.MatToVec(Utils.MatLoad(trainFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));

      string testFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_test_40.txt";
      double[][] testX =
        Utils.MatLoad(testFile,
        new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 }, ',', "#");
      double[] testY =
        Utils.MatToVec(Utils.MatLoad(testFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three X predictors: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        Utils.VecShow(trainX[i], 4, 9);
      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three target y: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        Console.WriteLine(trainY[i].ToString("F4").
          PadLeft(8));

      Console.WriteLine("\nCreating prelim, " +
        "full KRR model ");
      double gamma = 0.3;    // RBF param
      double alpha = 1.0e-5;  // regularization
      Console.WriteLine("Setting RBF gamma = " +
        gamma.ToString("F1"));
      Console.WriteLine("Setting alpha decay =  " +
        alpha.ToString("F5"));
      KRR krr = new KRR(gamma, alpha);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      double lrnRate = 0.05;
      int maxEpochs = 5000;
      double exitTol = 0.001;
      Console.WriteLine("\nSetting lrnRate = " +
        lrnRate.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Setting maxEpochs = " + maxEpochs);
      Console.WriteLine("Setting auto-exit tol = " +
        exitTol.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("\nTraining model ");
      krr.Train(trainX, trainY, lrnRate, maxEpochs, exitTol);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");
      Console.WriteLine("\nPrelim model weights: ");
      Utils.VecShow(krr.wts, 4, 9);

      Console.WriteLine("\nEvaluating full KRR model ");
      Console.WriteLine("Number model item/weights = " +
        krr.wts.Length);
      double trainAcc = krr.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
      double testAcc = krr.Accuracy(testX, testY, 0.10);

      Console.WriteLine("\nTrain acc = " +
        trainAcc.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Test acc = " +
        testAcc.ToString("F4"));

      double trainMSE = krr.MSE(trainX, trainY);
      double testMSE = krr.MSE(testX, testY);

      Console.WriteLine("\nTrain MSE = " +
        trainMSE.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Test MSE = " +
        testMSE.ToString("F4"));

      //double[] x = trainX[0];
      //Console.WriteLine("\nPredicting for trainX[0] ");
      //double y = krr.Predict(x);
      //Console.WriteLine("Predicted y = " +
      //  y.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nBegin trim/prune model ");
      // larger epsilon = fewer retained weights
      // smaller epsilon = more retained weights
      double epsilon = 0.0035;
      Console.WriteLine("Using trim epsilon = " + 
        epsilon.ToString("F6"));
      Console.WriteLine("\nFinding pseudo-support vectors ");
      int[] isSupportVec = new int[trainX.Length];
      // 0 = not supp == predicts too well.
      // 1 = supp == predicts OK or weak.
      // find items and wts that predict 'too well'
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
      {
        if (Math.Abs(krr.Predict(trainX[i]) - trainY[i])
          "gt" epsilon)
          isSupportVec[i] = 1; // not a supper-accurate pred
      }
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");
      Console.WriteLine("\nCreating smaller train dataset ");
      // create a new, smaller training dataset
      List"lt"double[]"gt" tmpTrainX = 
        new List"lt"double[]"gt"();
      List"lt"double"gt" tmpTrainY = 
        new List"lt"double"gt"();
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
      {
        if (isSupportVec[i] == 1)
        {
          tmpTrainX.Add(trainX[i]);
          tmpTrainY.Add(trainY[i]);
        }
      }
      double[][] newTrainX = tmpTrainX.ToArray();
      double[] newTrainY = tmpTrainY.ToArray();
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");
      // train using new dataset
      Console.WriteLine("\nBegin train new, smaller model ");
      KRR newModel = new KRR(gamma, alpha);
      newModel.Train(newTrainX, newTrainY, lrnRate,
        maxEpochs, exitTol);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");
      // analyze
      Console.WriteLine("\nEvaluating new model ");
      Console.WriteLine("Number model items/weights = " +
        newModel.wts.Length);

      trainAcc = newModel.Accuracy(newTrainX, newTrainY,
        0.10);
      testAcc = newModel.Accuracy(testX, testY, 0.10);

      Console.WriteLine("\nTrain acc = " +
        trainAcc.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Test acc = " +
        testAcc.ToString("F4"));

      trainMSE = newModel.MSE(newTrainX, newTrainY);
      testMSE = newModel.MSE(testX, testY);

      Console.WriteLine("\nTrain MSE = " +
        trainMSE.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Test MSE = " +
        testMSE.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nEnd KRR trim/prune demo ");
      Console.ReadLine();
    } // Main()

  } // class Program

  /*
  scikit SVR version results for validation
  Creating scikit SVR model
  Setting gamma = 0.1000
  Setting C = 10.0000
  Setting epsilon = 0.0100

  Number support vectors = 90
  Accuracy (within 0.10) train = 0.9650
  Accuracy (within 0.10) test = 0.9500
  MSE train = 0.0001
  MSE test = 0.0002 
  */

  // ========================================================

  public class KRR
  {
    public double gamma;  // for RBF kernel
    public double alpha;  // regularization
    public double[][] trainX;  // need for prediction
    public double[] trainY;  // not needed this version
    public double[] wts;  // one per trainX item
    public Random rnd;

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public KRR(double gamma, double alpha, int seed = 1)
    {
      this.gamma = gamma;
      this.alpha = alpha;
      this.rnd = new Random(seed);  // shuffle train order
    } // ctor

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private void Shuffle(int[] indices)
    {
      // Fisher-Yates
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" indices.Length; ++i)
      {
        int ri = this.rnd.Next(i, indices.Length);
        int tmp = indices[i];
        indices[i] = indices[ri];
        indices[ri] = tmp;
      }
    } // Shuffle

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public int Train(double[][] trainX, double[] trainY,
      double lrnRate, int maxEpochs, double exitTol)
    {
      // return epoch at exit
      int freq = maxEpochs / 5;  // when to show progress

      // 0. store trainX -- needed by Predict()
      this.trainX = trainX;  // by ref -- could copy
      this.trainY = trainY;  // not used this version

      this.wts = new double[trainX.Length];
      double lo = -0.10; double hi = 0.10;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" this.wts.Length; ++i)
        this.wts[i] = (hi - lo) *
          this.rnd.NextDouble() + lo;

      // 1. set up indices for shuffling
      int[] indices = new int[trainX.Length];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" indices.Length; ++i)
        indices[i] = i;

      // set up weights for auto-exit
      double[] prevWeights = new double[trainX.Length];
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" trainX.Length; ++j)
        prevWeights[j] = this.wts[j];

      for (int epoch = 0; epoch "lt" maxEpochs; ++epoch)
      {
        Shuffle(indices);
        for (int i = 0; i "lt" trainX.Length; ++i)
        {
          int idx = indices[i];
          double[] x = trainX[idx];
          double predY = this.Predict(x);
          double actualY = trainY[idx];

          // update wt assoc with x
          this.wts[idx] -= lrnRate * (predY - actualY);
        } // each item

        if (epoch % freq == 0)
        {
          double rmse = this.MSE(trainX, trainY);
          double acc = this.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
          string s1 = "epoch = " +
            epoch.ToString().PadLeft(6);
          string s2 = " MSE = " +
            rmse.ToString("F4");
          string s3 = " acc = " + acc.ToString("F4");
          Console.WriteLine(s1 + s2 + s3);
        }

        
        // if max_change_in_wts / max_weights "lt" tol
        int numWts = this.wts.Length;
        double[] weightDeltas = new double[numWts];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          weightDeltas[j] = 
            Math.Abs(prevWeights[j] - this.wts[j]);
        double maxChange = weightDeltas[0];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          if (weightDeltas[j] "gt" maxChange)
            maxChange = weightDeltas[j];

        double maxWeight = Math.Abs(this.wts[0]);
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          if (Math.Abs(this.wts[j]) "gt" maxWeight)
            maxWeight = Math.Abs(this.wts[j]);
        if (maxWeight != 0.0 &&
          (maxChange / maxWeight) "lt" exitTol)
        {
          Console.WriteLine("Auto-exit at epoch " + epoch);
          return epoch;
        }

        // an auto-exit didn't happen
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" numWts; ++j)
          prevWeights[j] = this.wts[j];
      
      } // each epoch

      // apply one final wt decay regularization
      // as opposed to small decay after every epoch
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" this.wts.Length; ++j)
        this.wts[j] *= (1.0 - this.alpha);
      return maxEpochs;

    } // Train

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private double Rbf(double[] v1, double[] v2)
    {
      // the gamma version aot len_scale version
      int dim = v1.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dim; ++i)
      {
        sum += (v1[i] - v2[i]) * (v1[i] - v2[i]);
      }
      return Math.Exp(-1 * this.gamma * sum);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Predict(double[] x)
    {
      int N = this.trainX.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" N; ++i)
      {
        double[] xx = this.trainX[i];
        double k = this.Rbf(x, xx);
        sum += this.wts[i] * k;
      }
      return sum;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Accuracy(double[][] dataX,
      double[] dataY, double pctClose)
    {
      int numCorrect = 0; int numWrong = 0;
      int n = dataX.Length;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double[] x = dataX[i];
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(x);
        if (Math.Abs(actualY - predY) "lt"
          Math.Abs(actualY * pctClose))
          ++numCorrect;
        else
          ++numWrong;
      }
      return (numCorrect * 1.0) / n;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double MSE(double[][] dataX, double[] dataY)
    {
      double sum = 0.0;
      int n = dataX.Length;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double[] x = dataX[i];
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(x);
        sum += (actualY - predY) * (actualY - predY);
      }
      return sum / n;
    }
  } // class KRR

  // ========================================================

  public class Utils
  {
    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double[][] MatLoad(string fn,
      int[] usecols, char sep, string comment)
    {
      List"lt"double[]"gt" result = 
        new List"lt"double[]"gt"();
      string line = "";
      FileStream ifs = new FileStream(fn, FileMode.Open);
      StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ifs);
      while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
      {
        if (line.StartsWith(comment) == true)
          continue;
        string[] tokens = line.Split(sep);
        List"lt"double"gt" lst = new List"lt"double"gt"();
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" usecols.Length; ++j)
          lst.Add(double.Parse(tokens[usecols[j]]));
        double[] row = lst.ToArray();
        result.Add(row);
      }
      sr.Close(); ifs.Close();
      return result.ToArray();
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double[] MatToVec(double[][] mat)
    {
      int nRows = mat.Length;
      int nCols = mat[0].Length;
      double[] result = new double[nRows * nCols];
      int k = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nCols; ++j)
          result[k++] = mat[i][j];
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static void MatShow(double[][] m, int dec, int wid)
    {
      int nRows = m.Length; int nCols = m[0].Length;
      double small = 1.0 / Math.Pow(10, dec);
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
      {
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nCols; ++j)
        {
          double v = m[i][j];
          if (Math.Abs(v) "lt" small) v = 0.0;
          Console.Write(v.ToString("F" + dec).
            PadLeft(wid));
        }
        Console.WriteLine("");
      }
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static void VecShow(double[] vec, int dec, int wid)
    {
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" vec.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(vec[i].ToString("F" + dec).
          PadLeft(wid));
      Console.WriteLine("");
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

  } // class Utils

  // ========================================================

} // ns

Training data:

# synthetic_train_200.txt
#
-0.1660,  0.4406, -0.9998, -0.3953, -0.7065,  0.4840
 0.0776, -0.1616,  0.3704, -0.5911,  0.7562,  0.1568
-0.9452,  0.3409, -0.1654,  0.1174, -0.7192,  0.8054
 0.9365, -0.3732,  0.3846,  0.7528,  0.7892,  0.1345
-0.8299, -0.9219, -0.6603,  0.7563, -0.8033,  0.7955
 0.0663,  0.3838, -0.3690,  0.3730,  0.6693,  0.3206
-0.9634,  0.5003,  0.9777,  0.4963, -0.4391,  0.7377
-0.1042,  0.8172, -0.4128, -0.4244, -0.7399,  0.4801
-0.9613,  0.3577, -0.5767, -0.4689, -0.0169,  0.6861
-0.7065,  0.1786,  0.3995, -0.7953, -0.1719,  0.5569
 0.3888, -0.1716, -0.9001,  0.0718,  0.3276,  0.2500
 0.1731,  0.8068, -0.7251, -0.7214,  0.6148,  0.3297
-0.2046, -0.6693,  0.8550, -0.3045,  0.5016,  0.2129
 0.2473,  0.5019, -0.3022, -0.4601,  0.7918,  0.2613
-0.1438,  0.9297,  0.3269,  0.2434, -0.7705,  0.5171
 0.1568, -0.1837, -0.5259,  0.8068,  0.1474,  0.3307
-0.9943,  0.2343, -0.3467,  0.0541,  0.7719,  0.5581
 0.2467, -0.9684,  0.8589,  0.3818,  0.9946,  0.1092
-0.6553, -0.7257,  0.8652,  0.3936, -0.8680,  0.7018
 0.8460,  0.4230, -0.7515, -0.9602, -0.9476,  0.1996
-0.9434, -0.5076,  0.7201,  0.0777,  0.1056,  0.5664
 0.9392,  0.1221, -0.9627,  0.6013, -0.5341,  0.1533
 0.6142, -0.2243,  0.7271,  0.4942,  0.1125,  0.1661
 0.4260,  0.1194, -0.9749, -0.8561,  0.9346,  0.2230
 0.1362, -0.5934, -0.4953,  0.4877, -0.6091,  0.3810
 0.6937, -0.5203, -0.0125,  0.2399,  0.6580,  0.1460
-0.6864, -0.9628, -0.8600, -0.0273,  0.2127,  0.5387
 0.9772,  0.1595, -0.2397,  0.1019,  0.4907,  0.1611
 0.3385, -0.4702, -0.8673, -0.2598,  0.2594,  0.2270
-0.8669, -0.4794,  0.6095, -0.6131,  0.2789,  0.4700
 0.0493,  0.8496, -0.4734, -0.8681,  0.4701,  0.3516
 0.8639, -0.9721, -0.5313,  0.2336,  0.8980,  0.1412
 0.9004,  0.1133,  0.8312,  0.2831, -0.2200,  0.1782
 0.0991,  0.8524,  0.8375, -0.2102,  0.9265,  0.2150
-0.6521, -0.7473, -0.7298,  0.0113, -0.9570,  0.7422
 0.6190, -0.3105,  0.8802,  0.1640,  0.7577,  0.1056
 0.6895,  0.8108, -0.0802,  0.0927,  0.5972,  0.2214
 0.1982, -0.9689,  0.1870, -0.1326,  0.6147,  0.1310
-0.3695,  0.7858,  0.1557, -0.6320,  0.5759,  0.3773
-0.1596,  0.3581,  0.8372, -0.9992,  0.9535,  0.2071
-0.2468,  0.9476,  0.2094,  0.6577,  0.1494,  0.4132
 0.1737,  0.5000,  0.7166,  0.5102,  0.3961,  0.2611
 0.7290, -0.3546,  0.3416, -0.0983, -0.2358,  0.1332
-0.3652,  0.2438, -0.1395,  0.9476,  0.3556,  0.4170
-0.6029, -0.1466, -0.3133,  0.5953,  0.7600,  0.4334
-0.4596, -0.4953,  0.7098,  0.0554,  0.6043,  0.2775
 0.1450,  0.4663,  0.0380,  0.5418,  0.1377,  0.2931
-0.8636, -0.2442, -0.8407,  0.9656, -0.6368,  0.7429
 0.6237,  0.7499,  0.3768,  0.1390, -0.6781,  0.2185
-0.5499,  0.1850, -0.3755,  0.8326,  0.8193,  0.4399
-0.4858, -0.7782, -0.6141, -0.0008,  0.4572,  0.4197
 0.7033, -0.1683,  0.2334, -0.5327, -0.7961,  0.1776
 0.0317, -0.0457, -0.6947,  0.2436,  0.0880,  0.3345
 0.5031, -0.5559,  0.0387,  0.5706, -0.9553,  0.3107
-0.3513,  0.7458,  0.6894,  0.0769,  0.7332,  0.3170
 0.2205,  0.5992, -0.9309,  0.5405,  0.4635,  0.3532
-0.4806, -0.4859,  0.2646, -0.3094,  0.5932,  0.3202
 0.9809, -0.3995, -0.7140,  0.8026,  0.0831,  0.1600
 0.9495,  0.2732,  0.9878,  0.0921,  0.0529,  0.1289
-0.9476, -0.6792,  0.4913, -0.9392, -0.2669,  0.5966
 0.7247,  0.3854,  0.3819, -0.6227, -0.1162,  0.1550
-0.5922, -0.5045, -0.4757,  0.5003, -0.0860,  0.5863
-0.8861,  0.0170, -0.5761,  0.5972, -0.4053,  0.7301
 0.6877, -0.2380,  0.4997,  0.0223,  0.0819,  0.1404
 0.9189,  0.6079, -0.9354,  0.4188, -0.0700,  0.1907
-0.1428, -0.7820,  0.2676,  0.6059,  0.3936,  0.2790
 0.5324, -0.3151,  0.6917, -0.1425,  0.6480,  0.1071
-0.8432, -0.9633, -0.8666, -0.0828, -0.7733,  0.7784
-0.9444,  0.5097, -0.2103,  0.4939, -0.0952,  0.6787
-0.0520,  0.6063, -0.1952,  0.8094, -0.9259,  0.4836
 0.5477, -0.7487,  0.2370, -0.9793,  0.0773,  0.1241
 0.2450,  0.8116,  0.9799,  0.4222,  0.4636,  0.2355
 0.8186, -0.1983, -0.5003, -0.6531, -0.7611,  0.1511
-0.4714,  0.6382, -0.3788,  0.9648, -0.4667,  0.5950
 0.0673, -0.3711,  0.8215, -0.2669, -0.1328,  0.2677
-0.9381,  0.4338,  0.7820, -0.9454,  0.0441,  0.5518
-0.3480,  0.7190,  0.1170,  0.3805, -0.0943,  0.4724
-0.9813,  0.1535, -0.3771,  0.0345,  0.8328,  0.5438
-0.1471, -0.5052, -0.2574,  0.8637,  0.8737,  0.3042
-0.5454, -0.3712, -0.6505,  0.2142, -0.1728,  0.5783
 0.6327, -0.6297,  0.4038, -0.5193,  0.1484,  0.1153
-0.5424,  0.3282, -0.0055,  0.0380, -0.6506,  0.6613
 0.1414,  0.9935,  0.6337,  0.1887,  0.9520,  0.2540
-0.9351, -0.8128, -0.8693, -0.0965, -0.2491,  0.7353
 0.9507, -0.6640,  0.9456,  0.5349,  0.6485,  0.1059
-0.0462, -0.9737, -0.2940, -0.0159,  0.4602,  0.2606
-0.0627, -0.0852, -0.7247, -0.9782,  0.5166,  0.2977
 0.0478,  0.5098, -0.0723, -0.7504, -0.3750,  0.3335
 0.0090,  0.3477,  0.5403, -0.7393, -0.9542,  0.4415
-0.9748,  0.3449,  0.3736, -0.1015,  0.8296,  0.4358
 0.2887, -0.9895, -0.0311,  0.7186,  0.6608,  0.2057
 0.1570, -0.4518,  0.1211,  0.3435, -0.2951,  0.3244
 0.7117, -0.6099,  0.4946, -0.4208,  0.5476,  0.1096
-0.2929, -0.5726,  0.5346, -0.3827,  0.4665,  0.2465
 0.4889, -0.5572, -0.5718, -0.6021, -0.7150,  0.2163
-0.7782,  0.3491,  0.5996, -0.8389, -0.5366,  0.6516
-0.5847,  0.8347,  0.4226,  0.1078, -0.3910,  0.6134
 0.8469,  0.4121, -0.0439, -0.7476,  0.9521,  0.1571
-0.6803, -0.5948, -0.1376, -0.1916, -0.7065,  0.7156
 0.2878,  0.5086, -0.5785,  0.2019,  0.4979,  0.2980
 0.2764,  0.1943, -0.4090,  0.4632,  0.8906,  0.2960
-0.8877,  0.6705, -0.6155, -0.2098, -0.3998,  0.7107
-0.8398,  0.8093, -0.2597,  0.0614, -0.0118,  0.6502
-0.8476,  0.0158, -0.4769, -0.2859, -0.7839,  0.7715
 0.5751, -0.7868,  0.9714, -0.6457,  0.1448,  0.1175
 0.4802, -0.7001,  0.1022, -0.5668,  0.5184,  0.1090
 0.4458, -0.6469,  0.7239, -0.9604,  0.7205,  0.0779
 0.5175,  0.4339,  0.9747, -0.4438, -0.9924,  0.2879
 0.8678,  0.7158,  0.4577,  0.0334,  0.4139,  0.1678
 0.5406,  0.5012,  0.2264, -0.1963,  0.3946,  0.2088
-0.9938,  0.5498,  0.7928, -0.5214, -0.7585,  0.7687
 0.7661,  0.0863, -0.4266, -0.7233, -0.4197,  0.1466
 0.2277, -0.3517, -0.0853, -0.1118,  0.6563,  0.1767
 0.3499, -0.5570, -0.0655, -0.3705,  0.2537,  0.1632
 0.7547, -0.1046,  0.5689, -0.0861,  0.3125,  0.1257
 0.8186,  0.2110,  0.5335,  0.0094, -0.0039,  0.1391
 0.6858, -0.8644,  0.1465,  0.8855,  0.0357,  0.1845
-0.4967,  0.4015,  0.0805,  0.8977,  0.2487,  0.4663
 0.6760, -0.9841,  0.9787, -0.8446, -0.3557,  0.1509
-0.1203, -0.4885,  0.6054, -0.0443, -0.7313,  0.4854
 0.8557,  0.7919, -0.0169,  0.7134, -0.1628,  0.2002
 0.0115, -0.6209,  0.9300, -0.4116, -0.7931,  0.4052
-0.7114, -0.9718,  0.4319,  0.1290,  0.5892,  0.3661
 0.3915,  0.5557, -0.1870,  0.2955, -0.6404,  0.2954
-0.3564, -0.6548, -0.1827, -0.5172, -0.1862,  0.4622
 0.2392, -0.4959,  0.5857, -0.1341, -0.2850,  0.2470
-0.3394,  0.3947, -0.4627,  0.6166, -0.4094,  0.5325
 0.7107,  0.7768, -0.6312,  0.1707,  0.7964,  0.2757
-0.1078,  0.8437, -0.4420,  0.2177,  0.3649,  0.4028
-0.3139,  0.5595, -0.6505, -0.3161, -0.7108,  0.5546
 0.4335,  0.3986,  0.3770, -0.4932,  0.3847,  0.1810
-0.2562, -0.2894, -0.8847,  0.2633,  0.4146,  0.4036
 0.2272,  0.2966, -0.6601, -0.7011,  0.0284,  0.2778
-0.0743, -0.1421, -0.0054, -0.6770, -0.3151,  0.3597
-0.4762,  0.6891,  0.6007, -0.1467,  0.2140,  0.4266
-0.4061,  0.7193,  0.3432,  0.2669, -0.7505,  0.6147
-0.0588,  0.9731,  0.8966,  0.2902, -0.6966,  0.4955
-0.0627, -0.1439,  0.1985,  0.6999,  0.5022,  0.3077
 0.1587,  0.8494, -0.8705,  0.9827, -0.8940,  0.4263
-0.7850,  0.2473, -0.9040, -0.4308, -0.8779,  0.7199
 0.4070,  0.3369, -0.2428, -0.6236,  0.4940,  0.2215
-0.0242,  0.0513, -0.9430,  0.2885, -0.2987,  0.3947
-0.5416, -0.1322, -0.2351, -0.0604,  0.9590,  0.3683
 0.1055,  0.7783, -0.2901, -0.5090,  0.8220,  0.2984
-0.9129,  0.9015,  0.1128, -0.2473,  0.9901,  0.4776
-0.9378,  0.1424, -0.6391,  0.2619,  0.9618,  0.5368
 0.7498, -0.0963,  0.4169,  0.5549, -0.0103,  0.1614
-0.2612, -0.7156,  0.4538, -0.0460, -0.1022,  0.3717
 0.7720,  0.0552, -0.1818, -0.4622, -0.8560,  0.1685
-0.4177,  0.0070,  0.9319, -0.7812,  0.3461,  0.3052
-0.0001,  0.5542, -0.7128, -0.8336, -0.2016,  0.3803
 0.5356, -0.4194, -0.5662, -0.9666, -0.2027,  0.1776
-0.2378,  0.3187, -0.8582, -0.6948, -0.9668,  0.5474
-0.1947, -0.3579,  0.1158,  0.9869,  0.6690,  0.2992
 0.3992,  0.8365, -0.9205, -0.8593, -0.0520,  0.3154
-0.0209,  0.0793,  0.7905, -0.1067,  0.7541,  0.1864
-0.4928, -0.4524, -0.3433,  0.0951, -0.5597,  0.6261
-0.8118,  0.7404, -0.5263, -0.2280,  0.1431,  0.6349
 0.0516, -0.8480,  0.7483,  0.9023,  0.6250,  0.1959
-0.3212,  0.1093,  0.9488, -0.3766,  0.3376,  0.2735
-0.3481,  0.5490, -0.3484,  0.7797,  0.5034,  0.4379
-0.5785, -0.9170, -0.3563, -0.9258,  0.3877,  0.4121
 0.3407, -0.1391,  0.5356,  0.0720, -0.9203,  0.3458
-0.3287, -0.8954,  0.2102,  0.0241,  0.2349,  0.3247
-0.1353,  0.6954, -0.0919, -0.9692,  0.7461,  0.3338
 0.9036, -0.8982, -0.5299, -0.8733, -0.1567,  0.1187
 0.7277, -0.8368, -0.0538, -0.7489,  0.5458,  0.0830
 0.9049,  0.8878,  0.2279,  0.9470, -0.3103,  0.2194
 0.7957, -0.1308, -0.5284,  0.8817,  0.3684,  0.2172
 0.4647, -0.4931,  0.2010,  0.6292, -0.8918,  0.3371
-0.7390,  0.6849,  0.2367,  0.0626, -0.5034,  0.7039
-0.1567, -0.8711,  0.7940, -0.5932,  0.6525,  0.1710
 0.7635, -0.0265,  0.1969,  0.0545,  0.2496,  0.1445
 0.7675,  0.1354, -0.7698, -0.5460,  0.1920,  0.1728
-0.5211, -0.7372, -0.6763,  0.6897,  0.2044,  0.5217
 0.1913,  0.1980,  0.2314, -0.8816,  0.5006,  0.1998
 0.8964,  0.0694, -0.6149,  0.5059, -0.9854,  0.1825
 0.1767,  0.7104,  0.2093,  0.6452,  0.7590,  0.2832
-0.3580, -0.7541,  0.4426, -0.1193, -0.7465,  0.5657
-0.5996,  0.5766, -0.9758, -0.3933, -0.9572,  0.6800
 0.9950,  0.1641, -0.4132,  0.8579,  0.0142,  0.2003
-0.4717, -0.3894, -0.2567, -0.5111,  0.1691,  0.4266
 0.3917, -0.8561,  0.9422,  0.5061,  0.6123,  0.1212
-0.0366, -0.1087,  0.3449, -0.1025,  0.4086,  0.2475
 0.3633,  0.3943,  0.2372, -0.6980,  0.5216,  0.1925
-0.5325, -0.6466, -0.2178, -0.3589,  0.6310,  0.3568
 0.2271,  0.5200, -0.1447, -0.8011, -0.7699,  0.3128
 0.6415,  0.1993,  0.3777, -0.0178, -0.8237,  0.2181
-0.5298, -0.0768, -0.6028, -0.9490,  0.4588,  0.4356
 0.6870, -0.1431,  0.7294,  0.3141,  0.1621,  0.1632
-0.5985,  0.0591,  0.7889, -0.3900,  0.7419,  0.2945
 0.3661,  0.7984, -0.8486,  0.7572, -0.6183,  0.3449
 0.6995,  0.3342, -0.3113, -0.6972,  0.2707,  0.1712
 0.2565,  0.9126,  0.1798, -0.6043, -0.1413,  0.2893
-0.3265,  0.9839, -0.2395,  0.9854,  0.0376,  0.4770
 0.2690, -0.1722,  0.9818,  0.8599, -0.7015,  0.3954
-0.2102, -0.0768,  0.1219,  0.5607, -0.0256,  0.3949
 0.8216, -0.9555,  0.6422, -0.6231,  0.3715,  0.0801
-0.2896,  0.9484, -0.7545, -0.6249,  0.7789,  0.4370
-0.9985, -0.5448, -0.7092, -0.5931,  0.7926,  0.5402

Test data:

# synthetic_test_40.txt
#
 0.7462,  0.4006, -0.0590,  0.6543, -0.0083,  0.1935
 0.8495, -0.2260, -0.0142, -0.4911,  0.7699,  0.1078
-0.2335, -0.4049,  0.4352, -0.6183, -0.7636,  0.5088
 0.1810, -0.5142,  0.2465,  0.2767, -0.3449,  0.3136
-0.8650,  0.7611, -0.0801,  0.5277, -0.4922,  0.7140
-0.2358, -0.7466, -0.5115, -0.8413, -0.3943,  0.4533
 0.4834,  0.2300,  0.3448, -0.9832,  0.3568,  0.1360
-0.6502, -0.6300,  0.6885,  0.9652,  0.8275,  0.3046
-0.3053,  0.5604,  0.0929,  0.6329, -0.0325,  0.4756
-0.7995,  0.0740, -0.2680,  0.2086,  0.9176,  0.4565
-0.2144, -0.2141,  0.5813,  0.2902, -0.2122,  0.4119
-0.7278, -0.0987, -0.3312, -0.5641,  0.8515,  0.4438
 0.3793,  0.1976,  0.4933,  0.0839,  0.4011,  0.1905
-0.8568,  0.9573, -0.5272,  0.3212, -0.8207,  0.7415
-0.5785,  0.0056, -0.7901, -0.2223,  0.0760,  0.5551
 0.0735, -0.2188,  0.3925,  0.3570,  0.3746,  0.2191
 0.1230, -0.2838,  0.2262,  0.8715,  0.1938,  0.2878
 0.4792, -0.9248,  0.5295,  0.0366, -0.9894,  0.3149
-0.4456,  0.0697,  0.5359, -0.8938,  0.0981,  0.3879
 0.8629, -0.8505, -0.4464,  0.8385,  0.5300,  0.1769
 0.1995,  0.6659,  0.7921,  0.9454,  0.9970,  0.2330
-0.0249, -0.3066, -0.2927, -0.4923,  0.8220,  0.2437
 0.4513, -0.9481, -0.0770, -0.4374, -0.9421,  0.2879
-0.3405,  0.5931, -0.3507, -0.3842,  0.8562,  0.3987
 0.9538,  0.0471,  0.9039,  0.7760,  0.0361,  0.1706
-0.0887,  0.2104,  0.9808,  0.5478, -0.3314,  0.4128
-0.8220, -0.6302,  0.0537, -0.1658,  0.6013,  0.4306
-0.4123, -0.2880,  0.9074, -0.0461, -0.4435,  0.5144
 0.0060,  0.2867, -0.7775,  0.5161,  0.7039,  0.3599
-0.7968, -0.5484,  0.9426, -0.4308,  0.8148,  0.2979
 0.7811,  0.8450, -0.6877,  0.7594,  0.2640,  0.2362
-0.6802, -0.1113, -0.8325, -0.6694, -0.6056,  0.6544
 0.3821,  0.1476,  0.7466, -0.5107,  0.2592,  0.1648
 0.7265,  0.9683, -0.9803, -0.4943, -0.5523,  0.2454
-0.9049, -0.9797, -0.0196, -0.9090, -0.4433,  0.6447
-0.4607,  0.1811, -0.2389,  0.4050, -0.0078,  0.5229
 0.2664, -0.2932, -0.4259, -0.7336,  0.8742,  0.1834
-0.4507,  0.1029, -0.6294, -0.1158, -0.6294,  0.6081
 0.8948, -0.0124,  0.9278,  0.2899, -0.0314,  0.1534
-0.1323, -0.8813, -0.0146, -0.0697,  0.6135,  0.2386

I like to write code every day — it’s good mental exercise and just plain fun for me. One evening, after I gave my dogs their early evening walk, I figured I’d implement linear regression, from scratch, using C#, with SGD training, with an early exit condition out of the training loop.

There are two main forms of early exit from SGD training. The most common uses a validation dataset, and checks if the model weights aren’t changing significantly. This first form is usually called “early stopping”. I’ve always been skeptical of this technique (see https://jamesmccaffreyblog.com/2022/11/10/why-i-dont-use-neural-network-early-stopping/). The second form of early exit just checks the training data directly for no significant change in model weights. That’s the approach I used.

Briefly, in high-level pseudo-code:

loop max_epochs times
  shuffle order of training data
  loop each training item
    compute predicted y
    compute error = pred_y - target_y
    loop each model weight
      use error and learn_rate to update each weight
    end-loop
    update model bias
  end-loop
  after each epoch, 
    compute max_change_in_wts, max_wt
  if (max_change / max_wt less-than stop_tolerance)
    exit training loop
  end-if
end-loop
(at this point training done but no early exit happened)

The output of the demo is:

Begin C# linear regression SGD training with early exit

Loading synthetic train (200) and test (40) data
Done

First three train X:
 -0.1660  0.4406 -0.9998 -0.3953 -0.7065
  0.0776 -0.1616  0.3704 -0.5911  0.7562
 -0.9452  0.3409 -0.1654  0.1174 -0.7192

First three train y:
  0.4840
  0.1568
  0.8054

Setting lrnRate = 0.0005
Setting maxEpohcs = 500

Setting stop tol = 0.0001

Creating and training Linear Regression model
epoch =     0  MSE =   0.1331
epoch =   100  MSE =   0.0026
epoch =   200  MSE =   0.0026
Early exit at epoch 214
Done

Weights/coefficients:
-0.2654 0.0333 -0.0456 0.0357 -0.1145
Bias/constant: 0.3620

Evaluating model

Accuracy train (within 0.10) = 0.4600
Accuracy test (within 0.10) = 0.6250

MSE train = 0.0026
MSE test = 0.0020

Predicting for x =
  -0.1660   0.4406  -0.9998  -0.3953  -0.7065

Predicted y = 0.5330

End demo

There are many ways to decide when to early exit, but the one above is simple and usually effective. Good fun. Now it’s time to give my dogs their late night walk.

I’m a big fan of early science fiction art from the 1950s.

Right: By Alex Schomburg (1905-1998).

Demo program. Replace “lt” (less than), “gt”, “lte”, “gte” with Boolean operator symbols (my blog editor chokes on symbols)

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace LinearRegressionSGDEarlyStop
{
  internal class LinearRegressionProgram
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("\nBegin C# linear regression" +
        " SGD training with early exit ");

      // 1. load data
      Console.WriteLine("\nLoading synthetic train" +
        " (200) and test (40) data");
      string trainFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_train_200.txt";
      int[] colsX = new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 };
      double[][] trainX =
        MatLoad(trainFile, colsX, ',', "#");
      double[] trainY =
        MatToVec(MatLoad(trainFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));

      string testFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_test_40.txt";
      double[][] testX =
        MatLoad(testFile, colsX, ',', "#");
      double[] testY =
        MatToVec(MatLoad(testFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three train X: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        VecShow(trainX[i], 4, 8);

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three train y: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        Console.WriteLine(trainY[i].ToString("F4").
          PadLeft(8));

      // 2. create and train model
      double lrnRate = 0.0005;
      int maxEpochs = 500;
      double stopTol = 0.0001;
      //int seed = 0;
      Console.WriteLine("\nSetting lrnRate = " +
        lrnRate.ToString("F4"));
      Console.WriteLine("Setting maxEpohcs = " +
        maxEpochs);
      Console.WriteLine("\nSetting stop tol = " +
        stopTol.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nCreating and training" +
        " Linear Regression model ");
      LinearRegressor model =
        new LinearRegressor();
      model.TrainSGD(trainX, trainY, lrnRate,
        maxEpochs, stopTol);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      // 2b.show model parameters
      Console.WriteLine("\nWeights/coefficients: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" model.weights.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(model.weights[i].ToString("F4") + " ");
      Console.WriteLine("\nBias/constant: " +
        model.bias.ToString("F4"));

      // 3. evaluate model
      Console.WriteLine("\nEvaluating model ");

      double accTrain = model.Accuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("\nAccuracy train (within 0.10) = " +
        accTrain.ToString("F4"));
      double accTest = model.Accuracy(testX, testY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("Accuracy test (within 0.10) = " +
        accTest.ToString("F4"));

      double mseTrain = model.MSE(trainX, trainY);
      Console.WriteLine("\nMSE train = " +
        mseTrain.ToString("F4"));
      double mseTest = model.MSE(testX, testY);
      Console.WriteLine("MSE test = " +
        mseTest.ToString("F4"));

      // 4. use model
      double[] x = trainX[0];
      Console.WriteLine("\nPredicting for x = ");
      VecShow(x, 4, 9);
      double predY = model.Predict(x);
      Console.WriteLine("\nPredicted y = " +
        predY.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nEnd demo ");
      Console.ReadLine();
    } // Main

    // ------------------------------------------------------
    // helpers for Main()
    // ------------------------------------------------------

    static double[][] MatLoad(string fn, int[] usecols,
      char sep, string comment)
    {
      List"lt"double[]"gt" result = 
        new List"lt"double[]"gt"();
      string line = "";
      FileStream ifs = new FileStream(fn, FileMode.Open);
      StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ifs);
      while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
      {
        if (line.StartsWith(comment) == true)
          continue;
        string[] tokens = line.Split(sep);
        List"lt"double"gt" lst = new List"lt"double"gt"();
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" usecols.Length; ++j)
          lst.Add(double.Parse(tokens[usecols[j]]));
        double[] row = lst.ToArray();
        result.Add(row);
      }
      sr.Close(); ifs.Close();
      return result.ToArray();
    }

    static double[] MatToVec(double[][] M)
    {
      int nRows = M.Length;
      int nCols = M[0].Length;
      double[] result = new double[nRows * nCols];
      int k = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nCols; ++j)
          result[k++] = M[i][j];
      return result;
    }

    static void VecShow(double[] vec, int dec, int wid)
    {
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" vec.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(vec[i].ToString("F" + dec).
          PadLeft(wid));
      Console.WriteLine("");
    }
  } // class Program

  public class LinearRegressor
  {
    public double[] weights;
    public double bias;
    private Random rnd;

    public LinearRegressor(int seed = 0)
    {
      this.weights = new double[0]; // keep compiler happy
      this.bias = 0;
      this.rnd = new Random(seed);
    }

    public int TrainSGD(double[][] trainX,
      double[] trainY, double lrnRate, int maxEpochs,
      double stopTol)
    {
      int n = trainX.Length;  int dim = trainX[0].Length;
      this.weights = new double[dim];

      // initialize weights and bias
      double low = -0.01; double hi = 0.01;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dim; ++i)
        this.weights[i] = (hi - low) *
          this.rnd.NextDouble() + low;
      this.bias = (hi - low) *
          this.rnd.NextDouble() + low;

      int[] indices = new int[n];  // of train data
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        indices[i] = i;

      double[] prevWeights = new double[dim];
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" dim; ++j)
        prevWeights[j] = this.weights[j];
      
      for (int epoch = 0; epoch "lt" maxEpochs; ++epoch)
      {
        Shuffle(indices, this.rnd);

        for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i) // each train item
        {
          int ii = indices[i];
          double[] x = trainX[ii];
          double predY = this.Predict(x);
          double actualY = trainY[ii];
          for (int j = 0; j "lt" dim; ++j) // each weight
            this.weights[j] -= lrnRate *
              (predY - actualY) * x[j];
          this.bias -= lrnRate * (predY - actualY);
        }
        if (epoch % (int)(maxEpochs / 5) == 0) // progress
        {
          double mse = this.MSE(trainX, trainY);
          string s = "";
          s += "epoch = " + epoch.ToString().PadLeft(5);
          s += "  MSE = " + mse.ToString("F4").PadLeft(8);
          Console.WriteLine(s);
        }

        // check early-stop after each epoch
        // if max_change_in_wts / max_weights "lt" tol
        double[] weightDeltas = new double[dim];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" dim; ++j)
          weightDeltas[j] = 
            Math.Abs(prevWeights[j] - this.weights[j]);
        double maxChange = weightDeltas[0];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" dim; ++j)
          if (weightDeltas[j] "gt" maxChange)
            maxChange = weightDeltas[j];
        double maxWeight = this.weights[0];
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" dim; ++j)
          if (this.weights[j] "gt" maxWeight)
            maxWeight = this.weights[j];
        if (maxWeight != 0.0 &&
          (maxChange / maxWeight) "lt" stopTol)
        {
          Console.WriteLine("Early exit at epoch " + epoch);
          return epoch;
        }

        // early exit didn't happen
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" dim; ++j)
          prevWeights[j] = this.weights[j];

      } // epoch
      return maxEpochs;

    } // Train

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Predict(double[] x)
    {
      double result = 0.0;
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" x.Length; ++j)
        result += x[j] * this.weights[j];
      result += this.bias;
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Accuracy(double[][] dataX, double[] dataY,
      double pctClose)
    {
      int numCorrect = 0; int numWrong = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dataX.Length; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(dataX[i]);
        if (Math.Abs(predY - actualY) "lt"
          (pctClose * actualY))
          ++numCorrect;
        else
          ++numWrong;
      }
      return (numCorrect * 1.0) / (numWrong + numCorrect);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double MSE(double[][] dataX, double[] dataY)
    {
      int n = dataX.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = this.Predict(dataX[i]);
        sum += (actualY - predY) * (actualY - predY);
      }
      return sum / n;
    }

    private static void Shuffle(int[] indices, Random rnd)
    {
      int n = indices.Length;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        int ri = rnd.Next(i, n);
        int tmp = indices[i];
        indices[i] = indices[ri];
        indices[ri] = tmp;
      }
    }

  } // class LinearRegressor

} // ns

Training data:

# synthetic_train_200.txt
#
-0.1660,  0.4406, -0.9998, -0.3953, -0.7065,  0.4840
 0.0776, -0.1616,  0.3704, -0.5911,  0.7562,  0.1568
-0.9452,  0.3409, -0.1654,  0.1174, -0.7192,  0.8054
 0.9365, -0.3732,  0.3846,  0.7528,  0.7892,  0.1345
-0.8299, -0.9219, -0.6603,  0.7563, -0.8033,  0.7955
 0.0663,  0.3838, -0.3690,  0.3730,  0.6693,  0.3206
-0.9634,  0.5003,  0.9777,  0.4963, -0.4391,  0.7377
-0.1042,  0.8172, -0.4128, -0.4244, -0.7399,  0.4801
-0.9613,  0.3577, -0.5767, -0.4689, -0.0169,  0.6861
-0.7065,  0.1786,  0.3995, -0.7953, -0.1719,  0.5569
 0.3888, -0.1716, -0.9001,  0.0718,  0.3276,  0.2500
 0.1731,  0.8068, -0.7251, -0.7214,  0.6148,  0.3297
-0.2046, -0.6693,  0.8550, -0.3045,  0.5016,  0.2129
 0.2473,  0.5019, -0.3022, -0.4601,  0.7918,  0.2613
-0.1438,  0.9297,  0.3269,  0.2434, -0.7705,  0.5171
 0.1568, -0.1837, -0.5259,  0.8068,  0.1474,  0.3307
-0.9943,  0.2343, -0.3467,  0.0541,  0.7719,  0.5581
 0.2467, -0.9684,  0.8589,  0.3818,  0.9946,  0.1092
-0.6553, -0.7257,  0.8652,  0.3936, -0.8680,  0.7018
 0.8460,  0.4230, -0.7515, -0.9602, -0.9476,  0.1996
-0.9434, -0.5076,  0.7201,  0.0777,  0.1056,  0.5664
 0.9392,  0.1221, -0.9627,  0.6013, -0.5341,  0.1533
 0.6142, -0.2243,  0.7271,  0.4942,  0.1125,  0.1661
 0.4260,  0.1194, -0.9749, -0.8561,  0.9346,  0.2230
 0.1362, -0.5934, -0.4953,  0.4877, -0.6091,  0.3810
 0.6937, -0.5203, -0.0125,  0.2399,  0.6580,  0.1460
-0.6864, -0.9628, -0.8600, -0.0273,  0.2127,  0.5387
 0.9772,  0.1595, -0.2397,  0.1019,  0.4907,  0.1611
 0.3385, -0.4702, -0.8673, -0.2598,  0.2594,  0.2270
-0.8669, -0.4794,  0.6095, -0.6131,  0.2789,  0.4700
 0.0493,  0.8496, -0.4734, -0.8681,  0.4701,  0.3516
 0.8639, -0.9721, -0.5313,  0.2336,  0.8980,  0.1412
 0.9004,  0.1133,  0.8312,  0.2831, -0.2200,  0.1782
 0.0991,  0.8524,  0.8375, -0.2102,  0.9265,  0.2150
-0.6521, -0.7473, -0.7298,  0.0113, -0.9570,  0.7422
 0.6190, -0.3105,  0.8802,  0.1640,  0.7577,  0.1056
 0.6895,  0.8108, -0.0802,  0.0927,  0.5972,  0.2214
 0.1982, -0.9689,  0.1870, -0.1326,  0.6147,  0.1310
-0.3695,  0.7858,  0.1557, -0.6320,  0.5759,  0.3773
-0.1596,  0.3581,  0.8372, -0.9992,  0.9535,  0.2071
-0.2468,  0.9476,  0.2094,  0.6577,  0.1494,  0.4132
 0.1737,  0.5000,  0.7166,  0.5102,  0.3961,  0.2611
 0.7290, -0.3546,  0.3416, -0.0983, -0.2358,  0.1332
-0.3652,  0.2438, -0.1395,  0.9476,  0.3556,  0.4170
-0.6029, -0.1466, -0.3133,  0.5953,  0.7600,  0.4334
-0.4596, -0.4953,  0.7098,  0.0554,  0.6043,  0.2775
 0.1450,  0.4663,  0.0380,  0.5418,  0.1377,  0.2931
-0.8636, -0.2442, -0.8407,  0.9656, -0.6368,  0.7429
 0.6237,  0.7499,  0.3768,  0.1390, -0.6781,  0.2185
-0.5499,  0.1850, -0.3755,  0.8326,  0.8193,  0.4399
-0.4858, -0.7782, -0.6141, -0.0008,  0.4572,  0.4197
 0.7033, -0.1683,  0.2334, -0.5327, -0.7961,  0.1776
 0.0317, -0.0457, -0.6947,  0.2436,  0.0880,  0.3345
 0.5031, -0.5559,  0.0387,  0.5706, -0.9553,  0.3107
-0.3513,  0.7458,  0.6894,  0.0769,  0.7332,  0.3170
 0.2205,  0.5992, -0.9309,  0.5405,  0.4635,  0.3532
-0.4806, -0.4859,  0.2646, -0.3094,  0.5932,  0.3202
 0.9809, -0.3995, -0.7140,  0.8026,  0.0831,  0.1600
 0.9495,  0.2732,  0.9878,  0.0921,  0.0529,  0.1289
-0.9476, -0.6792,  0.4913, -0.9392, -0.2669,  0.5966
 0.7247,  0.3854,  0.3819, -0.6227, -0.1162,  0.1550
-0.5922, -0.5045, -0.4757,  0.5003, -0.0860,  0.5863
-0.8861,  0.0170, -0.5761,  0.5972, -0.4053,  0.7301
 0.6877, -0.2380,  0.4997,  0.0223,  0.0819,  0.1404
 0.9189,  0.6079, -0.9354,  0.4188, -0.0700,  0.1907
-0.1428, -0.7820,  0.2676,  0.6059,  0.3936,  0.2790
 0.5324, -0.3151,  0.6917, -0.1425,  0.6480,  0.1071
-0.8432, -0.9633, -0.8666, -0.0828, -0.7733,  0.7784
-0.9444,  0.5097, -0.2103,  0.4939, -0.0952,  0.6787
-0.0520,  0.6063, -0.1952,  0.8094, -0.9259,  0.4836
 0.5477, -0.7487,  0.2370, -0.9793,  0.0773,  0.1241
 0.2450,  0.8116,  0.9799,  0.4222,  0.4636,  0.2355
 0.8186, -0.1983, -0.5003, -0.6531, -0.7611,  0.1511
-0.4714,  0.6382, -0.3788,  0.9648, -0.4667,  0.5950
 0.0673, -0.3711,  0.8215, -0.2669, -0.1328,  0.2677
-0.9381,  0.4338,  0.7820, -0.9454,  0.0441,  0.5518
-0.3480,  0.7190,  0.1170,  0.3805, -0.0943,  0.4724
-0.9813,  0.1535, -0.3771,  0.0345,  0.8328,  0.5438
-0.1471, -0.5052, -0.2574,  0.8637,  0.8737,  0.3042
-0.5454, -0.3712, -0.6505,  0.2142, -0.1728,  0.5783
 0.6327, -0.6297,  0.4038, -0.5193,  0.1484,  0.1153
-0.5424,  0.3282, -0.0055,  0.0380, -0.6506,  0.6613
 0.1414,  0.9935,  0.6337,  0.1887,  0.9520,  0.2540
-0.9351, -0.8128, -0.8693, -0.0965, -0.2491,  0.7353
 0.9507, -0.6640,  0.9456,  0.5349,  0.6485,  0.1059
-0.0462, -0.9737, -0.2940, -0.0159,  0.4602,  0.2606
-0.0627, -0.0852, -0.7247, -0.9782,  0.5166,  0.2977
 0.0478,  0.5098, -0.0723, -0.7504, -0.3750,  0.3335
 0.0090,  0.3477,  0.5403, -0.7393, -0.9542,  0.4415
-0.9748,  0.3449,  0.3736, -0.1015,  0.8296,  0.4358
 0.2887, -0.9895, -0.0311,  0.7186,  0.6608,  0.2057
 0.1570, -0.4518,  0.1211,  0.3435, -0.2951,  0.3244
 0.7117, -0.6099,  0.4946, -0.4208,  0.5476,  0.1096
-0.2929, -0.5726,  0.5346, -0.3827,  0.4665,  0.2465
 0.4889, -0.5572, -0.5718, -0.6021, -0.7150,  0.2163
-0.7782,  0.3491,  0.5996, -0.8389, -0.5366,  0.6516
-0.5847,  0.8347,  0.4226,  0.1078, -0.3910,  0.6134
 0.8469,  0.4121, -0.0439, -0.7476,  0.9521,  0.1571
-0.6803, -0.5948, -0.1376, -0.1916, -0.7065,  0.7156
 0.2878,  0.5086, -0.5785,  0.2019,  0.4979,  0.2980
 0.2764,  0.1943, -0.4090,  0.4632,  0.8906,  0.2960
-0.8877,  0.6705, -0.6155, -0.2098, -0.3998,  0.7107
-0.8398,  0.8093, -0.2597,  0.0614, -0.0118,  0.6502
-0.8476,  0.0158, -0.4769, -0.2859, -0.7839,  0.7715
 0.5751, -0.7868,  0.9714, -0.6457,  0.1448,  0.1175
 0.4802, -0.7001,  0.1022, -0.5668,  0.5184,  0.1090
 0.4458, -0.6469,  0.7239, -0.9604,  0.7205,  0.0779
 0.5175,  0.4339,  0.9747, -0.4438, -0.9924,  0.2879
 0.8678,  0.7158,  0.4577,  0.0334,  0.4139,  0.1678
 0.5406,  0.5012,  0.2264, -0.1963,  0.3946,  0.2088
-0.9938,  0.5498,  0.7928, -0.5214, -0.7585,  0.7687
 0.7661,  0.0863, -0.4266, -0.7233, -0.4197,  0.1466
 0.2277, -0.3517, -0.0853, -0.1118,  0.6563,  0.1767
 0.3499, -0.5570, -0.0655, -0.3705,  0.2537,  0.1632
 0.7547, -0.1046,  0.5689, -0.0861,  0.3125,  0.1257
 0.8186,  0.2110,  0.5335,  0.0094, -0.0039,  0.1391
 0.6858, -0.8644,  0.1465,  0.8855,  0.0357,  0.1845
-0.4967,  0.4015,  0.0805,  0.8977,  0.2487,  0.4663
 0.6760, -0.9841,  0.9787, -0.8446, -0.3557,  0.1509
-0.1203, -0.4885,  0.6054, -0.0443, -0.7313,  0.4854
 0.8557,  0.7919, -0.0169,  0.7134, -0.1628,  0.2002
 0.0115, -0.6209,  0.9300, -0.4116, -0.7931,  0.4052
-0.7114, -0.9718,  0.4319,  0.1290,  0.5892,  0.3661
 0.3915,  0.5557, -0.1870,  0.2955, -0.6404,  0.2954
-0.3564, -0.6548, -0.1827, -0.5172, -0.1862,  0.4622
 0.2392, -0.4959,  0.5857, -0.1341, -0.2850,  0.2470
-0.3394,  0.3947, -0.4627,  0.6166, -0.4094,  0.5325
 0.7107,  0.7768, -0.6312,  0.1707,  0.7964,  0.2757
-0.1078,  0.8437, -0.4420,  0.2177,  0.3649,  0.4028
-0.3139,  0.5595, -0.6505, -0.3161, -0.7108,  0.5546
 0.4335,  0.3986,  0.3770, -0.4932,  0.3847,  0.1810
-0.2562, -0.2894, -0.8847,  0.2633,  0.4146,  0.4036
 0.2272,  0.2966, -0.6601, -0.7011,  0.0284,  0.2778
-0.0743, -0.1421, -0.0054, -0.6770, -0.3151,  0.3597
-0.4762,  0.6891,  0.6007, -0.1467,  0.2140,  0.4266
-0.4061,  0.7193,  0.3432,  0.2669, -0.7505,  0.6147
-0.0588,  0.9731,  0.8966,  0.2902, -0.6966,  0.4955
-0.0627, -0.1439,  0.1985,  0.6999,  0.5022,  0.3077
 0.1587,  0.8494, -0.8705,  0.9827, -0.8940,  0.4263
-0.7850,  0.2473, -0.9040, -0.4308, -0.8779,  0.7199
 0.4070,  0.3369, -0.2428, -0.6236,  0.4940,  0.2215
-0.0242,  0.0513, -0.9430,  0.2885, -0.2987,  0.3947
-0.5416, -0.1322, -0.2351, -0.0604,  0.9590,  0.3683
 0.1055,  0.7783, -0.2901, -0.5090,  0.8220,  0.2984
-0.9129,  0.9015,  0.1128, -0.2473,  0.9901,  0.4776
-0.9378,  0.1424, -0.6391,  0.2619,  0.9618,  0.5368
 0.7498, -0.0963,  0.4169,  0.5549, -0.0103,  0.1614
-0.2612, -0.7156,  0.4538, -0.0460, -0.1022,  0.3717
 0.7720,  0.0552, -0.1818, -0.4622, -0.8560,  0.1685
-0.4177,  0.0070,  0.9319, -0.7812,  0.3461,  0.3052
-0.0001,  0.5542, -0.7128, -0.8336, -0.2016,  0.3803
 0.5356, -0.4194, -0.5662, -0.9666, -0.2027,  0.1776
-0.2378,  0.3187, -0.8582, -0.6948, -0.9668,  0.5474
-0.1947, -0.3579,  0.1158,  0.9869,  0.6690,  0.2992
 0.3992,  0.8365, -0.9205, -0.8593, -0.0520,  0.3154
-0.0209,  0.0793,  0.7905, -0.1067,  0.7541,  0.1864
-0.4928, -0.4524, -0.3433,  0.0951, -0.5597,  0.6261
-0.8118,  0.7404, -0.5263, -0.2280,  0.1431,  0.6349
 0.0516, -0.8480,  0.7483,  0.9023,  0.6250,  0.1959
-0.3212,  0.1093,  0.9488, -0.3766,  0.3376,  0.2735
-0.3481,  0.5490, -0.3484,  0.7797,  0.5034,  0.4379
-0.5785, -0.9170, -0.3563, -0.9258,  0.3877,  0.4121
 0.3407, -0.1391,  0.5356,  0.0720, -0.9203,  0.3458
-0.3287, -0.8954,  0.2102,  0.0241,  0.2349,  0.3247
-0.1353,  0.6954, -0.0919, -0.9692,  0.7461,  0.3338
 0.9036, -0.8982, -0.5299, -0.8733, -0.1567,  0.1187
 0.7277, -0.8368, -0.0538, -0.7489,  0.5458,  0.0830
 0.9049,  0.8878,  0.2279,  0.9470, -0.3103,  0.2194
 0.7957, -0.1308, -0.5284,  0.8817,  0.3684,  0.2172
 0.4647, -0.4931,  0.2010,  0.6292, -0.8918,  0.3371
-0.7390,  0.6849,  0.2367,  0.0626, -0.5034,  0.7039
-0.1567, -0.8711,  0.7940, -0.5932,  0.6525,  0.1710
 0.7635, -0.0265,  0.1969,  0.0545,  0.2496,  0.1445
 0.7675,  0.1354, -0.7698, -0.5460,  0.1920,  0.1728
-0.5211, -0.7372, -0.6763,  0.6897,  0.2044,  0.5217
 0.1913,  0.1980,  0.2314, -0.8816,  0.5006,  0.1998
 0.8964,  0.0694, -0.6149,  0.5059, -0.9854,  0.1825
 0.1767,  0.7104,  0.2093,  0.6452,  0.7590,  0.2832
-0.3580, -0.7541,  0.4426, -0.1193, -0.7465,  0.5657
-0.5996,  0.5766, -0.9758, -0.3933, -0.9572,  0.6800
 0.9950,  0.1641, -0.4132,  0.8579,  0.0142,  0.2003
-0.4717, -0.3894, -0.2567, -0.5111,  0.1691,  0.4266
 0.3917, -0.8561,  0.9422,  0.5061,  0.6123,  0.1212
-0.0366, -0.1087,  0.3449, -0.1025,  0.4086,  0.2475
 0.3633,  0.3943,  0.2372, -0.6980,  0.5216,  0.1925
-0.5325, -0.6466, -0.2178, -0.3589,  0.6310,  0.3568
 0.2271,  0.5200, -0.1447, -0.8011, -0.7699,  0.3128
 0.6415,  0.1993,  0.3777, -0.0178, -0.8237,  0.2181
-0.5298, -0.0768, -0.6028, -0.9490,  0.4588,  0.4356
 0.6870, -0.1431,  0.7294,  0.3141,  0.1621,  0.1632
-0.5985,  0.0591,  0.7889, -0.3900,  0.7419,  0.2945
 0.3661,  0.7984, -0.8486,  0.7572, -0.6183,  0.3449
 0.6995,  0.3342, -0.3113, -0.6972,  0.2707,  0.1712
 0.2565,  0.9126,  0.1798, -0.6043, -0.1413,  0.2893
-0.3265,  0.9839, -0.2395,  0.9854,  0.0376,  0.4770
 0.2690, -0.1722,  0.9818,  0.8599, -0.7015,  0.3954
-0.2102, -0.0768,  0.1219,  0.5607, -0.0256,  0.3949
 0.8216, -0.9555,  0.6422, -0.6231,  0.3715,  0.0801
-0.2896,  0.9484, -0.7545, -0.6249,  0.7789,  0.4370
-0.9985, -0.5448, -0.7092, -0.5931,  0.7926,  0.5402

Test data:

# synthetic_test_40.txt
#
 0.7462,  0.4006, -0.0590,  0.6543, -0.0083,  0.1935
 0.8495, -0.2260, -0.0142, -0.4911,  0.7699,  0.1078
-0.2335, -0.4049,  0.4352, -0.6183, -0.7636,  0.5088
 0.1810, -0.5142,  0.2465,  0.2767, -0.3449,  0.3136
-0.8650,  0.7611, -0.0801,  0.5277, -0.4922,  0.7140
-0.2358, -0.7466, -0.5115, -0.8413, -0.3943,  0.4533
 0.4834,  0.2300,  0.3448, -0.9832,  0.3568,  0.1360
-0.6502, -0.6300,  0.6885,  0.9652,  0.8275,  0.3046
-0.3053,  0.5604,  0.0929,  0.6329, -0.0325,  0.4756
-0.7995,  0.0740, -0.2680,  0.2086,  0.9176,  0.4565
-0.2144, -0.2141,  0.5813,  0.2902, -0.2122,  0.4119
-0.7278, -0.0987, -0.3312, -0.5641,  0.8515,  0.4438
 0.3793,  0.1976,  0.4933,  0.0839,  0.4011,  0.1905
-0.8568,  0.9573, -0.5272,  0.3212, -0.8207,  0.7415
-0.5785,  0.0056, -0.7901, -0.2223,  0.0760,  0.5551
 0.0735, -0.2188,  0.3925,  0.3570,  0.3746,  0.2191
 0.1230, -0.2838,  0.2262,  0.8715,  0.1938,  0.2878
 0.4792, -0.9248,  0.5295,  0.0366, -0.9894,  0.3149
-0.4456,  0.0697,  0.5359, -0.8938,  0.0981,  0.3879
 0.8629, -0.8505, -0.4464,  0.8385,  0.5300,  0.1769
 0.1995,  0.6659,  0.7921,  0.9454,  0.9970,  0.2330
-0.0249, -0.3066, -0.2927, -0.4923,  0.8220,  0.2437
 0.4513, -0.9481, -0.0770, -0.4374, -0.9421,  0.2879
-0.3405,  0.5931, -0.3507, -0.3842,  0.8562,  0.3987
 0.9538,  0.0471,  0.9039,  0.7760,  0.0361,  0.1706
-0.0887,  0.2104,  0.9808,  0.5478, -0.3314,  0.4128
-0.8220, -0.6302,  0.0537, -0.1658,  0.6013,  0.4306
-0.4123, -0.2880,  0.9074, -0.0461, -0.4435,  0.5144
 0.0060,  0.2867, -0.7775,  0.5161,  0.7039,  0.3599
-0.7968, -0.5484,  0.9426, -0.4308,  0.8148,  0.2979
 0.7811,  0.8450, -0.6877,  0.7594,  0.2640,  0.2362
-0.6802, -0.1113, -0.8325, -0.6694, -0.6056,  0.6544
 0.3821,  0.1476,  0.7466, -0.5107,  0.2592,  0.1648
 0.7265,  0.9683, -0.9803, -0.4943, -0.5523,  0.2454
-0.9049, -0.9797, -0.0196, -0.9090, -0.4433,  0.6447
-0.4607,  0.1811, -0.2389,  0.4050, -0.0078,  0.5229
 0.2664, -0.2932, -0.4259, -0.7336,  0.8742,  0.1834
-0.4507,  0.1029, -0.6294, -0.1158, -0.6294,  0.6081
 0.8948, -0.0124,  0.9278,  0.2899, -0.0314,  0.1534
-0.1323, -0.8813, -0.0146, -0.0697,  0.6135,  0.2386

The goal of a machine learning regression model is to predict a single numeric value. For example, you might want to predict the bank account balance of a person based on their age, height, and annual income.

After a regression model has been created, it’s a good idea to evaluate the model. Common metrics are prediction percent accuracy, mean squared error or root mean squared error, and R2 (coefficient of determination). It’s also a good idea to compute a baseline accuracy and a baseline mean squared error, where the baseline metric assumes that you just predict the average of the target y values in the training data. If a prediction model has worse prediction accuracy than the baseline accuracy, something is seriously wrong with the model.

I put together a demo to illustrate the idea. I used linear regression, implemented from scratch using the C# language. The output of my demo is:

Begin C# linear regression baseline accuracy demo

Loading synthetic train (200) and test (40) data
Done

First three train X:
 -0.1660  0.4406 -0.9998 -0.3953 -0.7065
  0.0776 -0.1616  0.3704 -0.5911  0.7562
 -0.9452  0.3409 -0.1654  0.1174 -0.7192

First three train y:
  0.4840
  0.1568
  0.8054

Creating and training  model using left pseudo-inverse
Done

Model weights:
-0.2656  0.0333  -0.0454  0.0358  -0.1146
Bias/constant: 0.3619

Evaluating trained model

Accuracy train (within 0.10) = 0.4600
Accuracy test (within 0.10) = 0.6500

Baseline accuracy train (within 0.10) = 0.1100
Baseline accuracy test (within 0.10) = 0.0750

End demo

The demo data is synthetic. There are 5 predictor values. The trained model scores 46% accuracy on the 200-item training data and 65% accuracy on the 40-item test data. A prediction is scored correct if it is within 10% of the true target value. The model accuracy is poor because the synthetic data has a complex, non-linear structure.

But the baseline accuracy, where you just predict the average target y value for every input, is only 11% on the training data and 7.5% on the test data. Therefore, the linear regression model is much better than naively predicting the average y value.

In addition to computing model accuracy and baseline accuracy, it’s a good idea to compute model mean squared error and baseline mean squared error. And computing model R2 is a good idea too — R2 combines accuracy and baseline accuracy into one metric in the sense that R2 is accuracy relative to always guessing the mean target y value.

Galaxy Science Fiction was published from 1950 to 1980. It was the leading science fiction magazine of its time. The magazine had beautiful cover art. Famous space artist Chesley Bonestell is known for his accuracy in depicting technologies and space geology. Bonestell did three early covers in 1951: February (issue #5), May (#8), and November (#14).

Demo program. Replace “lt” (less than), “gt”, “lte”, “gte” with Boolean operator symbols (my blog editor often chokes on symbols).

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace LinearRegressionBaselines
{
  internal class LinearRegressionProgram
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("\nBegin C# linear regression" +
        " baseline accuracy demo ");

      // 1. load data
      Console.WriteLine("\nLoading synthetic train" +
        " (200) and test (40) data");
      string trainFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_train_200.txt";
      int[] colsX = new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 };
      double[][] trainX =
        MatLoad(trainFile, colsX, ',', "#");
      double[] trainY =
        MatToVec(MatLoad(trainFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));

      string testFile =
        "..\\..\\..\\Data\\synthetic_test_40.txt";
      double[][] testX =
        MatLoad(testFile, colsX, ',', "#");
      double[] testY =
        MatToVec(MatLoad(testFile,
        new int[] { 5 }, ',', "#"));
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three train X: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        VecShow(trainX[i], 4, 8);

      Console.WriteLine("\nFirst three train y: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" 3; ++i)
        Console.WriteLine(trainY[i].ToString("F4").
          PadLeft(8));

      // 2. create and train model
      Console.WriteLine("\nCreating and training" +
       "  model using left pseudo-inverse ");

      LinearRegressor model = new LinearRegressor();
      model.TrainLeftPinv(trainX, trainY);
      Console.WriteLine("Done ");

      // 2b.show model parameters
      Console.WriteLine("\nModel weights: ");
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" model.weights.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(model.weights[i].ToString("F4") + "  ");
      Console.WriteLine("\nBias/constant: " +
        model.bias.ToString("F4"));

      // 3. evaluate model
      Console.WriteLine("\nEvaluating trained model ");

      double accTrain = Eval.Accuracy(model,
        trainX, trainY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("\nAccuracy train (within 0.10) = " +
        accTrain.ToString("F4"));
      double accTest = Eval.Accuracy(model,
        testX, testY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("Accuracy test (within 0.10) = " +
        accTest.ToString("F4"));

      double baseAccTrain =
        Eval.BaselineAccuracy(trainX, trainY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("\nBaseline accuracy train" +
        " (within 0.10) = " + baseAccTrain.ToString("F4"));
      double baseAccTest =
        Eval.BaselineAccuracy(testX, testY, 0.10);
      Console.WriteLine("Baseline accuracy test " +
        "(within 0.10) = " + baseAccTest.ToString("F4"));

      Console.WriteLine("\nEnd demo ");
      Console.ReadLine();
    } // Main

    // ------------------------------------------------------
    // helpers for Main()
    // ------------------------------------------------------

    static double[][] MatLoad(string fn, int[] usecols,
      char sep, string comment)
    {
      List"lt"double[]"gt" result = 
        new List"lt"double[]"gt"();
      string line = "";
      FileStream ifs = new FileStream(fn, FileMode.Open);
      StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ifs);
      while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
      {
        if (line.StartsWith(comment) == true)
          continue;
        string[] tokens = line.Split(sep);
        List"lt"double"gt" lst = new List"lt"double"gt"();
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" usecols.Length; ++j)
          lst.Add(double.Parse(tokens[usecols[j]]));
        double[] row = lst.ToArray();
        result.Add(row);
      }
      sr.Close(); ifs.Close();
      return result.ToArray();
    }

    static double[] MatToVec(double[][] M)
    {
      int nRows = M.Length;
      int nCols = M[0].Length;
      double[] result = new double[nRows * nCols];
      int k = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nCols; ++j)
          result[k++] = M[i][j];
      return result;
    }

    static void VecShow(double[] vec, int dec, int wid)
    {
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" vec.Length; ++i)
        Console.Write(vec[i].ToString("F" + dec).
          PadLeft(wid));
      Console.WriteLine("");
    }
  } // class Program

  // ========================================================

  public class LinearRegressor
  {
    public double[] weights;
    public double bias;
    private Random rnd;

    public LinearRegressor(int seed = 0)
    {
      this.weights = new double[0]; // keep compiler happy
      this.bias = 0;
      this.rnd = new Random(seed); // not used
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public void TrainLeftPinv(double[][] trainX,
      double[] trainY)
    {
      // pseudo-inverse via normal equations
      // wts_bias = (inv(Xt * X) * Xt) * trainY
      int dim = trainX[0].Length;
      this.weights = new double[dim];

      double[][] X = MatDesign(trainX);
      double[][] Xinv = Cholesky.MatPseudoInv(X);
      double[] biasAndWts =
        MatVecProduct(Xinv, trainY);

      // extract bias and weights
      this.bias = biasAndWts[0];
      for (int i = 1; i "lt" biasAndWts.Length; ++i)
        this.weights[i - 1] = biasAndWts[i];
      return;  // all done
    } // TrainClosed()

    private static double[] MatVecProduct(double[][] A,
        double[] v)
    {
      // helper for TrainLeftPinv()
      double[] result = new double[A.Length];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" A.Length; ++i)
        for (int k = 0; k "lt" A[0].Length; ++k)
          result[i] += A[i][k] * v[k];
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private static double[][] MatDesign(double[][] M)
    {
      // helper for TrainLeftPinv()
      int nRows = M.Length; int nCols = M[0].Length;
      double[][] result = new double[nRows][];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
        result[i] = new double[nCols + 1];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nRows; ++i)
      {
        result[i][0] = 1.0;
        for (int j = 1; j "lt" nCols + 1; ++j)
          result[i][j] = M[i][j - 1];
      }
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public double Predict(double[] x)
    {
      double result = 0.0;
      for (int j = 0; j "lt" x.Length; ++j)
        result += x[j] * this.weights[j];
      result += this.bias;
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

  } // class LinearRegressor

  // ========================================================

  public class Cholesky
  {
    // container class for MatPseudoInv() for TrainLeftPinv()

    public static double[][] MatPseudoInv(double[][] A)
    {
      // left pseudo-inverse via normal equations
      // nRows must be gte nCols
      // inv(At * A) * A
      double[][] At = MatTranspose(A);
      double[][] AtA = MatProduct(At, A);
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" AtA.Length; ++i)
        AtA[i][i] += 1.0e-8; /// condition before inv
      double[][] AtAinv = MatInvCholesky(AtA);
      double[][] pinv = MatProduct(AtAinv, At);
      return pinv;
    } // MatPseudoInv()

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private static double[][] MatInvCholesky(double[][] A)
    {
      // A must be square, symmetric, positive definite
      int m = A.Length; int n = A[0].Length;  // m == n
      // 1. decompose A to L
      double[][] L = new double[n][];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        L[i] = new double[n];

      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
      {
        for (int j = 0; j "lte" i; ++j)
        {
          double sum = 0.0;
          for (int k = 0; k "lt" j; ++k)
            sum += L[i][k] * L[j][k];
          if (i == j)
          {
            double tmp = A[i][i] - sum;
            if (tmp "lt" 0.0)
              throw new
                Exception("decomp Cholesky fatal");
            L[i][j] = Math.Sqrt(tmp);
          }
          else
          {
            if (L[j][j] == 0.0)
              throw new
                Exception("decomp Cholesky fatal ");
            L[i][j] = (A[i][j] - sum) / L[j][j];
          }
        } // j
      } // i

      // 2. compute inverse from L
      double[][] result = new double[n][];  // make Identity
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        result[i] = new double[n];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        result[i][i] = 1.0;

      for (int k = 0; k "lt" n; ++k)
      {
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" n; j++)
        {
          for (int i = 0; i "lt" k; i++)
          {
            result[k][j] -= result[i][j] * L[k][i];
          }
          result[k][j] /= L[k][k];
        }
      }

      for (int k = n - 1; k "gte" 0; --k)
      {
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" n; j++)
        {
          for (int i = k + 1; i "lt" n; i++)
          {
            result[k][j] -= result[i][j] * L[i][k];
          }
          result[k][j] /= L[k][k];
        }
      }
      return result;
    } // MatInvCholesky()

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    private static double[][] MatTranspose(double[][] M)
    {
      int nr = M.Length; int nc = M[0].Length;
      double[][] result = new double[nc][]; // note
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nc; ++i)
        result[i] = new double[nr];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" nr; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" nc; ++j)
          result[j][i] = M[i][j]; // note
      return result;
    }

    // ````````````````````````````````````````````````````

    private static double[][] MatProduct(double[][] A,
      double[][] B)
    {
      int aRows = A.Length; int aCols = A[0].Length;
      int bRows = B.Length; int bCols = B[0].Length;
      if (aCols != bRows)
        throw new Exception("Non-conformable matrices");

      double[][] result = new double[aRows][];
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" aRows; ++i)
        result[i] = new double[bCols];

      for (int i = 0; i "lt" aRows; ++i) // each row of A
        for (int j = 0; j "lt" bCols; ++j) // each col of B
          for (int k = 0; k "lt" aCols; ++k)
            result[i][j] += A[i][k] * B[k][j];
      return result;
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

  } // class Cholesky

  // ========================================================

  public class Eval
  {
    // uses 'dynamic' keyword (C# 4.0, 2010 and later)

    public static double Accuracy(dynamic model,
      double[][] dataX, double[] dataY, double pctClose)
    {
      int numCorrect = 0; int numWrong = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dataX.Length; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = model.Predict(dataX[i]); // assume
        if (Math.Abs(predY - actualY) "lt"
          Math.Abs(pctClose * actualY))
          ++numCorrect;
        else
          ++numWrong;
      }
      return (numCorrect * 1.0) / (numWrong + numCorrect);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

    public static double BaselineAccuracy(double[][] dataX,
      double[] dataY, double pctClose)
    {
      // compute avg of y values
      int n = dataY.Length;
      double sum = 0.0;

      for (int i = 0; i "lt" n; ++i)
        sum += dataY[i];
      double meanY = sum / n;

      // always predict the mean
      int numCorrect = 0; int numWrong = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i "lt" dataX.Length; ++i)
      {
        double actualY = dataY[i];
        double predY = meanY;
        if (Math.Abs(predY - actualY) "lt"
          Math.Abs(pctClose * actualY))
          ++numCorrect;
        else
          ++numWrong;
      }
      return (numCorrect * 1.0) / (numWrong + numCorrect);
    }

    // ------------------------------------------------------

  } // class Eval


  // ========================================================

} // ns

Training data:

# synthetic_train_200.txt
#
-0.1660,  0.4406, -0.9998, -0.3953, -0.7065,  0.4840
 0.0776, -0.1616,  0.3704, -0.5911,  0.7562,  0.1568
-0.9452,  0.3409, -0.1654,  0.1174, -0.7192,  0.8054
 0.9365, -0.3732,  0.3846,  0.7528,  0.7892,  0.1345
-0.8299, -0.9219, -0.6603,  0.7563, -0.8033,  0.7955
 0.0663,  0.3838, -0.3690,  0.3730,  0.6693,  0.3206
-0.9634,  0.5003,  0.9777,  0.4963, -0.4391,  0.7377
-0.1042,  0.8172, -0.4128, -0.4244, -0.7399,  0.4801
-0.9613,  0.3577, -0.5767, -0.4689, -0.0169,  0.6861
-0.7065,  0.1786,  0.3995, -0.7953, -0.1719,  0.5569
 0.3888, -0.1716, -0.9001,  0.0718,  0.3276,  0.2500
 0.1731,  0.8068, -0.7251, -0.7214,  0.6148,  0.3297
-0.2046, -0.6693,  0.8550, -0.3045,  0.5016,  0.2129
 0.2473,  0.5019, -0.3022, -0.4601,  0.7918,  0.2613
-0.1438,  0.9297,  0.3269,  0.2434, -0.7705,  0.5171
 0.1568, -0.1837, -0.5259,  0.8068,  0.1474,  0.3307
-0.9943,  0.2343, -0.3467,  0.0541,  0.7719,  0.5581
 0.2467, -0.9684,  0.8589,  0.3818,  0.9946,  0.1092
-0.6553, -0.7257,  0.8652,  0.3936, -0.8680,  0.7018
 0.8460,  0.4230, -0.7515, -0.9602, -0.9476,  0.1996
-0.9434, -0.5076,  0.7201,  0.0777,  0.1056,  0.5664
 0.9392,  0.1221, -0.9627,  0.6013, -0.5341,  0.1533
 0.6142, -0.2243,  0.7271,  0.4942,  0.1125,  0.1661
 0.4260,  0.1194, -0.9749, -0.8561,  0.9346,  0.2230
 0.1362, -0.5934, -0.4953,  0.4877, -0.6091,  0.3810
 0.6937, -0.5203, -0.0125,  0.2399,  0.6580,  0.1460
-0.6864, -0.9628, -0.8600, -0.0273,  0.2127,  0.5387
 0.9772,  0.1595, -0.2397,  0.1019,  0.4907,  0.1611
 0.3385, -0.4702, -0.8673, -0.2598,  0.2594,  0.2270
-0.8669, -0.4794,  0.6095, -0.6131,  0.2789,  0.4700
 0.0493,  0.8496, -0.4734, -0.8681,  0.4701,  0.3516
 0.8639, -0.9721, -0.5313,  0.2336,  0.8980,  0.1412
 0.9004,  0.1133,  0.8312,  0.2831, -0.2200,  0.1782
 0.0991,  0.8524,  0.8375, -0.2102,  0.9265,  0.2150
-0.6521, -0.7473, -0.7298,  0.0113, -0.9570,  0.7422
 0.6190, -0.3105,  0.8802,  0.1640,  0.7577,  0.1056
 0.6895,  0.8108, -0.0802,  0.0927,  0.5972,  0.2214
 0.1982, -0.9689,  0.1870, -0.1326,  0.6147,  0.1310
-0.3695,  0.7858,  0.1557, -0.6320,  0.5759,  0.3773
-0.1596,  0.3581,  0.8372, -0.9992,  0.9535,  0.2071
-0.2468,  0.9476,  0.2094,  0.6577,  0.1494,  0.4132
 0.1737,  0.5000,  0.7166,  0.5102,  0.3961,  0.2611
 0.7290, -0.3546,  0.3416, -0.0983, -0.2358,  0.1332
-0.3652,  0.2438, -0.1395,  0.9476,  0.3556,  0.4170
-0.6029, -0.1466, -0.3133,  0.5953,  0.7600,  0.4334
-0.4596, -0.4953,  0.7098,  0.0554,  0.6043,  0.2775
 0.1450,  0.4663,  0.0380,  0.5418,  0.1377,  0.2931
-0.8636, -0.2442, -0.8407,  0.9656, -0.6368,  0.7429
 0.6237,  0.7499,  0.3768,  0.1390, -0.6781,  0.2185
-0.5499,  0.1850, -0.3755,  0.8326,  0.8193,  0.4399
-0.4858, -0.7782, -0.6141, -0.0008,  0.4572,  0.4197
 0.7033, -0.1683,  0.2334, -0.5327, -0.7961,  0.1776
 0.0317, -0.0457, -0.6947,  0.2436,  0.0880,  0.3345
 0.5031, -0.5559,  0.0387,  0.5706, -0.9553,  0.3107
-0.3513,  0.7458,  0.6894,  0.0769,  0.7332,  0.3170
 0.2205,  0.5992, -0.9309,  0.5405,  0.4635,  0.3532
-0.4806, -0.4859,  0.2646, -0.3094,  0.5932,  0.3202
 0.9809, -0.3995, -0.7140,  0.8026,  0.0831,  0.1600
 0.9495,  0.2732,  0.9878,  0.0921,  0.0529,  0.1289
-0.9476, -0.6792,  0.4913, -0.9392, -0.2669,  0.5966
 0.7247,  0.3854,  0.3819, -0.6227, -0.1162,  0.1550
-0.5922, -0.5045, -0.4757,  0.5003, -0.0860,  0.5863
-0.8861,  0.0170, -0.5761,  0.5972, -0.4053,  0.7301
 0.6877, -0.2380,  0.4997,  0.0223,  0.0819,  0.1404
 0.9189,  0.6079, -0.9354,  0.4188, -0.0700,  0.1907
-0.1428, -0.7820,  0.2676,  0.6059,  0.3936,  0.2790
 0.5324, -0.3151,  0.6917, -0.1425,  0.6480,  0.1071
-0.8432, -0.9633, -0.8666, -0.0828, -0.7733,  0.7784
-0.9444,  0.5097, -0.2103,  0.4939, -0.0952,  0.6787
-0.0520,  0.6063, -0.1952,  0.8094, -0.9259,  0.4836
 0.5477, -0.7487,  0.2370, -0.9793,  0.0773,  0.1241
 0.2450,  0.8116,  0.9799,  0.4222,  0.4636,  0.2355
 0.8186, -0.1983, -0.5003, -0.6531, -0.7611,  0.1511
-0.4714,  0.6382, -0.3788,  0.9648, -0.4667,  0.5950
 0.0673, -0.3711,  0.8215, -0.2669, -0.1328,  0.2677
-0.9381,  0.4338,  0.7820, -0.9454,  0.0441,  0.5518
-0.3480,  0.7190,  0.1170,  0.3805, -0.0943,  0.4724
-0.9813,  0.1535, -0.3771,  0.0345,  0.8328,  0.5438
-0.1471, -0.5052, -0.2574,  0.8637,  0.8737,  0.3042
-0.5454, -0.3712, -0.6505,  0.2142, -0.1728,  0.5783
 0.6327, -0.6297,  0.4038, -0.5193,  0.1484,  0.1153
-0.5424,  0.3282, -0.0055,  0.0380, -0.6506,  0.6613
 0.1414,  0.9935,  0.6337,  0.1887,  0.9520,  0.2540
-0.9351, -0.8128, -0.8693, -0.0965, -0.2491,  0.7353
 0.9507, -0.6640,  0.9456,  0.5349,  0.6485,  0.1059
-0.0462, -0.9737, -0.2940, -0.0159,  0.4602,  0.2606
-0.0627, -0.0852, -0.7247, -0.9782,  0.5166,  0.2977
 0.0478,  0.5098, -0.0723, -0.7504, -0.3750,  0.3335
 0.0090,  0.3477,  0.5403, -0.7393, -0.9542,  0.4415
-0.9748,  0.3449,  0.3736, -0.1015,  0.8296,  0.4358
 0.2887, -0.9895, -0.0311,  0.7186,  0.6608,  0.2057
 0.1570, -0.4518,  0.1211,  0.3435, -0.2951,  0.3244
 0.7117, -0.6099,  0.4946, -0.4208,  0.5476,  0.1096
-0.2929, -0.5726,  0.5346, -0.3827,  0.4665,  0.2465
 0.4889, -0.5572, -0.5718, -0.6021, -0.7150,  0.2163
-0.7782,  0.3491,  0.5996, -0.8389, -0.5366,  0.6516
-0.5847,  0.8347,  0.4226,  0.1078, -0.3910,  0.6134
 0.8469,  0.4121, -0.0439, -0.7476,  0.9521,  0.1571
-0.6803, -0.5948, -0.1376, -0.1916, -0.7065,  0.7156
 0.2878,  0.5086, -0.5785,  0.2019,  0.4979,  0.2980
 0.2764,  0.1943, -0.4090,  0.4632,  0.8906,  0.2960
-0.8877,  0.6705, -0.6155, -0.2098, -0.3998,  0.7107
-0.8398,  0.8093, -0.2597,  0.0614, -0.0118,  0.6502
-0.8476,  0.0158, -0.4769, -0.2859, -0.7839,  0.7715
 0.5751, -0.7868,  0.9714, -0.6457,  0.1448,  0.1175
 0.4802, -0.7001,  0.1022, -0.5668,  0.5184,  0.1090
 0.4458, -0.6469,  0.7239, -0.9604,  0.7205,  0.0779
 0.5175,  0.4339,  0.9747, -0.4438, -0.9924,  0.2879
 0.8678,  0.7158,  0.4577,  0.0334,  0.4139,  0.1678
 0.5406,  0.5012,  0.2264, -0.1963,  0.3946,  0.2088
-0.9938,  0.5498,  0.7928, -0.5214, -0.7585,  0.7687
 0.7661,  0.0863, -0.4266, -0.7233, -0.4197,  0.1466
 0.2277, -0.3517, -0.0853, -0.1118,  0.6563,  0.1767
 0.3499, -0.5570, -0.0655, -0.3705,  0.2537,  0.1632
 0.7547, -0.1046,  0.5689, -0.0861,  0.3125,  0.1257
 0.8186,  0.2110,  0.5335,  0.0094, -0.0039,  0.1391
 0.6858, -0.8644,  0.1465,  0.8855,  0.0357,  0.1845
-0.4967,  0.4015,  0.0805,  0.8977,  0.2487,  0.4663
 0.6760, -0.9841,  0.9787, -0.8446, -0.3557,  0.1509
-0.1203, -0.4885,  0.6054, -0.0443, -0.7313,  0.4854
 0.8557,  0.7919, -0.0169,  0.7134, -0.1628,  0.2002
 0.0115, -0.6209,  0.9300, -0.4116, -0.7931,  0.4052
-0.7114, -0.9718,  0.4319,  0.1290,  0.5892,  0.3661
 0.3915,  0.5557, -0.1870,  0.2955, -0.6404,  0.2954
-0.3564, -0.6548, -0.1827, -0.5172, -0.1862,  0.4622
 0.2392, -0.4959,  0.5857, -0.1341, -0.2850,  0.2470
-0.3394,  0.3947, -0.4627,  0.6166, -0.4094,  0.5325
 0.7107,  0.7768, -0.6312,  0.1707,  0.7964,  0.2757
-0.1078,  0.8437, -0.4420,  0.2177,  0.3649,  0.4028
-0.3139,  0.5595, -0.6505, -0.3161, -0.7108,  0.5546
 0.4335,  0.3986,  0.3770, -0.4932,  0.3847,  0.1810
-0.2562, -0.2894, -0.8847,  0.2633,  0.4146,  0.4036
 0.2272,  0.2966, -0.6601, -0.7011,  0.0284,  0.2778
-0.0743, -0.1421, -0.0054, -0.6770, -0.3151,  0.3597
-0.4762,  0.6891,  0.6007, -0.1467,  0.2140,  0.4266
-0.4061,  0.7193,  0.3432,  0.2669, -0.7505,  0.6147
-0.0588,  0.9731,  0.8966,  0.2902, -0.6966,  0.4955
-0.0627, -0.1439,  0.1985,  0.6999,  0.5022,  0.3077
 0.1587,  0.8494, -0.8705,  0.9827, -0.8940,  0.4263
-0.7850,  0.2473, -0.9040, -0.4308, -0.8779,  0.7199
 0.4070,  0.3369, -0.2428, -0.6236,  0.4940,  0.2215
-0.0242,  0.0513, -0.9430,  0.2885, -0.2987,  0.3947
-0.5416, -0.1322, -0.2351, -0.0604,  0.9590,  0.3683
 0.1055,  0.7783, -0.2901, -0.5090,  0.8220,  0.2984
-0.9129,  0.9015,  0.1128, -0.2473,  0.9901,  0.4776
-0.9378,  0.1424, -0.6391,  0.2619,  0.9618,  0.5368
 0.7498, -0.0963,  0.4169,  0.5549, -0.0103,  0.1614
-0.2612, -0.7156,  0.4538, -0.0460, -0.1022,  0.3717
 0.7720,  0.0552, -0.1818, -0.4622, -0.8560,  0.1685
-0.4177,  0.0070,  0.9319, -0.7812,  0.3461,  0.3052
-0.0001,  0.5542, -0.7128, -0.8336, -0.2016,  0.3803
 0.5356, -0.4194, -0.5662, -0.9666, -0.2027,  0.1776
-0.2378,  0.3187, -0.8582, -0.6948, -0.9668,  0.5474
-0.1947, -0.3579,  0.1158,  0.9869,  0.6690,  0.2992
 0.3992,  0.8365, -0.9205, -0.8593, -0.0520,  0.3154
-0.0209,  0.0793,  0.7905, -0.1067,  0.7541,  0.1864
-0.4928, -0.4524, -0.3433,  0.0951, -0.5597,  0.6261
-0.8118,  0.7404, -0.5263, -0.2280,  0.1431,  0.6349
 0.0516, -0.8480,  0.7483,  0.9023,  0.6250,  0.1959
-0.3212,  0.1093,  0.9488, -0.3766,  0.3376,  0.2735
-0.3481,  0.5490, -0.3484,  0.7797,  0.5034,  0.4379
-0.5785, -0.9170, -0.3563, -0.9258,  0.3877,  0.4121
 0.3407, -0.1391,  0.5356,  0.0720, -0.9203,  0.3458
-0.3287, -0.8954,  0.2102,  0.0241,  0.2349,  0.3247
-0.1353,  0.6954, -0.0919, -0.9692,  0.7461,  0.3338
 0.9036, -0.8982, -0.5299, -0.8733, -0.1567,  0.1187
 0.7277, -0.8368, -0.0538, -0.7489,  0.5458,  0.0830
 0.9049,  0.8878,  0.2279,  0.9470, -0.3103,  0.2194
 0.7957, -0.1308, -0.5284,  0.8817,  0.3684,  0.2172
 0.4647, -0.4931,  0.2010,  0.6292, -0.8918,  0.3371
-0.7390,  0.6849,  0.2367,  0.0626, -0.5034,  0.7039
-0.1567, -0.8711,  0.7940, -0.5932,  0.6525,  0.1710
 0.7635, -0.0265,  0.1969,  0.0545,  0.2496,  0.1445
 0.7675,  0.1354, -0.7698, -0.5460,  0.1920,  0.1728
-0.5211, -0.7372, -0.6763,  0.6897,  0.2044,  0.5217
 0.1913,  0.1980,  0.2314, -0.8816,  0.5006,  0.1998
 0.8964,  0.0694, -0.6149,  0.5059, -0.9854,  0.1825
 0.1767,  0.7104,  0.2093,  0.6452,  0.7590,  0.2832
-0.3580, -0.7541,  0.4426, -0.1193, -0.7465,  0.5657
-0.5996,  0.5766, -0.9758, -0.3933, -0.9572,  0.6800
 0.9950,  0.1641, -0.4132,  0.8579,  0.0142,  0.2003
-0.4717, -0.3894, -0.2567, -0.5111,  0.1691,  0.4266
 0.3917, -0.8561,  0.9422,  0.5061,  0.6123,  0.1212
-0.0366, -0.1087,  0.3449, -0.1025,  0.4086,  0.2475
 0.3633,  0.3943,  0.2372, -0.6980,  0.5216,  0.1925
-0.5325, -0.6466, -0.2178, -0.3589,  0.6310,  0.3568
 0.2271,  0.5200, -0.1447, -0.8011, -0.7699,  0.3128
 0.6415,  0.1993,  0.3777, -0.0178, -0.8237,  0.2181
-0.5298, -0.0768, -0.6028, -0.9490,  0.4588,  0.4356
 0.6870, -0.1431,  0.7294,  0.3141,  0.1621,  0.1632
-0.5985,  0.0591,  0.7889, -0.3900,  0.7419,  0.2945
 0.3661,  0.7984, -0.8486,  0.7572, -0.6183,  0.3449
 0.6995,  0.3342, -0.3113, -0.6972,  0.2707,  0.1712
 0.2565,  0.9126,  0.1798, -0.6043, -0.1413,  0.2893
-0.3265,  0.9839, -0.2395,  0.9854,  0.0376,  0.4770
 0.2690, -0.1722,  0.9818,  0.8599, -0.7015,  0.3954
-0.2102, -0.0768,  0.1219,  0.5607, -0.0256,  0.3949
 0.8216, -0.9555,  0.6422, -0.6231,  0.3715,  0.0801
-0.2896,  0.9484, -0.7545, -0.6249,  0.7789,  0.4370
-0.9985, -0.5448, -0.7092, -0.5931,  0.7926,  0.5402

Test data:

# synthetic_test_40.txt
#
 0.7462,  0.4006, -0.0590,  0.6543, -0.0083,  0.1935
 0.8495, -0.2260, -0.0142, -0.4911,  0.7699,  0.1078
-0.2335, -0.4049,  0.4352, -0.6183, -0.7636,  0.5088
 0.1810, -0.5142,  0.2465,  0.2767, -0.3449,  0.3136
-0.8650,  0.7611, -0.0801,  0.5277, -0.4922,  0.7140
-0.2358, -0.7466, -0.5115, -0.8413, -0.3943,  0.4533
 0.4834,  0.2300,  0.3448, -0.9832,  0.3568,  0.1360
-0.6502, -0.6300,  0.6885,  0.9652,  0.8275,  0.3046
-0.3053,  0.5604,  0.0929,  0.6329, -0.0325,  0.4756
-0.7995,  0.0740, -0.2680,  0.2086,  0.9176,  0.4565
-0.2144, -0.2141,  0.5813,  0.2902, -0.2122,  0.4119
-0.7278, -0.0987, -0.3312, -0.5641,  0.8515,  0.4438
 0.3793,  0.1976,  0.4933,  0.0839,  0.4011,  0.1905
-0.8568,  0.9573, -0.5272,  0.3212, -0.8207,  0.7415
-0.5785,  0.0056, -0.7901, -0.2223,  0.0760,  0.5551
 0.0735, -0.2188,  0.3925,  0.3570,  0.3746,  0.2191
 0.1230, -0.2838,  0.2262,  0.8715,  0.1938,  0.2878
 0.4792, -0.9248,  0.5295,  0.0366, -0.9894,  0.3149
-0.4456,  0.0697,  0.5359, -0.8938,  0.0981,  0.3879
 0.8629, -0.8505, -0.4464,  0.8385,  0.5300,  0.1769
 0.1995,  0.6659,  0.7921,  0.9454,  0.9970,  0.2330
-0.0249, -0.3066, -0.2927, -0.4923,  0.8220,  0.2437
 0.4513, -0.9481, -0.0770, -0.4374, -0.9421,  0.2879
-0.3405,  0.5931, -0.3507, -0.3842,  0.8562,  0.3987
 0.9538,  0.0471,  0.9039,  0.7760,  0.0361,  0.1706
-0.0887,  0.2104,  0.9808,  0.5478, -0.3314,  0.4128
-0.8220, -0.6302,  0.0537, -0.1658,  0.6013,  0.4306
-0.4123, -0.2880,  0.9074, -0.0461, -0.4435,  0.5144
 0.0060,  0.2867, -0.7775,  0.5161,  0.7039,  0.3599
-0.7968, -0.5484,  0.9426, -0.4308,  0.8148,  0.2979
 0.7811,  0.8450, -0.6877,  0.7594,  0.2640,  0.2362
-0.6802, -0.1113, -0.8325, -0.6694, -0.6056,  0.6544
 0.3821,  0.1476,  0.7466, -0.5107,  0.2592,  0.1648
 0.7265,  0.9683, -0.9803, -0.4943, -0.5523,  0.2454
-0.9049, -0.9797, -0.0196, -0.9090, -0.4433,  0.6447
-0.4607,  0.1811, -0.2389,  0.4050, -0.0078,  0.5229
 0.2664, -0.2932, -0.4259, -0.7336,  0.8742,  0.1834
-0.4507,  0.1029, -0.6294, -0.1158, -0.6294,  0.6081
 0.8948, -0.0124,  0.9278,  0.2899, -0.0314,  0.1534
-0.1323, -0.8813, -0.0146, -0.0697,  0.6135,  0.2386