multiStart {BB}

Nonlinear Optimization or Root-Finding with Multiple Starting Values

Description

Start BBsolve or BBoptim from multiple starting points to obtain multiple solutions and to test sensitivity to starting values.

Usage

  multiStart(par, fn, gr=NULL, action = c("solve", "optimize"), 
	method=c(2,3,1),  lower=-Inf, upper=Inf,
	project=NULL, projectArgs=NULL, 
	control=list(),  quiet=FALSE, details=FALSE, ...) 
  

Arguments

par

A real matrix, each row of which is an argument to fn, indicating initial guesses for solving a nonlinear system fn = 0 or for optimizing the objective function fn.

fn

see BBsolve or BBoptim.

gr

Only required for optimization. See BBoptim.

action

A character string indicating whether to solve a nonlinear system or to optimize. Default is “solve”.

method

see BBsolve or BBoptim.

upper

An upper bound for box constraints. See spg

lower

An lower bound for box constraints. See spg

project

A projection function or character string indicating its name. The projection function that takes a point in R^n and projects it onto a region that defines the constraints of the problem. This is a vector-function that takes a real vector as argument and returns a real vector of the same length. See spg for more details.

projectArgs

A list with arguments to the project function.

control

See BBsolve and BBoptim.

quiet

A logical variable (TRUE/FALSE). If TRUE warnings and some additional information printing are suppressed. Default is quiet = FALSE Note that the control variable trace and quiet affect different printing, so if trace is not set to FALSE there will be considerable printed output.

details

Logical indicating if the result should include the full result from BBsolve or BBoptim for each starting value.

...

arguments passed fn (via the optimization algorithm).

Details

The optimization or root-finder is run with each row of par indicating initial guesses.

Value

list with elements par, values, and converged. It optionally returns an attribute called “details”, which is a list as long as the number of starting values, which contains the complete object returned by dfsane or spg for each starting value.

References

R Varadhan and PD Gilbert (2009), BB: An R Package for Solving a Large System of Nonlinear Equations and for Optimizing a High-Dimensional Nonlinear Objective Function, J. Statistical Software, 32:4, http://www.jstatsoft.org/v32/i04/

See Also

BBsolve, BBoptim, dfsane, spg

Examples

# Use a preset seed so the example is reproducable. 
require("setRNG")
old.seed <- setRNG(list(kind="Mersenne-Twister", normal.kind="Inversion",
    seed=1234))

# Finding multiple roots of a nonlinear system
brownlin <- function(x) {
# Brown's almost linear system(A.P. Morgan, ACM 1983)
# two distinct solutions if n is even
# three distinct solutions if n is odd  
  	n <- length(x)
  	f <- rep(NA, n)
	nm1 <- 1:(n-1)
	f[nm1] <- x[nm1] + sum(x) - (n+1)
	f[n] <- prod(x) - 1 
	f
}

p <- 9
n <- 50
p0 <- matrix(rnorm(n*p), n, p)  # n starting values, each of length p
ans <- multiStart(par=p0, fn=brownlin)
pmat <- ans$par[ans$conv, 1:p] # selecting only converged solutions
ord1 <- order(abs(pmat[,1]))
round(pmat[ord1, ], 3)  # all 3 roots can be seen

# An optimization example
rosbkext <- function(x){
n <- length(x)
j <- 2 * (1:(n/2))
jm1 <- j - 1
sum(100 * (x[j] - x[jm1]^2)^2 + (1 - x[jm1])^2)
}

p0 <- rnorm(50)
spg(par=p0, fn=rosbkext)
BBoptim(par=p0, fn=rosbkext)

pmat <- matrix(rnorm(100), 20, 5)  # 20 starting values each of length 5 
ans <- multiStart(par=pmat, fn=rosbkext, action="optimize")
ans
attr(ans, "details")[[1]]  # 

pmat <- ans$par[ans$conv, 1:5] # selecting only converged solutions
round(pmat, 3)