## Using F# to minimise a function

August 22nd, 2013

Finding the minimum of functions is at the heart of optimisation. Mathematicians, engineers and programmers have come up with a large number of approaches to solving this problem, including differentiation, genetic algorithms and even exhaustive search.

Consider a quadratic function such that could be written in F# as

let f x = (x ** 2.0) - (2.0 * x) + 1.0

Finding the minimum means finding the input value for the function that returns to lowest value. If we plot the curve, then the minimum is the lowest point of the curve.

One way to find this is find the derivative of the function:

(2.0 * x) - 2.0

and solve the equation where the derivative is equal to 0, which is when x is 1. This probably the best way to solve this problem in practice.

However, not all functions have derivatives that are easy to find. Therefore, an alternative way to minimise a function is an exhaustive search of the inputs in some range. This is not an elegant or generally efficient solution, but it works.

In F#, we might proceed as follows.

We define the range that we want to search and the step between candidate inputs:

let min = 0.0
let max = 10.0
let step = 0.01

We know where to start searching- with the lowest candidate input:

let firstCandidate = f min, min

This creates a tuple of two floats, the first being the output and the second being the lowest candidate input.

We also want a sequence of tuples of two floats that are the remaining candidate solutions:

let remainingCandidates = seq { for c in min + step .. step .. max do yield f c, c }

Note that at this point the sequence has not been enumerated and the function has not been run with each of the candidate inputs. Because sequences are evaluated lazily, the function will not be run for each of the candidate inputs until it is asked for.

We are trying to minimise the function, therefore we need a function that can compare the first elements of two candidate solutions:

let findMin currentMinSln candidateSln =
match fst currentMinSln < fst candidateSln with
| true -> currentMinSln
| false -> candidateSln

Running this code in fsi shows its type to be:

val findMin : 'a * 'b -> 'a * 'b -> 'a * 'b when 'a : comparison

The F# compiler can infer that the function takes in two tuples, each with two elements. The tuples must be of the same type and the first element of each tuple must be comparable. Way to go, type inference!

Everything has been set up at this point. We just need to run the code:

let minSln = Seq.fold findMin firstCandidate remainingCandidates

The fold function is to reduce a sequence to a single value, starting with a given accumulator. In this case, the first candidate solution that we created earlier is our starting point. The output of the function for each candidate input is compared to that accumulator.

Running the code finds the same answer (1) that we found with calculus.

This code runs pretty quickly, but this approach is generally slow. Our range is only 10 wide and the step is 0.01, so there are only 1000 candidate inputs. Increasing the size of the range or decreasing the step would increase the number of inputs. More worryingly, the size of the search space increases exponentially as the number of inputs to the function increases. So a function that took two inputs for the same range for each input would have a million candidate inputs, three inputs would take a billion and so on.

However, it is also quite straightforward to parallelise this approach. The sequence of candidate solutions could be split up into partitions and each partition could be sent off to a different computer. Each batch would find a local minimum for the range it was given. Finding the minimum for the whole of our range of inputs is simply a matter of find the minimum in the returned list.

The complete code for this can be found here:

## Project Euler 1 in F# using Sequences

August 21st, 2013

I have written previously about solving the first problem on the Project Euler website using F# and Haskell.

The problem is to find the sum of the natural numbers that are divisible by 3 or 5 that are less than 1000. To solve this in F#, my first solution looked like this:

[0..999]
|> List.filter (fun x -> x % 3 = 0 || x % 5 = 0)
|> List.sum

This works. However, it was pointed out to me that using lists to generate the numbers below 1000 in my F# solution was memory hungry as the list will be created and stored in memory then piped to the filter and so on. The list is evaluated eagerly. This isn’t a problem with a small list like this, but it could create issues with more elements.

I took a look at sequences in F#, which are evaluated lazily. To get an idea of what this means, consider the sequence of natural numbers:

let countingNumbers =
seq {
for i in 1 .. System.Int32.MaxValue do
printfn "Yielding: %d" i
yield i
}

If you are unfamiliar with lazy evaluation, it might look like this will create all the natural numbers up to System.Int32.MaxValue (2147483647) and print each number as it goes. However, if you run this with F# Interactive (aka fsi), it creates a seq<int> without printing anything out. At this point, the sequence is yet to be enumerated.

The ingenious thing about sequences is that we can work with them without enumerating them. Consider these lines:

let max = 999
let firstUpToMax = Seq.take max countingNumbers

The Seq.take function allows us to take the first elements in a sequence. However, running these lines in fsi does not cause the for loop in the sequence above to be run. The print and yield statements are not run.

F#’s ability to delay enumeration is not limited to sequences. Queries also allow us to describe a sequence of numbers without enumerating them.

I define the following function that will be used to filter the sequence:

let isDivisibleBy3Or5 x =
x % 3 = 0 || x % 5 = 0

and then create this query:

let divisibleBy3Or5 =
query {
for countingNumber in firstUpToMax do
where (isDivisibleBy3Or5 countingNumber)
select countingNumber
}

Programmers who are familiar with SQL or LINQ should have no problem understanding this query. In plain English, we might say “we will go through the sequence and find the values that match the given criterion.” Note the use of the future tense. Running this code in fsi does not result in enumeration of our sequence and the printing of the “Yielding…” lines.

I could find the sum of the numbers matching our criteria using a built in function like this:

let seqSum = Seq.sum divisibleBy3Or5

This will cause the sequence to be enumerated and finds the same sum as the list method above.

However, by defining the following function:

let noisySum total next =
printfn "Adding %d to %d" next total
total + next

I will be able to see the order in which the sequence is enumerated and when the values are pumped down the pipeline to be folded into the sum.

let seqFoldSum =
divisibleBy3Or5
|> Seq.fold noisySum 0

At this point we get the following out put at fsi:

Yielding: 1
Yielding: 2
Yielding: 3
Yielding: 4
Yielding: 5
Yielding: 6
...
Yielding: 996
Yielding: 997
Yielding: 998
Yielding: 999

val seqFoldSum : int = 233168

Which clearly demonstrates the order of execution and that only the numbers that are divisible by 3 or 5 are added to the sum.

Does this make much difference to the memory usage? For this problem, this is not the bottle neck. The integers storing the sum of the numbers overflow before the input lists become large enough to use a lot of memory. However, passing values down the pipeline as they are yielded is somehow more pleasing to this programmer. Also, lazy evaluation means that enumerating the numbers and performing the mathematics do not take place until the result is actually needed. By creating a sequence and query, the programmer can create the code and pass it around the program without doing any heavy computation or using up much memory.

The complete listing of this code can be found at GitHub:

https://github.com/robert-impey/CodingExperiments/blob/master/F%23/Loose/Euler1.fs

## Finding the Nearest Tube Station with LINQ

August 20th, 2013

I recently wrote a little command line program in C# that can tell you the name of the nearest tube station. I’ve put the program on GitHub in my Coding Experiments repository:

https://github.com/robert-impey/CodingExperiments/tree/master/C%23/NearestTube

The interface is very simple- this more of an experiment than something that I intend for mass consumption! You enter a location via the command line as the latitude and longitude:

The starting point of the program was to calculate the distances between points. To do this I adapted some JavaScript code that John D. Cook wrote:

http://www.johndcook.com/lat_long_distance.html

Mathematical code looks very similar in many languages, and the translation from JavaScript to C# was trivially simple as the languages are very similar in this case. This code is part of the Point class:

        /// <summary>
/// Porting JavaScript code from
/// http://www.johndcook.com/lat_long_distance.html
/// </summary>
/// <param name="that"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public double Distance(Point that)
{
// Compute spherical coordinates

double rho = 6373;

// convert latitude and longitude to spherical coordinates in radians
// phi = 90 - latitude
double phi1 = (90.0 - this.Latitude) * Math.PI / 180.0;
double phi2 = (90.0 - that.Latitude) * Math.PI / 180.0;
// theta = longitude
double theta1 = this.Longitude * Math.PI / 180.0;
double theta2 = that.Longitude * Math.PI / 180.0;

// compute spherical distance from spherical coordinates
// arc length = \arccos(\sin\phi\sin\phi'\cos(\theta-\theta') + \cos\phi\cos\phi')
// distance = rho times arc length
return rho * Math.Acos(
Math.Sin(phi1) * Math.Sin(phi2) * Math.Cos(theta1 - theta2)
+ Math.Cos(phi1) * Math.Cos(phi2)) * 1000;
}

Once I was able to calculate the distances between points on the map, I needed to be able to sort the tube stations of London by distance from the given point. This is the sort of code that LINQ to objects handles very naturally. In the SequentialTubeStationFinder class, I have the following method:

        public TubeStation FindNearestTubeStation(Point point)
{
return (from tubeStation in tubeStations
orderby tubeStation.Point.Distance(point)
select tubeStation).First();
}

tubeStations is a generic list of TubeStation objects. Each has a Point property that is used to sort the tube stations and find the nearest one to our location.

The declarative style of programming that LINQ uses is much easier to read (and therefore maintain) than the equivalent code written with a for loop.

## Trying F#

March 18th, 2013

As part of my ongoing interest in functional programming languages, I have decided to try F#. I have been looking at the Try F# page:

http://www.tryfsharp.org/

This provides an online REPL environment for exploring the language. I have a number of students at school who are exploring JavaScript and Python as first languages through Code Academy. I thought it would be a useful experiment to try this sort of educational activity with an unfamiliar language myself.

At first glance, I quite like the learning experience of reading through explanations and running some code, although it’s not as much fun as trying to make something yourself. In order to consolidate my learning, I tried to solve the first of the problems in Project Euler, which is to find the sum of the natural numbers less than 1000 that are multiples of 3 or 4. (I have already done this in Haskell).

I came up with this:

[0..999]
|> List.filter (fun x -> x % 3 = 0 || x % 5 = 0)
|> List.sum

## One liner to show logs without Rotated Backup files

May 25th, 2012

I’ve been looking at the Apache log files on a web server this morning. There are many virtual hosts on the machine and the log rotation scripts have created many numbered backup files of the logs. To make the directory listing more readable, I have been using the following one-liner:

ls -l /var/log/apache2 | grep -Ev -e '[[:digit:]]+(\.gz)?\$'

This will only display the current log files, assuming that /var/log/apache2 is the directory in which you store your Apache logs and that you do not store any other files there.

I hope it helps.

## Decimal to Binary

April 13th, 2012

In order to prepare for teaching computing, I’ve been reading Introduction to Computing by David Evans.

In the first chapter there is an excellent explanation of binary numbers using binary search trees. You can build a bitstring for the binary representation of a number by starting at the root (highest node on the tree) and comparing the number to the midpoints of a range of numbers that you are searching. If you answer a question with “yes” append “1” to your bitstring, otherwise append “0”.

The number 6 would be “Yes”, “Yes”, “No” or 110.

I decided to implement the logic of this binary tree in Java.

private static String decimalToBinary(int input) {
if (input < 0 || input > 7) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
}

StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();

if (input >= 4) {
result.append('1');
if (input >= 6) {
result.append('1');
if (input == 7) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
} else {
result.append('0');
if (input == 5) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
}
} else {
result.append('0');
if (input >= 2) {
result.append('1');
if (input == 3) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
} else {
result.append('0');
if (input == 1) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
}
}

return result.toString();
}

This works for converting decimal numbers to binary strings. I think that writing a program like this might work as an exercise for secondary school students for learning about conditional statements in programming and binary numbers.

However, the range of inputs is severely limited (0 to 7 inclusive). I wrote another method and a recursive helper method that can take arbitrary non-negative decimals in the range of Java ints and return the corresponding binary number:

private static String decimalToBinaryRecursive(int input) {
if (input < 0) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
}

if (input == 0) {
return "0";
}

if (input == 1) {
return "1";
}

// Find how many bits we need.
int bits = (int)(Math.log(input) / Math.log(2)) + 1;

// Find the greatest number that can be represented with this many bits.
int max = (int)Math.pow(2, bits);

// We want to know how much to change this value by to search from the mid point.
int delta = max / -2;

StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();

return decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(input, max, delta, result);
}

private static String decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(int input, int previousMidpoint, int delta, StringBuilder result) {
if (delta == 0) {
return result.toString();
}

int midpoint = previousMidpoint + delta;

if (input >= midpoint) {
result.append('1');
return decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(input, midpoint, Math.abs(delta) / 2, result);
} else {
result.append('0');
return decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(input, midpoint, Math.abs(delta) / -2, result);
}
}

The recursive method is considerably more complex and would be much harder for a secondary school student to write. The mathematics might be unfamiliar for most secondary school students, particularly the code to do with logarithms. You could simplify the mathematics of that code with a while loop that compared increasing powers of 2 to the input. It might be a possible extension task for a gifted and talented student. It could also be a task for a lesson on recursive methods.

I can see that teaching computing will present challenges. There are an enormous number of toy programs that we can get students to create in order to learn about programming. However, in order to extend any of these tasks to make them more practical and interesting, it is very easy to set challenges that are rely on outside skills, knowledge and understanding that many secondary school students do not have.

The whole program with a main method for testing looks like this:

package decimaltobinary;

/**
* @author Robert Impey
*/
public class DecimalToBinary {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Simple Approach");
for (int i = 0; i <= 7; i++) {
System.out.printf("%d\t%s\n", i, decimalToBinary(i));
}

System.out.println("Recursive Approach");
int bits = 8;
for (int i = 0; i <= Math.pow(2, bits) - 1; i++) {
System.out.printf("%d\t%s\n", i, decimalToBinaryRecursive(i));
}
}

private static String decimalToBinary(int input) {
if (input < 0 || input > 7) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
}

StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();

if (input >= 4) {
result.append('1');
if (input >= 6) {
result.append('1');
if (input == 7) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
} else {
result.append('0');
if (input == 5) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
}
} else {
result.append('0');
if (input >= 2) {
result.append('1');
if (input == 3) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
} else {
result.append('0');
if (input == 1) {
result.append('1');
} else {
result.append('0');
}
}
}

return result.toString();
}

private static String decimalToBinaryRecursive(int input) {
if (input < 0) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
}

if (input == 0) {
return "0";
}

if (input == 1) {
return "1";
}

// Find how many bits we need.
int bits = (int)(Math.log(input) / Math.log(2)) + 1;

// Find the greatest number that can be represented with this many bits.
int max = (int)Math.pow(2, bits);

// We want to know how much to change this value by to search from the mid point.
int delta = max / -2;

StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();

return decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(input, max, delta, result);
}

private static String decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(int input, int previousMidpoint, int delta, StringBuilder result) {
if (delta == 0) {
return result.toString();
}

int midpoint = previousMidpoint + delta;

if (input >= midpoint) {
result.append('1');
return decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(input, midpoint, Math.abs(delta) / 2, result);
} else {
result.append('0');
return decimalToBinaryRecursiveHelper(input, midpoint, Math.abs(delta) / -2, result);
}
}
}

This post contains content that was released with the following license:
and is published with the same license.

## New Domain for the Blog

February 6th, 2012

This blog will now be hosted at

http://www.reversing-entropy.com/

to reflect the title. Any requests to the old address:

http://impey.info/blog/

will be redirected to the new address.

## Project Euler 1

December 11th, 2011

I took a look at the first problem on the Project Euler site earlier this afternoon:

http://projecteuler.net/problem=1

This asks you to find the sum of the natural numbers that are less than 1000 and are multiples of 3 or 5.

I decided that Haskell’s filter function and a lambda would make this problem trivially easy to solve. In GHCi:

Prelude> let sumMultiplesOf3Or5 max = sum(filter(\x -> (mod x 3 == 0) || (mod x 5 == 0))[1 .. max - 1])
Prelude> sumMultiplesOf3Or5 1000
233168

As I played around with other values for max, something unexpected appeared before my eyes. A pattern of repeated digits begins to emerge in the sums of the multiples of 3 and 5 less than 10 to the power of i as i increases.

Prelude> map sumMultiplesOf3Or5 (map (\i -> 10 ^ i) [1..6])
[23,2318,233168,23331668,2333316668,233333166668]

Something similar happens with the sums of the multiples of 3 or 5 less than 20, 200,…,30,300, and so on:

Prelude> map (\j -> map sumMultiplesOf3Or5 (map (\i -> j * 10 ^ i) [1..6])) [1..9]
[[23,2318,233168,23331668,2333316668,233333166668],[78,9168,931668,93316668,9333166668,933331666668],[195,20850,2098500,209985000,20999850000,2099998500000],[368,37268,3732668,373326668,37333266668,3733332666668],[543,57918,5829168,583291668,58332916668,5833329166668],[810,83700,8397000,839970000,83999700000,8399997000000],[1133,114218,11432168,1143321668,114333216668,11433332166668],[1428,148668,14926668,1493266668,149332666668,14933326666668],[1845,188550,18895500,1889955000,188999550000,18899995500000]]

Reformatted:

[[23,2318,233168,23331668,2333316668,233333166668], -- [10,100,1000,10000,100000,1000000]
[78,9168,931668,93316668,9333166668,933331666668], -- [20,200,2000,20000,200000,2000000]
[195,20850,2098500,209985000,20999850000,2099998500000], -- and so on
[368,37268,3732668,373326668,37333266668,3733332666668],
[543,57918,5829168,583291668,58332916668,5833329166668],
[810,83700,8397000,839970000,83999700000,8399997000000],
[1133,114218,11432168,1143321668,114333216668,11433332166668],
[1428,148668,14926668,1493266668,149332666668,14933326666668],
[1845,188550,18895500,1889955000,188999550000,18899995500000]]

I’m not sure if this continues indefinitely. I wonder if similar patterns emerge with numbers in different bases. I’m curious about trying multiples of numbers other than 3 or 5. At this point, I’ve really no idea why this happens, but my curiosity is aroused.

I’m also really impressed with Haskell, a language that I barely know. The only other time I’ve used functional programming seriously is with C# and VB.Net for LINQ, of which I am a huge fan.

## GHCN Monthly and MS Access

December 4th, 2011

For some of the last few evenings, I have been learning about MS Access’s data import functionality in order to interrogate the data of the Global Historical Climatology Network-Monthly dataset. This dataset holds records of temperature readings dating back to the beginning of the eighteenth century from more than seven thousand stations around the globe.

GHCN Monthly

The data are in text files with a fixed width format. It’s very straightforward to set up the import format (although there are many columns!) and save the import specification so that future datasets can be imported as they are released with ease. The largest data files have almost half a million rows, yet Access can import the data in a few seconds. The resulting table of readings of average, minimum and maximum temperatures for each month for each station has more than one million rows. I have not experimented with adding indexes yet but, in spite of this, I can run queries that are not painfully slow.

Now that I have the data into an Access database, I hope to start analysing the data. I have produced a couple of charts for a single station but am yet to run any serious calculations. I have read of a similar project at:

A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data

The algorithm that caerbannog (the blogger) uses in his C++ program to smooth the data and calculate averages is fairly simple. Something similar should be possible (or even easy) using the MS Office tools.

Ultimately, my aim for this is to make this the basis of an ICT lesson or project. As caerbannog notes “Never in history has science been more accessible to the general public than it is now.” The quantities of data that can be accessed for free are as enormous as the power of the computers that are now cheaply available. I hope that my students will be inspired to look deeply into the issue and this will help develop their sense of empirical curiosity.

## Mouse Utopia

August 17th, 2011

I’ve just read an interesting piece on a scientist who tried to create a utopia for mice and his results.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/42/wiles.php

Science fiction writers have often presented a pessimistic vision of the future, where overpopulation is the problem and nihilism and violence are the consequences. That authors take this route is understandable as a functioning society is not much of a backdrop for a story. Also, despair is easier than hope.

It’s heartening that the scientist in the piece to which I link above was disappointed by the pessimistic fiction that he inspired. Whatever happens to our population and environment, we’re going to have to keep on keeping on.

In spite of the recent ugliness in the streets of London, I still feel that urban living and constantly being surrounded by other people is infinitely to be preferred to living like Robinson Cruesoe.