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how to make simulation faster

8 messages · R. Michael Weylandt, jim holtman, stats12

#
Dear R users,

I need to run 1000 simulations to find maximum likelihood estimates.  I
print my output as a vector. However, it is taking too long. I am running 50
simulations at a time and it is taking me 30 minutes. Once I tried to run
200 simulations at once, after 2 hours I stopped it and saw that only about
40 of them are simulated in those 2 hours. Is there any way to make my
simulations faster? (I can post my code if needed, I'm just looking for
general ideas here). Thank you in advance. 



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#
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 4:23 AM, stats12 <skarmv at gmail.com> wrote:
Code would be nice: I struggle to think of an basic MLE fitting that
would take ~36s per iteration and scale so badly if you are writing
idiomatic R:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example

Finally, I note you're posting from Nabble. Please include context in
your reply -- I don't believe Nabble does this automatically, so
you'll need to manually include it. Most of the regular respondents on
this list don't use Nabble -- it is a _mailing list_ after all -- so
we don't get the forum view you do, only emails of the individual
posts. Combine that with the high volume of posts, and it's quite
difficult to trace a discussion if we all don't make sure to include
context.

RMW
#
use Rprof to profile your code to determine where time is being spent.  This might tell you where to concentrate your effort.

Sent from my iPad
On Oct 25, 2012, at 23:23, stats12 <skarmv at gmail.com> wrote:

            
#
Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I updated my post with the code. Also, about
posting from Nabble, since I am a new user I didn't know about that problem.
If I post to the mailing list ( r-help at r-project.org), would it get rid of
that problem? 


output1<-vector("numeric",length(1:r))
output2<-vector("numeric",length(1:r))
output3<-vector("numeric",length(1:r))
output4<-vector("numeric",length(1:r))

for (m in 1:r){

ll<-function(p){
cumhaz<-(time*exp(Zi*p[3]))*p[1]
cumhaz<-aggregate(cumhaz,by=list(i),FUN=sum)
lnhaz<-delta*log(exp(Zi*p[3])*p[1])
lnhaz<-aggregate(lnhaz,by=list(i),FUN=sum)
lnhaz<-lnhaz[2:(r+1)]
cumhaz<-cumhaz[2:(r+1)]
lik<-r[m]*log(p[2])-
sum((di[,m]+1/p[2])*log(1+cumhaz[,m]*p[2]))+sum(lnhaz[,m])-
n*log(gamma(1/p[2]))+sum(log(gamma(di[,m]+1/p[2])))
-lik
}

initial<-c(1,0.5,0.5)
estt<-nlm(ll,initial,hessian=T)
lambda<-estt$estimate[1]
theta<-estt$estimate[2]
beta<-estt$estimate[3]

hessian<-t$hessian
cov<-solve(hessian)
vtheta<-cov[2,2]
vbeta<-cov[3,3]

output1[m]<-theta
output2[m]<-beta
output3[m]<-vtheta
output4[m]<-vbeta
}

theta<-as.vector(output1)
beta<-as.vector(output2)
vtheta<-as.vector(output3)
vbeta<-as.vector(output4)




Code would be nice: I struggle to think of an basic MLE fitting that
would take ~36s per iteration and scale so badly if you are writing
idiomatic R:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example

Finally, I note you're posting from Nabble. Please include context in
your reply -- I don't believe Nabble does this automatically, so
you'll need to manually include it. Most of the regular respondents on
this list don't use Nabble -- it is a _mailing list_ after all -- so
we don't get the forum view you do, only emails of the individual
posts. Combine that with the high volume of posts, and it's quite
difficult to trace a discussion if we all don't make sure to include
context.



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#
Thank you. I tried Rprof and looks like aggregate function I am using is one
of the functions that takes most of the time. What is the difference between
self time and total time?

$by.total
                       total.time total.pct self.time self.pct
f                          925.92     99.98      5.16     0.56
<Anonymous>                925.92     99.98      0.06     0.01
nlm                        925.92     99.98      0.00     0.00
aggregate                  885.66     95.64      0.28     0.03
aggregate.default          885.38     95.61      0.02     0.00
aggregate.data.frame       885.34     95.60     12.54     1.35
lapply                     817.06     88.23    183.76    19.84
FUN                        814.48     87.95     53.50     5.78
split                      425.06     45.90      4.50     0.49
split.default              420.56     45.41     14.16     1.53
factor                     408.84     44.15    347.12    37.48
unique                     235.32     25.41     19.38     2.09
sapply                     202.60     21.88      1.70     0.18
unlist                     181.40     19.59    132.28    14.28
simplify2array             148.70     16.06      1.10     0.12
[[<-                        41.24      4.45      1.62     0.17
[[<-.data.frame             39.62      4.28     31.42     3.39
^                           26.18      2.83     26.18     2.83



jholtman wrote

            

            
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#
The code you posted was not runnable.  'r' and at least 'Zi' were missing.

The 'total time' is the amount of the elapsed time that it was
sampling with the given function.  The "self time" is how much time
was actually spent in that function.
is probably within the "aggregate" function since this is where most
of the "total time" is being spent.  You may want to look at what you
are trying to do with the "aggregate" and see if there is another way
of doing it.

You seem to have an object "i" being used in the aggregate that does
not seem to be defined.

There are probably other ways of speeding it up.  Here is one that
compares 'aggregate' to 'sapply' to do the same thing:
user  system elapsed
   3.62    0.05    3.67
user  system elapsed
   0.56    0.00    0.56

So this is about a 6X increase in performance.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 9:08 AM, stats12 <skarmv at gmail.com> wrote:

  
    
#
You can get even better improvement using the 'data.table' package:
+     dt <- data.table(value = x, z = z)
+     r3 <- dt[
+             , list(sum = sum(value))
+             , keyby = z
+             ]
+ })
   user  system elapsed
   0.14    0.00    0.14
On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 11:23 PM, stats12 <skarmv at gmail.com> wrote:

  
    
#
Thank you very much for saving my time. I ran 500 simulations in 20 min using
"sapply" function. I'll try "data.table" method for the rest of my
simulations to get the results even faster. Thanks a lot again!



jholtman wrote

            

            
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