Question

I implemented a gradient descent algorithm to minimize a cost function in order to gain a hypothesis for determining whether an image has a good quality. I did that in Octave. The idea is somehow based on the algorithm from the machine learning class by Andrew Ng

Therefore I have 880 values “y” that contains values from 0.5 to ~12. And I have 880 values from 50 to 300 in “X” that should predict the image’s quality.

Sadly the algorithm seems to fail, after some iterations the value for theta is so small, that theta0 and theta1 become “NaN”. And my linear regression curve has strange values…

here is the code for the gradient descent algorithm:
(theta = zeros(2, 1);, alpha= 0.01, iterations=1500)

function [theta, J_history] = gradientDescent(X, y, theta, alpha, num_iters)

m = length(y); % number of training examples
J_history = zeros(num_iters, 1);

for iter = 1:num_iters


    tmp_j1=0;
for i=1:m, 
    tmp_j1 = tmp_j1+ ((theta (1,1) + theta (2,1)*X(i,2)) - y(i));
end

    tmp_j2=0;
for i=1:m, 
    tmp_j2 = tmp_j2+ (((theta (1,1) + theta (2,1)*X(i,2)) - y(i)) *X(i,2)); 
end

    tmp1= theta(1,1) - (alpha *  ((1/m) * tmp_j1))  
    tmp2= theta(2,1) - (alpha *  ((1/m) * tmp_j2))  

    theta(1,1)=tmp1
    theta(2,1)=tmp2

    % ============================================================

    % Save the cost J in every iteration    
    J_history(iter) = computeCost(X, y, theta);
end
end

And here is the computation for the costfunction:

function J = computeCost(X, y, theta)   %

m = length(y); % number of training examples
J = 0;
tmp=0;
for i=1:m, 
    tmp = tmp+ (theta (1,1) + theta (2,1)*X(i,2) - y(i))^2; %differenzberechnung
end
J= (1/(2*m)) * tmp
end

Answer 1

I think that your computeCost function is wrong.
I attended NG’s class last year and I have the following implementation (vectorized):

m = length(y);
J = 0;
predictions = X * theta;
sqrErrors = (predictions-y).^2;

J = 1/(2*m) * sum(sqrErrors);

The rest of the implementation seems fine to me, although you could also vectorize them.

theta_1 = theta(1) - alpha * (1/m) * sum((X*theta-y).*X(:,1));
theta_2 = theta(2) - alpha * (1/m) * sum((X*theta-y).*X(:,2));

Afterwards you are setting the temporary thetas (here called theta_1 and theta_2) correctly back to the “real” theta.

Generally it is more useful to vectorize instead of loops, it is less annoying to read and to debug.