Difference between R.loess and org.apache.commons.math LoessInterpolator

Question

I'm trying to compute the convert a R script to java using the apache.commons.math library. Can I use org.apache.commons.math.analysis.interpolation.LoessInterpolator in place of R loess ? I cannot get the same result.

EDIT.

here is a java program that creates a random array(x,y) and compute the loess with LoessInterpolator or by calling R. At the end, the results are printed.

import java.io.*;
import java.util.Random;

import org.apache.commons.math.analysis.interpolation.LoessInterpolator;


public class TestLoess
    {
    private String RScript="/usr/local/bin/Rscript";
    private static class ConsummeInputStream
        extends Thread
        {
        private InputStream in;
        ConsummeInputStream(InputStream in)
            {
            this.in=in;
            }
        @Override
        public void run()
            {
            try
                {
                int c;
                while((c=this.in.read())!=-1) 
                    System.err.print((char)c);
                }
            catch(IOException err)
                {
                err.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }
    TestLoess()
        {

        }
    private void run() throws Exception
        {
        int num=100;
        Random rand=new Random(0L);
        double x[]=new double[num];
        double y[]=new double[x.length];
        for(int i=0;i< x.length;++i)
            {
            x[i]=rand.nextDouble()+(i>0?x[i-1]:0);
            y[i]=Math.sin(i)*100;
            }
        LoessInterpolator loessInterpolator=new LoessInterpolator(
            0.75,//bandwidth,
            2//robustnessIters

            );
        double y2[]=loessInterpolator.smooth(x, y);

        Process proc=Runtime.getRuntime().exec(
            new String[]{RScript,"-"}
            );
        ConsummeInputStream errIn=new ConsummeInputStream(proc.getErrorStream());
        BufferedReader stdin=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(proc.getInputStream()));
        PrintStream out=new PrintStream(proc.getOutputStream());
        errIn.start();
        out.print("T<-as.data.frame(matrix(c(");
        for(int i=0;i< x.length;++i)
            {
            if(i>0) out.print(',');
            out.print(x[i]+","+y[i]);
            }
        out.println("),ncol=2,byrow=TRUE))");
        out.println("colnames(T)<-c('x','y')");
        out.println("T2<-loess(y ~ x, T)");
        out.println("write.table(residuals(T2),'',col.names= F,row.names=F,sep='\\t')");
        out.flush();
        out.close();
        double y3[]=new double[x.length];
        for(int i=0;i< y3.length;++i)
            {
            y3[i]=Double.parseDouble(stdin.readLine());
            }
        System.out.println("X\tY\tY.java\tY.R");
        for(int i=0;i< y3.length;++i)
            {
            System.out.println(""+x[i]+"\t"+y[i]+"\t"+y2[i]+"\t"+y3[i]);
            }
        }

    public static void main(String[] args)
        throws Exception
        {
        new TestLoess().run();
        }
    }

compilation & exec:

javac -cp commons-math-2.2.jar TestLoess.java && java -cp commons-math-2.2.jar:. TestLoess

output:

X   Y   Y.java  Y.R
0.730967787376657   0.0 6.624884763714674   -12.5936186703287
0.9715042030481429  84.14709848078965   6.5263049649584 71.9725380029913
1.6089216283982513  90.92974268256818   6.269100654071115   79.839773167581
2.159358633515885   14.112000805986721  6.051308261720918   3.9270340708818
2.756903911313087   -75.68024953079282  5.818424835586378   -84.9176311089431
3.090122310789737   -95.89242746631385  5.689740879461759   -104.617807889069
3.4753114955304554  -27.941549819892586 5.541837854229562   -36.0902352062634
4.460153035730264   65.6986598718789    5.168028655980764   58.9472823439219
5.339335553602744   98.93582466233818   4.840314399516663   93.3329030534449
6.280584733084859   41.21184852417566   4.49531113985498    36.7282165788057
6.555538699120343   -54.40211108893698  4.395343460231256   -58.5812856445538
6.68443584999412    -99.99902065507035  4.348559404444451   -104.039069260889
6.831037507640638   -53.657291800043495 4.295400167908642   -57.5419313320511
6.854275630124528   42.016703682664094  4.286978656933373   38.1564179414478
7.401015387322993   99.06073556948704   4.089252482141094   95.7504087842369
8.365502247999844   65.02878401571168   3.7422883733498726  62.5865641279576
8.469992934250815   -28.790331666506532 3.704793544880599   -31.145867173504
9.095139297716374   -96.13974918795569  3.4805388562453574  -98.0047896609079
9.505935493207435   -75.09872467716761  3.3330472034239405  -76.6664588290508

the output values for y are clearly not the same between R and Java; TheY.R column looks good (it's close to the original Y column). How should I change this in order to get Y.java ~ Y.R ?

Answer 1

You need to change the default values of three input parameters to make the Java and R versions identical:

1. The Java LoessInterpolator only does linear local polynomial regression, but R supports linear (degree=1), quadratic (degree=2), and a strange degree=0 option. So you need to specify degree=1 in R to be identical to Java.

2. LoessInterpolator defaults number of iterations DEFAULT_ROBUSTNESS_ITERS=2, but R defaults iterations=4. So you need to set control = loess.control(iterations=X) in R (X is the number of iterations).

3. LoessInterpolator defaults DEFAULT_BANDWIDTH=0.3 but R defaults span=0.75.