# Dynamic memory allocation in C++

To have success creating C++ programs, it’s essential to have a good understanding of the workings and implementation of dynamic memory,  which is the “art” of performing manual memory management.  When developing code in C++, you may not always know how much memory you will need before your program runs.  For instance, the size of an array may be unknown until you execute the program.

## Introduction to pointers

In order to understand dynamic memory allocation, we must first talk about pointers. A pointer is essentially a variable that stores the address in memory of another variable. The pointer data type is a long hexadecimal number representing the memory address.   This address can be accessed using an ampersand (&) exemplified in the following script:

//Accessing a pointer:
int age=43;
cout << &age << endl;
// The output would be something like: 0x7fff567ecb68


Since a pointer is also a variable, it requires declaration before being used .   The declaration consists on giving it a name, hopefully following the good code style convention and declaring the data type that it “points to” using an asterisk (*) like so:

//Declaring pointers of different data types:
int *integerPointer;
double *doublePointer;
float *floatPointer;
char *charPointer;


## The pointer’s operators

In summary, the two pointer operators are: address-of operator(&) which returns the memory address and contents-of operator (*) which returns the value of the variable located at that address.

// Example of pointer operators:
float variable=25.6;
float *pointer;
pointer= &variable;
cout << variable << endl; //outputs 25.6, the variable’s value
cout << pointer << endl; //outputs 0x7fff5a774b68, the variable’s location in memory
cout << *pointer << endl; // outputs 25.6, value of the variable stored in that location


This last operator is also called deference operator which enables you to access directly the variable the pointer points to, which you can then use for regular operations:

float width = 5.0;
float length = 10.0;
float area;
float *pWidth = &width;
float *pLength = &length;

//Both of the following operations are equivalent
area = *pWidth * *pLength;
area = width * length;
//the output for both would be 50.


Deferencing the pointers *pWidth and *pLength represents exactly the same as the variables width and length, respectively.

## Memory allocation in C++

Now that you have some basic understanding of pointers, we can talk about memory allocation in C++.  Memory in C++ is divided in tow parts: the stack and the heap.  All variables declared inside the function use memory from the stack whereas unused memory that can be used to allocate memory dynamically is stored in the heap.

You may not know in advance how much memory you need to store information in a variable. You can allocate memory within the heap of a variable of a determined data type using the new operator like so:

new float;


This operator allocates the memory necessary for storing a float on the heap and returns that address. This address can also be stored in a pointer, which can then be deferenced to access the variable:

float *pointer = new float; //requesting memory
*pointer = 12.0; //store value
cout << *pointer << endl; //use value
delete pointer;// free up memory
// this is now a dangling pointer
pointer= new float // reuse for new address


Here, the pointer is stored in the stack as a local variable, and holds the allocated address in the heap as its value. The value of 12.0 is then stored at the address in the heap. You can then use this value for other operations. Finally, the delete statement releases the memory when it’s no longer needed; however, it does not delete the pointer since it was stored in the stack. These type of pointers that point to non-existent memory are called dangling pointers and can be reused.

## Dynamic memory and arrays

Perhaps the most common use of dynamic memory allocation are arrays. Here’s a brief example of the syntax:

int *pointer= NULL; // initialized pointer
pointer= new int[10] // request memory
delete[]pointer; //delete array pointed to by pointer


The NULL pointer has a value of zero, you can declare a null pointer when you do not have the address to be assigned.

Finally, to allocate and release memory for multi-dimensional arrays, you basically use an array of pointers to arrays, it sounds confusing but you can do this using the following  sample method:

int row = 3;
int col = 4;
double **p  = new double* [row]; // Allocate memory for rows

// Then allocate memory for columns
for(int i = 0; i < col; i++) {
p[i] = new double[col];
}

//Release memory
for(int i = 0; i < row; i++) {
delete[] p[i];
}
delete [] p;


I hope this quick overview provides a starting point on tackling your  C++ memory allocation challenges.

# Reed Group’s basic C++ code style conventions

It is always good practice for programmers to adopt some sort of style convention when developing new code. This helps keeping the code readable for both authors and collaborators, as well as for people that read your code on online repositories. Here I will set a precedent for a minimal C++ code style for Reed’s group encompassing C++ features we normally use based on the most common practices out there, so that we can more easily help each other with out codes and keep consistency when publishing them. This post may be updated if somebody sets precedents for C++ features didn’t account for (e.g. namespaces).

### Naming conventions

• Classes: Uppercase first letter. If the class name is comprised of more than one word, all words should be written together (no dashes, underscores, etc.) and the first letter of each word should be capitalized. E.g.: MyAwesomeClass.
• Functions: Lowercase first letter. If the function name is comprised of more than one word, all words should be written together (no dashes, underscores, etc.) and the first letter of each word except the first should be capitalized. E.g.: myFantasticFunction. If you are creating a getter or a setter, be sure to follow the this standard. E.g. the getter for variable “thisVariable” would be “getThisVariable.”
• Variables: Same as Functions. Acronyms should also follow this rule — e.g. a variable containing a short-term ROF (for risk-of-failure) value for a utility should be called something like “shortTermRof.”
• Constants: All letters capitalized and words separated by underscores. E.g. MY_GREAT_CONSTANT.

### Other naming rules

Besides naming conventions, there are other good practices when it comes to coming up with names in your code:

• Do not assign one letter names, unless it is a temporary variable such as i, j, k used as indexes.
• Assign informative names to your classes, functions, variables and constants. If you have a variable called “length,” another called “thisLength” and a third one called “realLength” your code will be really hard to follow.
• Being concise is great (nobody reads code for its poetic variable names) but avoid shortening your names too much. Calling a variable “catchmentFallCreekIthaca” makes it much easier for someone else to know the information contained in that variable than calling it “catfacreith.”
• We all get really frustrated with our codes at times, and want to curse it really bad. It’s fine to do it in your office when nobody is hearing, but be sure to not let that leak into your code and to keep some decency: e.g. avoid having in your code “this&%$*%DoesNot&$%*#@Work = true” or anything of the sort.

### Other rules

• Avoid magic numbers (hard coded numbers). Codes like the one below not only are hard to understand but also make the reader question if the results of the code are actually right:
if (312 * evaporation + inflow / 52 - 7 * demand) {
// Do something here
}


Now imagine if the value 212 is the value of an area and is used in 83 different parts of your code: that’s a problem. Instead, declaring those numbers as constants would be preferred:

const double DRYVILLE_RESERVOIR_AREA = 312.0;
const double NUMBER_OF_WEEKS_IN_YEAR = 52.14;
const double NUMBER_OF_DAYS_IN_WEEK = 7.0;

// Lots of code here, since constants are normally declared at the top of the code.

if (DRYVILLE_RESERVOIR_AREA * evaporation + inflow / NUMBER_OF_WEEKS_IN_YEAR - NUMBER_OF_DAYS_IN_WEEK * demand) {
// Do something here
}

• Keep your cpp files shorter than 500 lines. If you start approaching 500 lines, it may be the case that your class can be broken into parent and multiple children classes, or into two completely different classes.
• Have only the main.cpp file in the root directory. All other files, if any, should be in directories so that the code is easy to navigate through.
• If there is an issue or simplification to be fixed at some point in the future, use the “//FIXME:” comment to indicate it, as in the code below:
//FIXME: replace constant area below by storage vs. area curve.
if (DRYVILLE_RESERVOIR_AREA * evaporation + inflow / NUMBER_OF_WEEKS_IN_YEAR - NUMBER_OF_DAYS_IN_WEEK * demand) {
// Do something here
}


Note that different languages have different standards. If coding in Python or Matlab, for example, be sure to follow the best practices for these languages. Also, if developing code in collaboration with another research group, be sure to negotiate a convention.

# Water Programming Blog Guide (Part 2)

Water Programming Blog Guide (Part 1)

This second part of the blog guide will cover the following topics:

1. Version control using git
2. Generating maps and working with spatial data in python
3. Reviews on synthetic streamflow and synthetic weather generation
4. Conceptual posts

## 1. Version Control using git

If you are developing code it’s worth the time to gain familiarity with git to maintain reliable and stable development.  Git allows a group of people to work together developing large projects minimizing the chaos when multiple people are editing the same files.   It is also valuable for individual projects as it allows you to have multiple versions of a project, show the changes that you have made over time and undo those changes if necessary.  For a quick introduction to git terminology and functionality, check out   The Intro to git Part 1: Local version control and  Intro to git Part 2: Remote Repositories  posts will guide you through your first git project (local or remote) while providing a set of useful commands.  Other specialized tips can be found in: Git branch in bash prompt and GitHub Pages. And if you are wondering how to use git with pycharm, you’ll find these couple of posts useful: A Guide to Using Git in PyCharm – Part 1A Guide to Using Git in PyCharm – Part 2

## 2. Generating maps and working with spatial data in python

To learn more about python’s capabilities on this subject,  this  lecture  summarizes key python libraries relevant for spatial analysis.  Also,  Julie and the Jons have documented their efforts when working with spatial data and with python’s basemap, leaving us with some valuable examples:

### Working with raster data

Python – Extract raster data value at a point

Python – Clip raster data with a shapefile

### Generating maps

Making Watershed Maps in Python

Plotting geographic data from geojson files using Python

### Generating map animations

Python makes the world go ’round

Making Movies of Time-Evolving Global Maps with Python

## 3. Reviews on synthetic streamflow and weather generation

We are lucky to have thorough reviews on synthetic weather and synthetic streamflow generation written by our experts Julie and Jon L.  The series on synthetic weather generation consists of five parts. Part I and Part II cover parametric and non-parametric methods, respectively. Part III covers multi-site generation.  Part IV discusses how to modify both parametric and non-parametric methods to simulate weather with climate change projections and finally Part V covers how to simulate weather with seasonal climate forecasts:

The synthetic streamflow review provides a historical perspective while answering key questions on “Why do we care about synthetic streamflow generation?  “Why do we use it in water resources planning and management? and “What are the different methods available?

Synthetic streamflow generation

## 4.  Conceptual posts

### Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs)

We frequently use multi-objective evolutionary algorithms due to their power and flexibility to solve multi-objective problems in water resources applications, so you’ll find sufficient documentation in the blog on basic concepts, applications and performance metrics:

You have a problem integrated into your MOEA, now what?

On constraints within MOEAs

MOEA Performance Metrics

### Many Objective Robust Decision Making (MORDM) and Problem framing

The next post discusses the MORDM framework which combines many objective evolutionary optimization, robust decision making, and interactive visual analytics to frame and solve many objective problems under uncertainty.  This is a valuable reading along with the references within.  The second post listed provides a systematic way of thinking about problem formulation and defines the key components of a many-objective problem:

Many Objective Robust Decision Making (MORDM): Concepts and Methods

“The Problem” is the Problem Formulation! Definitions and Getting Started

### Econometric analysis and handling multi-variate data

To close this second part of the blog guide, I leave you with a couple selected topics  from the Econometrics and Multivariate statistics courses at Cornell documented by Dave Gold:

A visual introduction to data compression through Principle Component Analysis

Dealing With Multicollinearity: A Brief Overview and Introduction to Tolerant Methods

# Profiling C++ code with Callgrind

Often times, we have to write code to perform tasks whose complexity vary from mundane, such as retrieving and organizing data, to highly complex, such as simulations CFD simulations comprising the spine of a project. In either case, depending on the complexity of the task and amount of data to be processed, it may happen for the newborn code to leave us staring at an underscore marker blinking gracefully for hours on a command prompt during its execution until the results are ready, leading to project schedule delays and shortages of patience. Two standard and preferred approaches to the problem of time intensive codes are to simplify the algorithm and to make the code more efficient. In order to better select the parts of the code to work on, it is often useful to first find the parts of the code in which more time by profiling the code.

In this post, I will show how to use Callgrind, part of Valgrind, and KCachegrind to profile C/C++ codes on Linux — unfortunately, Valgrind is not available for Windows or Mac, although it can be ran on cluster from which results can be downloaded and visualized on Windows with QCachegrind. The first step is to install Valgrind and KCachegrind by typing the following commands in the terminal of a Debian based distribution, such as Ubuntu (equivalent yum commands area available for Red Hat based distributions):

$sudo apt-get install valgrind$ sudo apt-get install kcachegrind


Now that the required tools are installed, the next step is to compile your code with GCC/G++ (with a make file, cmake, IDE or by running the compiler directly from the terminal) and then run the following command in a terminal (type ctrl+shift+T to open the terminal):

$valgrind --tool=callgrind path/to/your/compiled/program program_arguments  Callgrind will then run your program with some instrumentation added to its execution to measure time expenditures and cache use by each function in your code. Because of the instrumentation, Your code will take considerably longer to run under Callgrind than it typically would, so be sure to run a representative task that is as small as possible when profiling your code. During its execution, Callgrind will output a report similar to the one below on terminal itself: ==12345== Callgrind, a call-graph generating cache profiler ==12345== Copyright (C) 2002-2015, and GNU GPL'd, by Josef Weidendorfer et al. ==12345== Using Valgrind-3.11.0 and LibVEX; rerun with -h for copyright info ==12345== Command: path/to/your/compiled/program program_arguments ==12345== ==12345== For interactive control, run 'callgrind_control -h'. IF YOUR CODE OUTPUTS TO THE TERMINAL, THE OUTPUT WILL BE SHOWN HERE. ==12345== ==12345== Events : Ir ==12345== Collected : 4171789731 ==12345== ==12345== I refs: 4,171,789,731  The report above shows that it collected 4 billion events in order to generate the comprehensive report saved in the file callgrind.out.12345 — 12345 is here your process id, shown in the report above. Instead of submerging your soul into a sea of despair by trying to read the output file in a text editor, you should load the file into KCachegrind by typing: $ kcachegrind calgrind.out.12345


You should now see a screen like the one below:

The screenshot above shows the profiling results for my code. The left panel shows the functions called by my code sorted by total time spent inside each function. Because functions call each other, callgrind shows two cost metrics as proxies for time spent in each function: Incl., showing the total cost of a function, and self, showing the time spent in each function itself discounting the callees. By clicking on “Self” to order to functions by the cost of the function itself, we sort the functions by the costs of their own codes, as shown below:

Callgrind includes functions that are native to C/C++ in its analysis. If one of them appears in the highest positions of the left panel, it may be the case to try to use a different function or data structure that performs a similar task in a more efficient way. Most of the time, however, our functions are the ones in most of the top positions in the list. In the example above, we can see that a possible first step I can take to improve the time performance of my code is to make function “ContinuityModelROF::shiftStorage” more efficient. A few weeks ago, however, the function “ContinuityModel::continuityStep” was ranked first with over 30% of the cost, followed by a C++ map related function. I then replaced a map inside that function by a pointer vector, resulting in the drop of my function’s cost to less than 5% of the total cost of the code.

In case KCachegrind shows that a given function that is called from multiple places in the code is costly, you may want to know which function is the main culprit behind the costly calls. To do this, click on the function of interest (in this case, “_memcpy_sse2_unalight”) in the left panel, and then click on “Callers” in the right upper panel and on “Call Graph” in the lower right panel. This will show in list and graph forms the calls made to the function by other functions, and the asociated percent costs. Unfortunately, I have only the function “ContinuityModelROF::calculateROF” calling “_memcpy_sse2_unalight,” hence the simple graph, but the graph would be more complex if multiple functions made calls to “_memcpy_sse2_unalight.”

I hope this saves you at least the time spend reading this post!

# Introduction To Econometrics: Part II- Violations of OLS Assumptions & Methods for Fixing them

Regression is the primary tool used in econometrics to infer relationships between a group of explanatory variables, X and a dependent variable, y. My previous post focused on the mechanics of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression and outlined key assumptions that, if true, make OLS estimates the Best Linear Unbiased Estimator (BLUE) for the coefficients in the regression:

$y = \beta X+\epsilon$

This post will discuss three common violations of OLS assumptions, and explain tools that have been developed for dealing with these violations. We’ll start with a violation of the assumption of a linear relationship between X and y, then discuss heteroskedasticity in the error terms and the issue of endogeniety.

### Linearity

If the relationship between X and y is not linear, OLS can no longer be used to estimate beta. A nonlinear regression of y on X has the form:

$y = g(X\beta)+\epsilon$

Where  g(X\beta) is the functional form of the nonlinear relationship between X and y and epsilon is the error term. Beta can be estimated using Nonlinear Least Squares regression (NLS). Similar  to OLS regression, NLS seeks to minimize the sum of the square error term.

$\hat{\beta} = argmin(\beta) \epsilon'\epsilon = (y-g(x\beta))^2$

To solve for beta, we again take the derivative and set it equal to zero, but for the nonlinear system there is no closed form solution, so the estimators have to be found using numerical optimization techniques.

The variance of a NLS estimator is:

$\hat{Var}_{\hat{\beta}_{NLS}} = \hat{\sigma^2}(\hat{G}'\hat{G})^{-1}$

Where G is a matrix of partial derivatives of g with respect to each Beta.

Modern numerical optimization techniques can solve many NLS equations quite easily making NLS a common alternative to OLS regression especially when there is a hypothesized functional form for the relationship between X and y.

### Heteroskedasticity

Heteroskedasticity arises within a data set when the errors do not have a constant variance with respect to X. In equation form, under heteroskedasticity:

$E(\epsilon_i^2|X ) \neq \sigma^2$

The presence of heteroskedasticity  increases the variance of Beta estimators found using OLS regression, reducing the efficiency of the estimator and causing it to no longer be the BLUE. As put by Allison (2012), OLS on heteroskedastic data puts “equal weight on all observations when, in fact, observations with larger disturbances contain less information”.

To fix this problem, econometric literature provides two options which both use a form of weighting to correct for differences in variance amongst the error terms:

1. Use the OLS estimate for beta, but calculate the variance of beta with a robust variance-covariance matrix .
2. Estimate Beta using Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS)

Let’s begin with the first strategy, using OLS beta estimates with a robust variance-covariance matrix. The robust variance-covariance matrix can be derived using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) for the sake of brevity, I’ll omit the derivation here and skip to the final result:

$\hat{var}(\hat{\beta}) = (X'X)^{-1}(X'\hat{D}X)(X'X)^{-1}$

Where $\hat{D}$ is a matrix of square residuals from the OLS regression:

The second strategy, estimation using FGLS, requires a more involved process for estimating beta. FGLS can be accomplished through 3 steps:

1. Use OLS to find OLS estimate for beta and calculate the residuals:

$\hat{\epsilon}_i = y_i-x_i \hat{\beta}_{OLS}$

2. Regress the error term on a subset of X, which we will call Z, to get an estimate of a new parameter, theta (denoted with a tilde, but wordpress makes it difficult for me to add this in the middle of a paragraph). We then use this parameter to estimate the variance of the error term, sigma squared,  for each observation:

$\hat{\sigma}^2_i = z_i\tilde{\theta}$

A diagonal matrix, D (different than the D used for the robust variance-covariance matrix), is then constructed using these variance estimates.

3. Finally, we use the matrix D to find our FGLS estimator for beta:

$\hat{\beta}_{FGLS} = (X'\hat{D}^{-1}X)^{-1}(X'\hat{D}^{-1}y)$

The variance of of the FGLS beta etimate is then defined as:

$\hat{var}(\hat{\beta}_{FGLS} = (X'\hat{D}X)^{-1}$

### Endogeneity

Endogeneity arises when explanatory variables are correlated with the error term in a regression. This may be a result of simultaneity, when errors and explanatory variables are effected by the same exogenous influences, omitted variable bias,  when an important variable is left out of a regression, causing the over- or underestimation of the effect of other explanatory variables and the error term, measurement error or a lag in the dependent variable. Endogeniety can be hard to detect and may cause regression large errors in regression results.

A common way of correcting for endogeniety is through Instrumental Variables (IVs). Instrumental variables are explanatory variables that are highly correlated with variables that cause endogeniety but are exogenous to the system. Examples include using proximity to cardiac care centers as an IV for heart surgery when modeling health or state cigarette taxes as an IV for maternal smoking rate when modeling infant birth weight (Angrist and Kruger, 2001). For an expansive but accessible overview of IVs and their many applications, see Angrist and Kruger (2001).

A common technique for conducting a regression using IVs is 2 Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regression. The two stages of 2SLS are as follows:

1. Define Z as a new set of explanatory variables, which omits the endogenous variables and includes the IVs (which are usually not included in the original OLS regression).
2. Project Z onto the column space of X.
3. Estimate the 2SLS using this projection:

$\hat{\beta}_{2SLS} = [X'Z(Z'Z)^{-1}Z'X]^{-1}[X'Z(Z'Z)^{-1}Z'y]$

Using 2SLS regression to correct for endogeneity is fairly simple, however identifying good IVs for an endogenous variable can be extremely difficult. Finding a good IV (or set of IVs) can be enough to get one published in an economics journal (at least that’s what my economist friend told me).

## Concluding thoughts

These two posts have constituted an extremely brief introduction to the field of econometrics meant for engineers who may be interested in learning about common empirical tools employed by economists. We covered the above methods in much more detail in class and also covered other topics such as panel data, Generalize Method Of Moments estimation, Maximum Likelihood Estimation, systems of equations in regression and discrete choice modeling. Overall, I found the course (AEM 7100) to be a useful introduction to a field that I hope to learn more about over the course of my PhD.

### References:

Allison, Paul D. (2012). “Multiple regression: a primer. Pine Forge. Thousand Oaks, CA: Press Print.

Angrist, J.; Krueger, A. (2001). “Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments”. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 15 (4): 69–85. doi:10.1257/jep.15.4.69.

# An Introduction To Econometrics: Part 1- Ordinary Least Squares Regression

I took a PhD level econometrics course this semester in the Applied Economics and Management department here at Cornell and I thought I’d share some of what I learned. Overall, I enjoyed the course and learned a great deal. It was very math and theory heavy, but the Professor Shanjun Li did a nice job keeping the class lively and interesting. I would recommend the class to future EWRS students who may be looking for some grounding in econometrics, provided they’ve taken some basic statics and linear algebra courses.

So lets start with the basics, what does the term “econometrics” even mean? Hansen (2010) defined econometrics as “the unified study of economic models, mathematical statistics and economic data”. After taking this introductory course, I’m inclined to add my own definition: econometrics is “a study of the problems with regression using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and how to solve them”. This is obviously a gross oversimplification of the field, however, regression through OLS was the primary tool used for finding insights and patterns within data, and we spent the vast majority of the course examining it. In this post I’ll briefly summarize OLS mechanics and classical OLS assumptions. In my next post, I’ll detail methods for dealing with violations of OLS assumptions. My hope is that reading this may help you understand some key terminology and the reasoning behind why certain econometric tools are employed.

## OLS mechanics

Our primary interest when creating an econometric model is to estimate some dependent variable, y, using a observations from a set of independent variables, X. Usually y is a vector of length n, where n is the number of observations, and X is a matrix of size (n x k) where k is the number of explanatory variables (you can think of X as a table of observations, where each column contains a different variable and each row represents an observation of that variable). The goal of OLS regression is to estimate the coefficients, beta, for the model:

$y = X\beta+\epsilon$

Where beta is a k by 1 vector of coefficients on X and epsilon is a k by 1 vector of error terms.

OLS regression estimates beta by minimizing the sum of the square error term (hence the name “least squares”). Put in matrix notation, OLS estimates beta using the equation:

$\hat{\beta} = argmin_{\beta} SSE_N(\beta) = \epsilon ' \epsilon$

The optimal beta estimate can be found through the following equations:

$\epsilon = y-X\hat{\beta}$

$\epsilon ' \epsilon = (y-X\hat{\beta})'(y-X\hat{\beta})$

Taking the derivative and setting it equal to zero:

$2X'y+2X'X\hat{\beta} = 0$

Then solving for the beta estimate:

$\hat{\beta} = (X'X)^{-1}X'y$

Estimation of y using OLS regression can be visualized as the orthogonal projection of the vector y onto the column space of X. The estimated error term, epsilon, is the orthogonal distance between the projection and the true vector y.  Figure 1 shows this projection for a y that is regressed on two explanatory variables, X1 and X2.

Figure 1: OLS regression as an orthogonal projection of vector y onto the column space of matrix X. The error term, $\hat{\epsilon}$, is the orthogonal distance between y and $X\hat{\beta}$. (Image source: Wikipedia commons)

## Assumptions and properties of OLS regression

The Gauss-Markov Theorem states that under a certain set of assumptions, the OLS estimator is the Best Linear Unbiased Estimator (BLUE) for vector y.

To understand the full meaning of the Gauss-Markov theorem, it’s important to define two fundamental properties that can be used to describe estimators, consistency and efficiency. An estimator is consistent if its value will converge to the true parameter value as the number of observations goes to infinity. An estimator is efficient if its asymptotic variance is no larger than the asymptotic variance of any other possible consistent estimator for the parameter. In light of these definitions, the Gauss-Markov Theorem can be restated as: estimators found using OLS will be the most efficient consistent estimator for beta as long as the classical OLS assumptions hold. The remainder of this post will be devoted to describing the necessary assumptions for the OLS estimator to be the BLUE and detailing fixes for when these assumptions are violated.

The four classical assumptions for OLS to be the BLUE are:

1. Linearity: The relationship between X and y is linear, following the functional form:

$y = X\beta+\epsilon$.

2. Strict exogeneity: The error $\epsilon$ terms should be independent of the value of the explanatory variables, X. Put in equation form, this assumption requires:

$E(\epsilon_i|X) = 0$

$E(\epsilon_i) =0$

3.  No perfect multicollinearity: columns of X should not be correlated with each other (see my earlier post on dealing with mulitcollinearity for fixes for violations of this assumption).

4. Spherical Error: Error terms should be homoskedastic, meaning they are evenly distributed around the X values. Put in equation form:

$E(\epsilon_i^2|X) =\sigma^2$

Where $\sigma^2$ is a constant value.

$E(\epsilon_i \epsilon_j|X)=0$

Using assumption 4, we can define the variance of $\hat{\beta}$ as:

$var(\hat{\beta}_{OLS}) = \sigma^2(X'X)^{-1}$

If assumptions 1-4 hold, then the OLS estimate for beta is the BLUE, if however, any of the assumptions are broken, we must employ other methods for estimating our regression coefficients.

In my next post I’ll detail the methods econometricians use when these assumptions are violated.

### References:

Hansen, Bruce. “Econometrics”. 2010. University of Wisconsin

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~bhansen/econometrics/Econometrics2010.pdf

# Map making in Matlab

Greetings,

This weeks post will cover the basics of generating maps in Matlab.  Julie’s recent post showed how to do some of this in Python, but, Matlab is also widely used by the community.  You can get a lot done with Matlab, but in this post we’ll just cover a few of the basics.

We’ll start off by plotting a map of the continental United States, with the states.  We used three  this with three commands: usamap, shaperead, and geoshow.  usamap creates an empty map axes having the Lambert Projection covering the area of the US, or any state or collection of states.  shaperead reads shapefiles (duh) and returns a Matlab geographic data structure, composed of both geographic data and attributes.  This Matlab data structure then interfaces really well with various Matlab functions (duh).  Finally, geoshow plots geographic data, in our case on the map axes we defined.  Here’s some code putting it all together.

hold on
figure1 = figure;
ax = usamap('conus');

set(ax, 'Visible', 'off')
latlim = getm(ax, 'MapLatLimit');
lonlim = getm(ax, 'MapLonLimit');
'UseGeoCoords', true, 'BoundingBox', [lonlim', latlim']);
geoshow(ax, states, 'FaceColor', [0.5 0.5 0.5])
tightmap
hold off


Note that ‘usastatehi’ is a shapefile containing the US states (duh) that’s distributed with Matlab. The above code generates this figure:

Now, suppose we wanted to plot some data, say a precipitation forecast, on our CONUS map.  Let’s assume our forecast is being made at many points (lat,long).  To interpolate between the points for plotting we’ll use Matlab’s griddata function.  Once we’ve done this, we use the Matlab’s contourm command.  This works exactly like the normal contour function, but the ‘m’ indicates it plots map data.

xi = min(x):0.5:max(x);
yi = min(y):0.5:max(y);
[XI, YI] = meshgrid(xi,yi);
ZI = griddata(x,y,V,XI,YI);

hold on
figure2 = figure;
ax = usamap('conus');

set(ax, 'Visible', 'off')
latlim = getm(ax, 'MapLatLimit');
lonlim = getm(ax, 'MapLonLimit');
'UseGeoCoords', true, 'BoundingBox', [lonlim', latlim']);
geoshow(ax, states, 'FaceColor', [0.5 0.5 0.5])

contourm(YI,-1*XI,ZI)
tightmap
hold off


Here x, y, and V are vectors of long, lat, and foretasted precipitation respectively.  This code generates the following figure:

Wow!  Louisiana is really getting hammered!  Let’s take a closer look.  We can do this by changing the entry to usamap to indicate we want to consider only Louisiana.  Note, usamap accepts US postal code abbreviations.

ax = usamap('LA');


Making that change results in this figure:

Neat!  We can also look at two states and add annotations.  Suppose, for no reason in particular, you’re interested in the location of Tufts University relative to Cornell.  We can make a map to look at this with the textm and scatterm functions.  As before, the ‘m’ indicates the functions  plot on a map axes.

hold on
figure4 = figure;
ax = usamap({'MA','NY'});

set(ax, 'Visible', 'off')
latlim = getm(ax, 'MapLatLimit');
lonlim = getm(ax, 'MapLonLimit');
'UseGeoCoords', true, 'BoundingBox', [lonlim', latlim']);
geoshow(ax, states, 'FaceColor', [0.5 0.5 0.5])
scatterm(42.4075,-71.1190,100,'k','filled')
textm(42.4075+0.2,-71.1190+0.2,'Tufts','FontSize',30)

scatterm(42.4491,-76.4842,100,'k','filled')
textm(42.4491+0.2,-76.4842+0.2,'Cornell','FontSize',30)
tightmap
hold off


This code generates the following figure.

Cool! Now back to forecasts.  NOAA distributes short term Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts (QPFs) for different durations every six hours.  You can download these forecasts in the form of shapefiles from a NOAA server.  Here’s an example of a 24-hour rainfall forecast made at 8:22 AM UTC on April 29.

Wow, that’s a lot of rain!  Can we plot our own version of this map using Matlab!  You bet!  Again we’ll use usamap, shaperead, and geoshow.  The for loop, (0,1) scaling, and log transform are simply to make the color map more visually appealing for the post.  There’s probably a cleaner way to do this, but this got the job done!

figure5 = figure;
ax = usamap('conus');

set(ax, 'Visible', 'off')
latlim = getm(ax, 'MapLatLimit');
lonlim = getm(ax, 'MapLonLimit');
'UseGeoCoords', true, 'BoundingBox', [lonlim', latlim']);
geoshow(ax, states, 'FaceColor', [0.5 0.5 0.5])
p = colormap(jet);

N = max(size(S));
d = zeros(N,1);
for i = 1:N
d(i) = log(S(i).QPF);
end

y=floor(((d-min(d))/range(d))*63)+1;
col = p(y,:);
for i = 1:N
geoshow(S(i),'FaceColor',col(i,:),'FaceAlpha',0.5)%,'SymbolSpec', faceColors)
end


This code generates the following figure:

If you are not plotting in the US, Matlab also has a worldmap command.  This works exactly the same as usamap, but now for the world (duh).  Matlab is distibuted with a shapefile ‘landareas.shp’ which contains all of the land areas in the world (duh).  Generating a global map is then trivial:

figure6 = figure;

worldmap('World')
geoshow(land, 'FaceColor', [0.15 0.5 0.15])


Which generates this figure.

Matlab also comes with a number of other included that might be of interest.  For instance, shapefiles detailing the locations of major world cities, lakes, and rivers.  We can plot those with the following code:

figure7 = figure;

worldmap('World')
geoshow(land, 'FaceColor', [0.15 0.5 0.15])
geoshow(lakes, 'FaceColor', 'blue')
geoshow(rivers, 'Color', 'blue')

worldmap('Europe')