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Finding the best trade-off point on a curve

Asked 2010-01-07T04:15:13.420
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Say I had some data, for which I want to fit a parametrized model over it. My goal is to find the best value for this model parameter.

I'm doing model selection using a AIC/BIC/MDL type of criterion which rewards models with low error but also penalizes models with high complexity (we're seeking the simplest yet most convincing explanation for this data so to speak, a la Occam's razor).

Following the above, this is an example of the sort of things I get for three different criteria (two are to be minimized, and one to be maximized):

aic-bic fit

Visually you can easily see the elbow shape and you would pick a value for the parameter somewhere in that region. The problem is that I'm doing do this for large number of experiments and I need a way to find this value without intervention.

My first intuition was to try to draw a line at 45 degrees angle from the corner and keep moving it until it intersect the curve, but that's easier said than done :) Also it can miss the region of interest if the curve is somewhat skewed.

Any thoughts on how to implement this, or better ideas?

Here's the samples needed to reproduce one of the plots above:

curve = [8.4663 8.3457 5.4507 5.3275 4.8305 4.7895 4.6889 4.6833 4.6819 4.6542 4.6501 4.6287 4.6162 4.585 4.5535 4.5134 4.474 4.4089 4.3797 4.3494 4.3268 4.3218 4.3206 4.3206 4.3203 4.2975 4.2864 4.2821 4.2544 4.2288 4.2281 4.2265 4.2226 4.2206 4.2146 4.2144 4.2114 4.1923 4.19 4.1894 4.1785 4.178 4.1694 4.1694 4.1694 4.1556 4.14
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1 Answer

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First, a quick calculus review: the first derivative f' of each graph represents the rate at which the function f being graphed is changing. The second derivative f'' represents the rate at which f' is changing. If f'' is small, it means that the graph is changing direction at a modest pace. But if f'' is large, it means the graph is rapidly changing direction.

You want to isolate the points at which f'' is largest over the domain of the graph. These will be candidate points to select for your optimal model. Which point you pick will have to be up to you, since you haven't specified exactly how much you value fitness versus complexity.

answered 2010-01-07T04:53:21.810

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