bnns: Generic Function for Fitting Bayesian Neural Network Models

In bnns: Bayesian Neural Network with 'Stan'

Generic Function for Fitting Bayesian Neural Network Models

Description

This is a generic function for fitting Bayesian Neural Network (BNN) models. It dispatches to methods based on the class of the input data.

Usage

bnns(
  formula,
  data,
  L = 1,
  nodes = rep(2, L),
  act_fn = rep(2, L),
  out_act_fn = 1,
  iter = 1000,
  warmup = 200,
  thin = 1,
  chains = 2,
  cores = 2,
  seed = 123,
  prior_weights = NULL,
  prior_bias = NULL,
  prior_sigma = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE,
  refresh = max(iter/10, 1),
  normalize = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

formula	A symbolic description of the model to be fitted. The formula should specify the response variable and predictors (e.g., y ~ x1 + x2). y must be continuous for regression (out_act_fn = 1), numeric 0/1 for binary classification (out_act_fn = 2), and factor with at least 3 levels for multi-classification (out_act_fn = 3).
data	A data frame containing the variables in the model.
L	An integer specifying the number of hidden layers in the neural network. Default is 1.
nodes	An integer or vector specifying the number of nodes in each hidden layer. If a single value is provided, it is applied to all layers. Default is 16.
act_fn	An integer or vector specifying the activation function(s) for the hidden layers. Options are: 1 for tanh 2 for sigmoid (default) 3 for softplus 4 for ReLU 5 for linear
out_act_fn	An integer specifying the activation function for the output layer. Options are: 1 for linear (default) 2 for sigmoid 3 for softmax
iter	An integer specifying the total number of iterations for the Stan sampler. Default is 1e3.
warmup	An integer specifying the number of warmup iterations for the Stan sampler. Default is 2e2.
thin	An integer specifying the thinning interval for Stan samples. Default is 1.
chains	An integer specifying the number of Markov chains. Default is 2.
cores	An integer specifying the number of CPU cores to use for parallel sampling. Default is 2.
seed	An integer specifying the random seed for reproducibility. Default is 123.
prior_weights	A list specifying the prior distribution for the weights in the neural network. The list must include two components: dist: A character string specifying the distribution type. Supported values are "normal", "uniform", and "cauchy". params: A named list specifying the parameters for the chosen distribution: For "normal": Provide mean (mean of the distribution) and sd (standard deviation). For "uniform": Provide alpha (lower bound) and beta (upper bound). For "cauchy": Provide mu (location parameter) and sigma (scale parameter). If prior_weights is NULL, the default prior is a normal(0, 1) distribution. For example: list(dist = "normal", params = list(mean = 0, sd = 1)) list(dist = "uniform", params = list(alpha = -1, beta = 1)) list(dist = "cauchy", params = list(mu = 0, sigma = 2.5))
prior_bias	A list specifying the prior distribution for the biases in the neural network. The list must include two components: dist: A character string specifying the distribution type. Supported values are "normal", "uniform", and "cauchy". params: A named list specifying the parameters for the chosen distribution: For "normal": Provide mean (mean of the distribution) and sd (standard deviation). For "uniform": Provide alpha (lower bound) and beta (upper bound). For "cauchy": Provide mu (location parameter) and sigma (scale parameter). If prior_bias is NULL, the default prior is a normal(0, 1) distribution. For example: list(dist = "normal", params = list(mean = 0, sd = 1)) list(dist = "uniform", params = list(alpha = -1, beta = 1)) list(dist = "cauchy", params = list(mu = 0, sigma = 2.5))
prior_sigma	A list specifying the prior distribution for the sigma parameter in regression models (out_act_fn = 1). This allows for setting priors on the standard deviation of the residuals. The list must include two components: dist: A character string specifying the distribution type. Supported values are "half-normal" and "inverse-gamma". params: A named list specifying the parameters for the chosen distribution: For "half-normal": Provide sd (standard deviation of the half-normal distribution). For "inverse-gamma": Provide shape (shape parameter) and scale (scale parameter). If prior_sigma is NULL, the default prior is a half-normal(0, 1) distribution. For example: list(dist = "half_normal", params = list(mean = 0, sd = 1)) list(dist = "inv_gamma", params = list(alpha = 1, beta = 1))
verbose	TRUE or FALSE: flag indicating whether to print intermediate output from Stan on the console, which might be helpful for model debugging.
refresh	refresh (integer) can be used to control how often the progress of the sampling is reported (i.e. show the progress every refresh iterations). By default, refresh = max(iter/10, 1). The progress indicator is turned off if refresh <= 0.
normalize	Logical. If TRUE (default), the input predictors are normalized to have zero mean and unit variance before training. Normalization ensures stable and efficient Bayesian sampling by standardizing the input scale, which is particularly beneficial for neural network training. If FALSE, no normalization is applied, and it is assumed that the input data is already pre-processed appropriately.
...	Currently not in use.

Details

The function serves as a generic interface to different methods of fitting Bayesian Neural Networks. The specific method dispatched depends on the class of the input arguments, allowing for flexibility in the types of inputs supported.

Value

The result of the method dispatched by the class of the input data. Typically, this would be an object of class "bnns" containing the fitted model and associated information.

References

1. Bishop, C.M., 1995. Neural networks for pattern recognition. Oxford university press.

2. Carpenter, B., Gelman, A., Hoffman, M.D., Lee, D., Goodrich, B., Betancourt, M., Brubaker, M.A., Guo, J., Li, P. and Riddell, A., 2017. Stan: A probabilistic programming language. Journal of statistical software, 76.

3. Neal, R.M., 2012. Bayesian learning for neural networks (Vol. 118). Springer Science & Business Media.

See Also

bnns.default

Examples

# Example usage with formula interface:
data <- data.frame(x1 = runif(10), x2 = runif(10), y = rnorm(10))
model <- bnns(y ~ -1 + x1 + x2,
  data = data, L = 1, nodes = 2, act_fn = 1,
  iter = 1e1, warmup = 5, chains = 1
)

# See the documentation for bnns.default for more details on the default implementation.

bnns documentation built on April 3, 2025, 6:12 p.m.