The dfdr
package implements a simple version of automatic differentiation. It takes functions that consist of a single expression and construct the derivative with respect to a specific variable.
To install dfdr
you can use devtools
.
install.packages("devtools") devtools::install_github("mailund/dfdr")
and then load the library with
library(dfdr)
To compute the derivative of a function, you use the function d
. It takes two arguments, the function to compute the derivative of and the variable to compute the derivative with respect to.
f <- function(x) x^2 + sin(x) df <- d(f, "x") df
We can plot a function together with selected tangents to see how it works:
plot_tangent <- function(f, var, at, L = 1, df = NULL) { if (is.null(df)) { x <- substitute(var) df <- d(f, x) } a <- df(at) w <- L / sqrt(1 + a^2) v <- a * w x <- c(at - w, at + w) y <- c(f(at) - v, f(at) + v) lines(x, y, lty = "dashed", col = "darkred") points(at, f(at), pch = 20) } x <- seq(-1.5, 0.9, length.out = 100) plot(x, f(x), type = "l", asp = 1) plot_tangent(f, x, -1) plot_tangent(f, x, -0.2) plot_tangent(f, x, 0.1) plot_tangent(f, x, 0.7)
plot(x, sin(x), type = "l", asp = 1) plot_tangent(sin, x, -2) plot_tangent(sin, x, -1) plot_tangent(sin, x, 0.5) plot_tangent(sin, x, 2.5)
plot(x, exp(x), type = "l") plot_tangent(exp, x, -2, L = 1) plot_tangent(exp, x, 0.0, L = 1) plot_tangent(exp, x, 1.5, L = 3) plot_tangent(exp, x, 2.5, L = 4)
The body of the deriatives are simplified to a certain extend, but in a depth-first approach with no rewriting of expressions, so thehy sometimes can be more complex than you would normally see them.
Currently, it just handles arithmetic expressions and a few builtin functions, but I will implement handling of functions in the expressions as well, soon.
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