📂Vector Analysis

Sum of Squared Residuals' Gradient

Overview

In many regression problems in statistics and machine learning, the sum of squared residuals is used as the objective function, especially when $f$ is a linear combination, it can be succinctly expressed in matrix form. $$ \begin{align*} RSS =& \sum_{k} \left( y_{k} - f \left( \mathbf{x}_{k} \right) \right)^{2} \\ =& \sum_{k} \left( y_{k} - \left( s_{0} + s_{1} x_{k1} + \cdots + s_{p} x_{kp} \right) \right)^{2} \\ =& \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right)^{T} \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) \\ =& \left\| \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right\|_{2}^{2} \end{align*} $$ To generalize this further, consider the gradient of a scalar function for matrix $R \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times n}$, which takes the following form.

Formula ¹

$$ f \left( \mathbf{s} \right) := \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right)^{T} R \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) $$ For vectors $\mathbf{y} \in \mathbb{R}^{n}$ and matrices $X \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times p}$ and $R \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times n}$ that are independent of $\mathbf{s}$, the following holds: $$ {{ \partial f \left( \mathbf{s} \right) } \over { \partial \mathbf{s} }} = - X^{T} \left( R + R^{T} \right) \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) $$

Derivation

Properties of transpose matrices: Assuming $r,s\in \mathbb{R}$ and $A,B$ have sizes that ensure matrix operations are well-defined, the following holds:

• (a) Linearity: $$\left( rA + sB\right)^{T}=r A^{T} + s B^{T}$$

Gradient of vectors and matrices: $$ \frac{ \partial \mathbf{w}^{T}\mathbf{x}}{ \partial \mathbf{w} } = \frac{ \partial \mathbf{x}^{T}\mathbf{w}}{ \partial \mathbf{w} } = \mathbf{x} $$ $$ \frac{ \partial }{ \partial \mathbf{w} }\left( \mathbf{w}^{T}\mathbf{R}\mathbf{w} \right)= \left( \mathbf{R} + \mathbf{R}^{T} \right) \mathbf{w} $$

$$ \begin{align*} {{ \partial } \over { \partial \mathbf{s} }} f \left( \mathbf{s} \right) =& {{ \partial } \over { \partial \mathbf{s} }} \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right)^{T} R \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) \\ =& {{ \partial } \over { \partial \mathbf{s} }} \left( \mathbf{y}^{T} - \mathbf{s}^{T} X^{T} \right) R \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) \\ =& {{ \partial } \over { \partial \mathbf{s} }} \left( - \mathbf{s}^{T} X^{T} R \mathbf{y} - \mathbf{y}^{T} R X \mathbf{s} + \mathbf{s}^{T} X^{T} R X \mathbf{s} \right) \\ =& - X^{T} R \mathbf{y} - X^{T} R^{T} \mathbf{y} + X^{T} \left( R + R^{T} \right) X \mathbf{s} \\ =& - X^{T} \left( R + R^{T} \right) \mathbf{y} + X^{T} \left( R + R^{T} \right) X \mathbf{s} \\ =& - X^{T} \left( R + R^{T} \right) \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) \end{align*} $$

■

Corollary 1

As a corollary, if $R$ is a symmetric matrix $$ {{ \partial f \left( \mathbf{s} \right) } \over { \partial \mathbf{s} }} = - 2 X^{T} R \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) $$ and if it is an identity matrix, then we obtain: $$ {{ \partial f \left( \mathbf{s} \right) } \over { \partial \mathbf{s} }} = - 2 X^{T} \left( \mathbf{y} - X \mathbf{s} \right) $$

Corollary 2

For the Hadamard product $\odot$, defining $f(\mathbf{s}) := \left\| X(\boldsymbol{\tau} \odot \mathbf{s}) - \mathbf{y} \right\|_{2}^{2}$ as, since $X(\boldsymbol{\tau} \odot \mathbf{s}) = X \diag(\boldsymbol{\tau}) \mathbf{s}$ applies

$$ \begin{align*} \dfrac{\partial f(\mathbf{s})}{\partial \mathbf{s}} & = 2 \left( X \diag(\boldsymbol{\tau}) \right)^{T} \left( X \diag(\boldsymbol{\tau})\mathbf{s} - \mathbf{y}\right) \\ & = 2 \diag(\boldsymbol{\tau})^{T} X^{T} \left( X (\boldsymbol{\tau} \odot \mathbf{s}) - \mathbf{y}\right) \\ & = 2 \boldsymbol{\tau} \odot X^{T} \left( X (\boldsymbol{\tau} \odot \mathbf{s}) - \mathbf{y}\right) \\ \end{align*} $$