# Estimating Custom Maximum Likelihood Models in Python (and Matlab)

In this post I show various ways of estimating "generic" maximum likelihood models in python. For each, we'll recover standard errors.

We will implement a simple ordinary least squares model like this

$$\mathbf{y = x\beta +\epsilon}$$

where $\epsilon$ is assumed distributed i.i.d. normal with mean 0 and variance $\sigma^2$. In our simple model, there is only a constant and one slope coefficient ($\beta = \begin{bmatrix} \beta_0 & \beta_1 \end{bmatrix}$).

For this model, we would probably never bother going to the trouble of manually implementing maximum likelihood estimators as we show in this post. However, for more complicated models for which there is no established package or command, there are benefits to knowing how to build your own likelihood function and use it for estimation. It is also worthwhile noting that most of the methods shown here don't use analytical gradiants or hessians, so are likely (1) to have longer execution times and (2) to be less precise than methods where known analytical gradiants and hessians are built into the estimation method. I might explore those issues in a later post.

tl;dr: There are numerous ways to estimate custom maximum likelihood models in Python, and what I find is:

1. For the most features, I recommend using the Genericlikelihoodmodel class from Statsmodels even if it is the least intuitive way for programmers familiar with Matlab. If you are comfortable with object oriented programming you should definitely go this route.
2. For fastest run times and computationally expensive problems Matlab will most likely be significantly even with lots of code optimizations.

Python packages we'll use for this post:

import pymc3 as pm3
import numpy as np
import numdifftools as ndt
import pandas as pd
from scipy.stats import norm
import statsmodels.api as sm
from statsmodels.base.model import GenericLikelihoodModel
from scipy.optimize import minimize


First we generate data for this model here and add a column for the model constant:

N = 10000
x = 10 + 2*np.random.randn(N)
y = 5 + x + np.random.randn(N)
df = pd.DataFrame({'y':y, 'x':x})
df['constant'] = 1


           x          y  constant
0   4.857731  10.623466         1
1  11.285848  16.136891         1
2   8.454859  14.482064         1
3   8.673113  15.358859         1
4  10.655889  14.795186         1


## OLS Estimation

Since this is such a simple and universally used model, there are numerous packages available for estimating it. For this problem, you would undoubtedly want to use one of these existing packages. For example, statsmodels has an OLS method. We use it here for benchmarking purposes for comparing our maximum likelihood estimation of the same model below.

sm.OLS(df.y,df[['constant','x']]).fit().summary()

                            OLS Regression Results
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable:                      y   R-squared:                       0.803
Method:                 Least Squares   F-statistic:                 4.086e+04
Date:                Wed, 08 Mar 2017   Prob (F-statistic):               0.00
Time:                        11:19:36   Log-Likelihood:                -14124.
No. Observations:               10000   AIC:                         2.825e+04
Df Residuals:                    9998   BIC:                         2.827e+04
Df Model:                           1
Covariance Type:            nonrobust
==============================================================================
coef    std err          t      P>|t|      [95.0% Conf. Int.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
constant       4.9956      0.050     99.532      0.000         4.897     5.094
x              0.9982      0.005    202.135      0.000         0.989     1.008
==============================================================================
Omnibus:                        1.709   Durbin-Watson:                   2.000
Prob(Omnibus):                  0.426   Jarque-Bera (JB):                1.731
Skew:                           0.022   Prob(JB):                        0.421
Kurtosis:                       2.953   Cond. No.                         51.8
==============================================================================

Warnings:
[1] Standard Errors assume that the covariance matrix of the errors is correctly specified.


## Matlab

Matlab is a tool used by many econometricians for estimating generic likelihood models so I include it here for comparison purposes. The file neg_loglike.m defines the log-likelihood function (negative log-likelihood):

function [ll] = neg_loglike(theta,Y,X)
mu = X*theta(1:2);
ll = -1*sum(log(normpdf(Y,mu,theta(3))));
end


When this code is run in Matlab:

data = csvread('/tmp/data.csv');

X = data(:,[3 1]);
Y = data(:,2);

% Optimization Settings
'Hessian','off',...
'LargeScale','off',...
'Display','off',...
'MaxIter', 100000,...
'MaxFunEvals', 1000000, ...
'TolFun', 1.000e-006,...
'TolX', 1.000e-006,...
'FunValCheck','off',...
'DerivativeCheck','off',...
'Diagnostics','off',...
'Algorithm','trust-region-reflective');

% starting values for estimation
theta_start=.5*ones(size(X,2)+1,1);
theta_start, opt);
se = sqrt(diag(inv(hess)));

ans = [theta se]


We get the following parameter estimates:

           Parameter  Standard Error
Intercept    4.99560        0.050186
Slope        0.99823        0.004938
Sigma        0.99344        0.007027


## Python Handcoded using Scipy

Of all the python methods, this one is most similar to Matlab above. Defining the log-likelihood (in this case as in matlab a negative log-likelihood since there is no maximize function):

def neg_loglike(theta):
mu = theta[0] + theta[1]*x
return -1*norm(mu, theta[2]).logpdf(y).sum()


We'll optimize the log-likelihood over our parameters using minimize from python's scipy.optimize package:

theta_start = np.array([1,1,1])
res = minimize(neg_loglike, theta_start, method = 'Nelder-Mead',
options={'disp': True})

Optimization terminated successfully.
Current function value: 14123.593389
Iterations: 109
Function evaluations: 193


The default method, BFGS sometimes fails to converge, so I usually use Nelder-Mead. Unfortunately, Nelder-Mead doesn't return an estimated Hessian, so we need to calculate it ourselves using the numdifftools package:

Hfun = ndt.Hessian(neg_loglike, full_output=True)
hessian_ndt, info = Hfun(res['x'])
se = np.sqrt(np.diag(np.linalg.inv(hessian_ndt)))
results = pd.DataFrame({'parameters':res['x'],'std err':se})
results.index=['Intercept','Slope','Sigma']


## Extending Statsmodels

This method is perhaps the best way to proceed, but unless you are well-versed in object oriented programming is likely to be confusing. In my view it is worth the trouble to setup your custom maximum likelihood problem like this, by leveraging the machinery of statsmodels for working with our custom likelihood function. Since we have $K+1$ parameters, proceed carefully, since by default statsmodels assumes the number of parameters is equal to the column dimension of your independent variable. First, define the log-likelihood function (note this is not the negative log-likelihood):

def _ll_ols(y, X, beta, sigma):
mu = X.dot(beta)
return norm(mu,sigma).logpdf(y).sum()


Then, using the log-likelihood define our custom likelihood class (I'll call it MyOLS). Note that there are two key parts to the code below:

1. The function nloglikeobs, is only acting as a "traffic cop" and spits the parameters into $\beta$ and $\sigma$ coefficients and calls the likelihood function _ll_ols above.
2. The fit function is where we inform statsmodels that our model has $K+1$ variables. We'll provide a name for the additional variable ($\sigma$) and provide default starting values.
class MyOLS(GenericLikelihoodModel):
def __init__(self, endog, exog, **kwds):
super(MyOLS, self).__init__(endog, exog, **kwds)
def nloglikeobs(self, params):
sigma = params[-1]
beta = params[:-1]
ll = _ll_ols(self.endog, self.exog, beta, sigma)
return -ll
def fit(self, start_params=None, maxiter=10000, maxfun=5000, **kwds):
# we have one additional parameter and we need to add it for summary
self.exog_names.append('sigma')
if start_params == None:
# Reasonable starting values
start_params = np.append(np.zeros(self.exog.shape[1]), .5)
return super(MyOLS, self).fit(start_params=start_params,
maxiter=maxiter, maxfun=maxfun,
**kwds)


Once the model structure is setup, we can use fit() for estimating the model. statsmodels handles all of the optimizations and hessian calculations for us.

sm_ols_manual = MyOLS(df.y,df[['constant','x']]).fit()
print(sm_ols_manual.summary())

Optimization terminated successfully.
Current function value: 1.412359
Iterations: 212
Function evaluations: 386
MyOLS Results
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable:                      y   Log-Likelihood:                -14124.
Model:                          MyOLS   AIC:                         2.825e+04
Method:            Maximum Likelihood   BIC:                         2.827e+04
Date:                Wed, 08 Mar 2017
Time:                        11:20:09
No. Observations:               10000
Df Residuals:                    9998
Df Model:                           1
==============================================================================
coef    std err          z      P>|z|      [95.0% Conf. Int.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
constant       4.9956      0.050     99.541      0.000         4.897     5.094
x              0.9982      0.005    202.154      0.000         0.989     1.008
sigma          0.9934      0.007    141.420      0.000         0.980     1.007
==============================================================================


The great thing about using the statsmodels infrastructure is that you have access to a lot of functionality once your model is setup and estimated. For example, suppose you want 95% confidence intervals, after estimation, we can use this command with the model object:

ci = sm_ols_manual.conf_int(alpha=.05)
resdf = pd.DataFrame(ci,columns=['lower','upper'])
resdf.index = ['constant','x','sigma']

             lower     upper
constant  4.897258  5.093985
x         0.988556  1.007912
sigma     0.979679  1.007215


The are lots of other methods available to your generic model instance, and it is worth the effort getting it running.

## PyMC3

The Bayesian Statistics Package PyMC3 can also find the Hessian and Maximum Posterior values, which for Flat priors should give us something nearly identical to Maximum Likelihood. Note, the Hessian produced by PyMC3 using approx_hessian is what you should use. The command find_hessian doesn't yield a valid hessian matrix for any of the cases I have tried. One potential advantage of using PyMC3 is that the hessian could be calculated off of analytical gradiants and if this is the case would likely yield more accurate standard errors than any of the other methods presented in this post (including Matlab).1

Setting the model up in PyMC3

with pm3.Model() as model:
b0 = pm3.Flat('constant',testval=5)
b1 = pm3.Flat('x',testval=1)
sigma = pm3.Flat('sigma',testval = 1)
mu = b0 + b1 * df.x
like = pm3.Normal('like',mu = mu, sd=sigma, observed=df.y)


Noting that with Flat priors the posterior is exactly proportional to the likelihood, we can use the find_MAP function

with model:
# obtain MLE
beta_mle = pm3.find_MAP()
# obtain hessian at MAP
hessian = pm3.approx_hessian(beta_mle)

Optimization terminated successfully.
Current function value: 14123.593388
Iterations: 7
Function evaluations: 11


The method pm3.approx_hessian uses numdifftools to calculate the standard errors evaluated at the parameter vector you specify. We evaluate it at the MAP estimates which coincides with MLE estimates for this model setup. Note, the only gotcha is that the pm3.approx_hessian changes the order of parameters, so we need to match the standard errors we calculate from the hessian to the estimates carefully. In this case, they are in reverse order. Putting together we have

se_1 = np.sqrt(np.diag(np.linalg.inv(hessian)))
se = se_1[::-1]
b = np.array([beta_mle['constant'], beta_mle['x'], beta_mle['sigma']])
results_pymc = pd.DataFrame({'parameters':b,'std err':se})
results_pymc.index=['Intercept','Slope','Sigma']

           parameters   std err
Intercept    4.995611  0.050186
Slope        0.998235  0.004938
Sigma        0.993442  0.007025


## Comparison

Unsurprisingly given the simplistic nature of the model estimated here, all of the results are nearly identical. I did an informal time (timed single run) comparison and here are the results. Note that we are using PyMC3 in unintended ways and it wasn't built to optimize execution times for this type of problem.

 Program Execution Time (Seconds) Matlab with fminunc .122 Python with minimize .9937 Python statsmodels .9848 Python PyMC3 1.377

Matlab is significantly faster for this problem.

## Footnotes:

1

Without futher investigation, I can't tell if PyMC3 uses analytical gradiants for calculating the hessian.