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Re: st: passing extra information to function evaluator program nl


From   "Brian P. Poi" <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: passing extra information to function evaluator program nl
Date   Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:13:01 -0500 (CDT)


On Tue, 23 Mar 2010, Ben Zipperer wrote:

I am interested in using Stata to find a real roots to a single
polynomial several times, where the coefficients vary each time.  I
basically want to apply Newton's method or something else to vectors
of coefficients. I originally planned to restrict the solver at
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/lang/nl.html to a single polynomial
and then iterate it, changing the coefficients at each iteration.
However, I can't figure out how to pass the coefficients to the
function evaluator program. How do I do this? Do I modify the syntax
statement of the program? Or should I try a different strategy?

For example, let's say the rows of the following matrix form the
coefficients for a quadratic polynomial

mat def M = (1,2,3\ 4,5,6\ 7,8,9)

Then the nl program evaluator program is something like

capture program drop nlpolysolve
program nlpolysolve

       syntax varlist(min=1 max=1) [if], at(name)

       tempname x z
       scalar `x' = `at'[1, 1]
       scalar `z' = `at'[1, 2]

       tempvar yh
	// the real polynomial
       gen double `yh' = a_`i' * x^2 + b_`i' * `x' + c_`i' + 1 in 1

       replace `yh' = 1 - `z' in 2
       replace `varlist' = `yh'

end

And my iterations are something like

forvalues i=1/3 {
preserve
clear
set obs 2
gen y = 0
replace y = 1 in 1

local a_`i' = M[`i',1]
local b_`i' = M[`i',2]
local c_`i' = M[`i',3]

nl polysolve @ y, parameters(A B) initial(A 0.5 B 1)
stuffiwanttopass(a_`i' b_`i' c_i')

restore
}

How do I pass the entries of the matrix to the nlpolysolve program above?



Ben,

Just make your program accept an additional option; any options that -nl- doesn't recognize as belonging to it will get passed to your program. Try something like this:


capture program drop nlpolysolve
program nlpolysolve

        syntax varlist(min=1 max=1) [if], at(name) mycoefs(numlist)

	local a : word 1 of `mycoefs'
	local b : word 2 of `mycoefs'
	local c : word 3 of `mycoefs'
...

        gen double `yh' = `a' * x^2 + `b' * `x' + `c' + 1 in 1

end


...

local a_`i' = M[`i',1]
local b_`i' = M[`i',2]
local c_`i' = M[`i',3]


nl polysolve @ y, parameters(A B) initial(A 0.5 B 1) ///
                  mycoefs(`a_`i'' `b_`i'' `c_`i'')



   -- Brian Poi
   -- [email protected]
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