Robust Linear Models

In [1]:
%matplotlib inline

from __future__ import print_function
import numpy as np
import statsmodels.api as sm
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from statsmodels.sandbox.regression.predstd import wls_prediction_std

/builds/AstraOS/buildsystem/tbs_build/statsmodels/statsmodels-0.8.0/.pybuild/cpython3_3.7_statsmodels/build/statsmodels/compat/pandas.py:56: FutureWarning: The pandas.core.datetools module is deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Please use the pandas.tseries module instead.
  from pandas.core import datetools

Estimation

Load data:

In [2]:
data = sm.datasets.stackloss.load()
data.exog = sm.add_constant(data.exog)

/builds/AstraOS/buildsystem/tbs_build/statsmodels/statsmodels-0.8.0/.pybuild/cpython3_3.7_statsmodels/build/statsmodels/datasets/utils.py:100: FutureWarning: arrays to stack must be passed as a "sequence" type such as list or tuple. Support for non-sequence iterables such as generators is deprecated as of NumPy 1.16 and will raise an error in the future.
  exog = np.column_stack(data[field] for field in exog_name)

Huber's T norm with the (default) median absolute deviation scaling

In [3]:
huber_t = sm.RLM(data.endog, data.exog, M=sm.robust.norms.HuberT())
hub_results = huber_t.fit()
print(hub_results.params)
print(hub_results.bse)
print(hub_results.summary(yname='y',
            xname=['var_%d' % i for i in range(len(hub_results.params))]))

[-41.02649835   0.82938433   0.92606597  -0.12784672]
[9.79189854 0.11100521 0.30293016 0.12864961]
                    Robust linear Model Regression Results                    
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable:                      y   No. Observations:                   21
Model:                            RLM   Df Residuals:                       17
Method:                          IRLS   Df Model:                            3
Norm:                          HuberT                                         
Scale Est.:                       mad                                         
Cov Type:                          H1                                         
Date:                Fri, 26 Dec 2025                                         
Time:                        15:13:15                                         
No. Iterations:                    19                                         
==============================================================================
                 coef    std err          z      P>|z|      [0.025      0.975]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
var_0        -41.0265      9.792     -4.190      0.000     -60.218     -21.835
var_1          0.8294      0.111      7.472      0.000       0.612       1.047
var_2          0.9261      0.303      3.057      0.002       0.332       1.520
var_3         -0.1278      0.129     -0.994      0.320      -0.380       0.124
==============================================================================

If the model instance has been used for another fit with different fit
parameters, then the fit options might not be the correct ones anymore .

Huber's T norm with 'H2' covariance matrix

In [4]:
hub_results2 = huber_t.fit(cov="H2")
print(hub_results2.params)
print(hub_results2.bse)

[-41.02649835   0.82938433   0.92606597  -0.12784672]
[9.08950419 0.11945975 0.32235497 0.11796313]

Andrew's Wave norm with Huber's Proposal 2 scaling and 'H3' covariance matrix

In [5]:
andrew_mod = sm.RLM(data.endog, data.exog, M=sm.robust.norms.AndrewWave())
andrew_results = andrew_mod.fit(scale_est=sm.robust.scale.HuberScale(), cov="H3")
print('Parameters: ', andrew_results.params)

Parameters:  [-40.8817957    0.79276138   1.04857556  -0.13360865]

See help(sm.RLM.fit) for more options and module sm.robust.scale for scale options

Comparing OLS and RLM

Artificial data with outliers:

In [6]:
nsample = 50
x1 = np.linspace(0, 20, nsample)
X = np.column_stack((x1, (x1-5)**2))
X = sm.add_constant(X)
sig = 0.3   # smaller error variance makes OLS<->RLM contrast bigger
beta = [5, 0.5, -0.0]
y_true2 = np.dot(X, beta)
y2 = y_true2 + sig*1. * np.random.normal(size=nsample)
y2[[39,41,43,45,48]] -= 5   # add some outliers (10% of nsample)

Example 1: quadratic function with linear truth

Note that the quadratic term in OLS regression will capture outlier effects.

In [7]:
res = sm.OLS(y2, X).fit()
print(res.params)
print(res.bse)
print(res.predict())

[ 5.15175977  0.52052722 -0.01445708]
[0.45541788 0.07031037 0.00622138]
[ 4.79033282  5.05939288  5.32363592  5.58306195  5.83767095  6.08746294
  6.33243791  6.57259585  6.80793678  7.03846069  7.26416758  7.48505746
  7.70113031  7.91238615  8.11882496  8.32044676  8.51725154  8.7092393
  8.89641004  9.07876376  9.25630046  9.42902014  9.59692281  9.76000845
  9.91827708 10.07172869 10.22036328 10.36418085 10.5031814  10.63736493
 10.76673145 10.89128094 11.01101342 11.12592887 11.23602731 11.34130873
 11.44177313 11.53742051 11.62825087 11.71426422 11.79546054 11.87183985
 11.94340214 12.0101474  12.07207565 12.12918688 12.18148109 12.22895829
 12.27161846 12.30946161]

Estimate RLM:

In [8]:
resrlm = sm.RLM(y2, X).fit()
print(resrlm.params)
print(resrlm.bse)

[ 5.08617674e+00  5.04378315e-01 -3.57604941e-03]
[0.13245524 0.0204493  0.00180945]

Draw a plot to compare OLS estimates to the robust estimates:

In [9]:
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(12,8))
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot(x1, y2, 'o',label="data")
ax.plot(x1, y_true2, 'b-', label="True")
prstd, iv_l, iv_u = wls_prediction_std(res)
ax.plot(x1, res.fittedvalues, 'r-', label="OLS")
ax.plot(x1, iv_u, 'r--')
ax.plot(x1, iv_l, 'r--')
ax.plot(x1, resrlm.fittedvalues, 'g.-', label="RLM")
ax.legend(loc="best")
Out[9]:
<matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0x7ee810d8aef0>

Example 2: linear function with linear truth

Fit a new OLS model using only the linear term and the constant:

In [10]:
X2 = X[:,[0,1]] 
res2 = sm.OLS(y2, X2).fit()
print(res2.params)
print(res2.bse)

[5.73446852 0.37595644]
[0.39720629 0.0342249 ]

Estimate RLM:

In [11]:
resrlm2 = sm.RLM(y2, X2).fit()
print(resrlm2.params)
print(resrlm2.bse)

[5.21417483 0.47073358]
[0.10663597 0.00918819]

Draw a plot to compare OLS estimates to the robust estimates:

In [12]:
prstd, iv_l, iv_u = wls_prediction_std(res2)

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(8,6))
ax.plot(x1, y2, 'o', label="data")
ax.plot(x1, y_true2, 'b-', label="True")
ax.plot(x1, res2.fittedvalues, 'r-', label="OLS")
ax.plot(x1, iv_u, 'r--')
ax.plot(x1, iv_l, 'r--')
ax.plot(x1, resrlm2.fittedvalues, 'g.-', label="RLM")
legend = ax.legend(loc="best")