Gradient descent impementation python - contour lines

Question

As a self study exercise I am trying to implement gradient descent on a linear regression problem from scratch and plot the resulting iterations on a contour plot.

My gradient descent implementation gives the correct result (tested with Sklearn) however the gradient descent plot doesn't seem to be perpendicular to the contour lines. Is this expected or did I get something wrong in my code / understanding?

Algorithm

Cost function and gradient descent

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D

def costfunction(X,y,theta):
    m = np.size(y)

    #Cost function in vectorized form
    h = X @ theta
    J = float((1./(2*m)) * (h - y).T @ (h - y));    
    return J;


def gradient_descent(X,y,theta,alpha = 0.0005,num_iters=1000):
    #Initialisation of useful values 
    m = np.size(y)
    J_history = np.zeros(num_iters)
    theta_0_hist, theta_1_hist = [], [] #For plotting afterwards

    for i in range(num_iters):
        #Grad function in vectorized form
        h = X @ theta
        theta = theta - alpha * (1/m)* (X.T @ (h-y))

        #Cost and intermediate values for each iteration
        J_history[i] = costfunction(X,y,theta)
        theta_0_hist.append(theta[0,0])
        theta_1_hist.append(theta[1,0])

    return theta,J_history, theta_0_hist, theta_1_hist

Plot

#Creating the dataset (as previously)
x = np.linspace(0,1,40)
noise = 1*np.random.uniform(  size = 40)
y = np.sin(x * 1.5 * np.pi ) 
y_noise = (y + noise).reshape(-1,1)
X = np.vstack((np.ones(len(x)),x)).T


#Setup of meshgrid of theta values
T0, T1 = np.meshgrid(np.linspace(-1,3,100),np.linspace(-6,2,100))

#Computing the cost function for each theta combination
zs = np.array(  [costfunction(X, y_noise.reshape(-1,1),np.array([t0,t1]).reshape(-1,1)) 
                     for t0, t1 in zip(np.ravel(T0), np.ravel(T1)) ] )
#Reshaping the cost values    
Z = zs.reshape(T0.shape)


#Computing the gradient descent
theta_result,J_history, theta_0, theta_1 = gradient_descent(X,y_noise,np.array([0,-6]).reshape(-1,1),alpha = 0.3,num_iters=1000)

#Angles needed for quiver plot
anglesx = np.array(theta_0)[1:] - np.array(theta_0)[:-1]
anglesy = np.array(theta_1)[1:] - np.array(theta_1)[:-1]

%matplotlib inline
fig = plt.figure(figsize = (16,8))

#Surface plot
ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 2, 1, projection='3d')
ax.plot_surface(T0, T1, Z, rstride = 5, cstride = 5, cmap = 'jet', alpha=0.5)
ax.plot(theta_0,theta_1,J_history, marker = '*', color = 'r', alpha = .4, label = 'Gradient descent')

ax.set_xlabel('theta 0')
ax.set_ylabel('theta 1')
ax.set_zlabel('Cost function')
ax.set_title('Gradient descent: Root at {}'.format(theta_result.ravel()))
ax.view_init(45, 45)


#Contour plot
ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 2, 2)
ax.contour(T0, T1, Z, 70, cmap = 'jet')
ax.quiver(theta_0[:-1], theta_1[:-1], anglesx, anglesy, scale_units = 'xy', angles = 'xy', scale = 1, color = 'r', alpha = .9)

plt.show()

Surface and contour plots

Comments

My understanding is that the gradient descent follow contour lines perpendicularly. Is this not the case ? Thanks

Answer 1

The problem with the contour graph is that the scales of theta0 and theta1 are different. Just add "plt.axis('equal')" to the contour plot instructions and you will see that the gradient descent is in fact perpendicular to the contour lines.

Contour graph with same scales in both axis