README

This is not yet another gp system (nyagp). For one, it is not general.
It does one thing, find mathematical functions, and tries to do that well.

So, if you're trying to steer ants on various New Mexico trails, or build your
own tiny block world, you're in the wrong place. However, if you're interested
in finding mathematical functions either through direct application on data or
running it through a simulator, you might find what you're looking for here.

=== Representation (sym/ + gen/) ========

Mathsym has a few interesting characteristics. First and foremost is the
basic representation. It uses trees, but these trees are stored in a 
reference counted hashtable. This means that every distinct subtree that is alive
is stored once and only once. 
The reference counting mechanism takes care of memory management. 

The idea of using a hashtable (for offline analysis) comes from Walter Tackett, in his
1994 dissertation. The current system is just a real-time implementation of this
idea, adding the reference counting for ease of use.

The hashtable brings overhead. It's still pretty fast, but a string based representation
would run circles around it. However, by virtue of it storing every subtree only once, it
is fairly tight on memory. This helps tremendously when confronted with excessively growing populations, bloat.
The hashtable implementation can not stop bloat, but does make it more manageable. In a typical
GP run, the number of distinct subtrees is only 10-20% of the total number of subtrees.

Other advantages of the hashtable are in the ability to examine the run more thoroughly. It is easy
to check how many subtrees are present in the system, and for each subtree you can check the reference
count. 

The basic tree is called a Sym. A Sym is simply a tree, and has children, accessible through args().
A Sym simply contains an iterator (== decorated pointer) to an entry in the hashtable. 
Every time you create a Sym, it is either looked up in the hashtable or added to the hashtable.
A Sym has several members: size, depth, args, etc. One interesting member is the refcount().
This returns the reference count of the Sym in the hashtable, and thus returns the number
of distinct contexts in which the Sym is used.

Another nice thing of these hashtable Syms is that a check for equality reduces to a pointer comparison.

The Sym nodes are identified by a simple token, of type token_t (usually an unsigned int). It
is completely generic and could conceivably be adapted to steer ants. The rest of the library
is however targeted at mathematical functions purely. 

sym/Sym.h is the file to look into for the functionality provided by Sym. The sym/ directory
is where the source files are stored that are relevant for the generic Sym functionality. The
'gen/' directory contains some generic functionality to build and traverse trees, independent of 
the function and terminal set.

The file sym/README.cpp documents the use of the sym library for general GP use.

=== Function Set (fun/) ===

The standard GP function set of binary functions: addition, multiplication, subtraction and
division is NOT supported. 

What is however supported are the functions of:

summation: arbitrary arity, arity zero meaning 0.0. Arity 2 is standard addition
product:   arbitrary arity, arity zero meaning 1.0. Arity 2 is standard multiplication
inversion:  1.0 / x. Only arity 1
unary minus: -x. Only arity 1

Plus a whole bunch of other functions (see "fun/FunDef.h")

The reason for this is the observation (actually from a friend of mine, thanks Luuk),
that this set of functions is complete and slightly more orthogonal than a binary set.

The directory 'fun' contains the functionality for the function and terminal set, together
with ERC's etc. fun/FunDef.cpp contains the definition of the functionality. Stuff can be
added here, but best to contact me if you miss particular functions.

With the sym and the function set in place, some fairly nice overloading is possible. A quick tour:

To create a variable that reads the first value from the inputs, do:

Sym var = SymVar(0);

To create a constant of value 0.4432, do

Sym cnst = SymConst(0.4432);

The constants are also stored uniquely so that:

Sym cnst2 = SymConst(0.4432)

will lead to:

cnst == cnst2

to be true (this happens without value compare, they point to the same element in the hashtable)

To add two values, do

Sym sym = var + const;

This will create a tree with three nodes. Other operators are overloaded similarily.

=== Evaluation (eval/) ===

The second important thing is evaluation. Although Syms can be evaluated through an interpreter,
this is not the fastest way to go about with it. The standard way of evaluating a Sym is to 
first *compile* it to a function, and then run it in your favourite environment. Compilation
is done through the use of the excellent tinycc compiler, which is blazingly fast and produces
pretty good functions.

Compilation comes in several flavours: compile a single function and retrieve a pointer to a function
of signature:

double func(const double* x);

where x is the input array. Another option is to compile a bunch of functions in one go, and retrieve an array
of such function pointers. The Syms are simply printed and compiled. An example: 

double func(const double* x) { return x*x + x * 1./x; }

The batch version proceeds significantly more quickly than calling compile every time. The function pointers
can be given to a simulation for extremely quick evaluation.

A third option is to compile a complete population in one go, and return a single pointer of signature

void func(const double* x, double* y);

Where 'y' is the (preallocated) output array. This allows to evaluate a complete population in one function
call, storing the results in 'y'. It uses the hashtable to store every calculation only once. An example
for the two function x*x + x*1./x and x + sin(x*x) is:

void func(const double* x, double* y) {
    double a0 = x;
    double a1 = a0 * a0;
    double a2 = 1.0;
    double a3 = a2 / a0;
    double a4 = a2 * a3;
    y[0] = a4;
    double a5 = sin(a1);
    double a6 = a0 + a5;
    y[1] = a6;
}

This is the fastest way to evaluate even humongous populations quickly. You might be surprised at
the amount of code re-use in a GP population.

The three compilation functions can be found in eval/sym_compile.h

A limiting factor in tinycc is that the struct TCCState that is used to hold the compilation context,
is not really self-contained. This unfortunately means that with every call to 'compile' ALL previous
pointers that have been produced become unsafe for use. I'm still looking at ways to circumvent this.

To work with mathsym, a few small changes in tccelf.c were necessary, check README.TCC for details.

=== Interval Arithmetic (eval/) ===

GP is pretty good at finding mathematical expressions that are numerically unsound. Take for instance
the function '1 / x'. This is well defined only when x is strictly positive, but will lead to problems
when x equals 0. The standard answer is to define some pseudo-arithmetical function called 'protected
division' that will return some value (usually 1) when a division by zero occurs. This leads to a number
of protected functions (sqrt, log, tan, etc.) which all need to be protected. Interpreting results from
GP using such functions is in general hard.

Interval arithmetic (through another excellent library boost/numeric/interval) is used to calculate
if particular functions can conceivably produce problems. This completely annihilates the use for Koza-style
protected operators and is a more safe and sound method. For interval arithmetic to function, the bounds
on the input variables need to be known. As for every function we can calculate a guarenteed, 
though not necessarily tight, output interval given the input intervals, we can check arbitrary functions
for possible problems. If, for example for division, the input interval contains 0, we know that a division
by zero is theoretically possible. It's then best to throw away the entire function.

Interval Arithmetic is accessible through the class IntervalBoundsCheck (eval/BoundsCheck.h)

=== More generic support (gen/) ===

The gen subdirectory contains some general utility classes for defining function sets and for 
creating trees. The idea is that these functions are generic and only append on the sym/ part
of the library. Unfortunately, the language table currently needs an ERC function, a default
implementation is hidden inside fun/FunDef.cpp. Will fix at some point.

gen/LanguageTable.cpp -> defines the functions/terminals that can be used
gen/TreeBuilder.cpp   -> can create trees based on a LanguageTable

=== Data and Errors (regression/)  ===

The above classes are generic and apply for any type of problem where a mathematical function can be 
used to steer some process, run a simulation, whatever. First check the intervals, then compile the 
Sym(s) to a (set of) function pointer(s), and use the pointers in some way to evaluate for fitness. 
One particular type of problem for which support is built in is 'symbolic regression'. This type of
problem involves finding an mathematical input/output relationship based on some data.

To enable this, regression/ introduces the class Dataset to contain the data and ErrorMeasure to calculate
error. Currently supported: mean squared error, mean absolute error and mean squared error scaled (proportional
to correlation squared). They use some helper classes such as Scaling and TargetInfo.

=== EO interface (eo_interface/) ===

Contains the classes to make it all work with EO. Check the root application 'symreg' for ways to use this

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