Is it possible to apply a single regression technique to data that has different patterns?

Question

I want to estimate the amount of sales for multiple different products depending on the temperature, which some products have a relationship between. For one of the products, the relationship between sales and temperature looks like this when plotted out:

This is just one product, but here there is a general trend that from after 10 degrees the amount of sales increases. For other products the relationship might be more linear, and others might have a polynomial kind of relationship, while other products might not have a relationship at all. An example of another product, which has no correlation between sales and temperature could be this product:

First of all i wanted to predict something just from one product, so I used the product from the first plot to try and model something. What I ended up doing was splitting the data so I had a dataframe with all the values from -5 degrees to 10 degrees and performed linear regression, and similar i splitted from 10 degrees to 30 degrees to perform linear regression, like so:

The one problem here is that I'm doing all sorts of things to fit my data to only ONE product. I have a dataset of 1000 products where I'd want to be able to estimate sales for SOME of the products based of a temperature. I want to somehow loop through all of my datasets, figure out which ones has some kind of relationship between sales and temperature and then automatically apply the best regression model for that particular product to estimate amount of sales for that product given some temperature, X.

I have looked at a bunch of different regression tutorials for neural networks, but I simply have no idea how to start or what to search for, or if what I'm trying to do is even possible?

Answer 1

Per the comments: as I cannot format code in a comment, I have placed it here. Here is an example surface fit to 3D data that also plots a 3D scatterplot, 3D surface, and contour plot.

import numpy, scipy, scipy.optimize
import matplotlib
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import  Axes3D
from matplotlib import cm # to colormap 3D surfaces from blue to red
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

graphWidth = 800 # units are pixels
graphHeight = 600 # units are pixels

# 3D contour plot lines
numberOfContourLines = 16


def SurfacePlot(func, data, fittedParameters):
    f = plt.figure(figsize=(graphWidth/100.0, graphHeight/100.0), dpi=100)

    matplotlib.pyplot.grid(True)
    axes = Axes3D(f)

    x_data = data[0]
    y_data = data[1]
    z_data = data[2]

    xModel = numpy.linspace(min(x_data), max(x_data), 20)
    yModel = numpy.linspace(min(y_data), max(y_data), 20)
    X, Y = numpy.meshgrid(xModel, yModel)

    Z = func(numpy.array([X, Y]), *fittedParameters)

    axes.plot_surface(X, Y, Z, rstride=1, cstride=1, cmap=cm.coolwarm, linewidth=1, antialiased=True)

    axes.scatter(x_data, y_data, z_data) # show data along with plotted surface

    axes.set_title('Surface Plot (click-drag with mouse)') # add a title for surface plot
    axes.set_xlabel('X Data') # X axis data label
    axes.set_ylabel('Y Data') # Y axis data label
    axes.set_zlabel('Z Data') # Z axis data label

    plt.show()
    plt.close('all') # clean up after using pyplot or else thaere can be memory and process problems


def ContourPlot(func, data, fittedParameters):
    f = plt.figure(figsize=(graphWidth/100.0, graphHeight/100.0), dpi=100)
    axes = f.add_subplot(111)

    x_data = data[0]
    y_data = data[1]
    z_data = data[2]

    xModel = numpy.linspace(min(x_data), max(x_data), 20)
    yModel = numpy.linspace(min(y_data), max(y_data), 20)
    X, Y = numpy.meshgrid(xModel, yModel)

    Z = func(numpy.array([X, Y]), *fittedParameters)

    axes.plot(x_data, y_data, 'o')

    axes.set_title('Contour Plot') # add a title for contour plot
    axes.set_xlabel('X Data') # X axis data label
    axes.set_ylabel('Y Data') # Y axis data label

    CS = matplotlib.pyplot.contour(X, Y, Z, numberOfContourLines, colors='k')
    matplotlib.pyplot.clabel(CS, inline=1, fontsize=10) # labels for contours

    plt.show()
    plt.close('all') # clean up after using pyplot or else thaere can be memory and process problems


def ScatterPlot(data):
    f = plt.figure(figsize=(graphWidth/100.0, graphHeight/100.0), dpi=100)

    matplotlib.pyplot.grid(True)
    axes = Axes3D(f)
    x_data = data[0]
    y_data = data[1]
    z_data = data[2]

    axes.scatter(x_data, y_data, z_data)

    axes.set_title('Scatter Plot (click-drag with mouse)')
    axes.set_xlabel('X Data')
    axes.set_ylabel('Y Data')
    axes.set_zlabel('Z Data')

    plt.show()
    plt.close('all') # clean up after using pyplot or else thaere can be memory and process problems


def func(data, a, alpha, beta):
    t = data[0]
    p_p = data[1]
    return a * (t**alpha) * (p_p**beta)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    xData = numpy.array([1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0])
    yData = numpy.array([11.0, 12.1, 13.0, 14.1, 15.0, 16.1, 17.0, 18.1, 90.0])
    zData = numpy.array([1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4, 5.5, 6.6, 7.7, 8.0, 9.9])

    data = [xData, yData, zData]

    initialParameters = [1.0, 1.0, 1.0] # these are the same as scipy default values in this example

    # here a non-linear surface fit is made with scipy's curve_fit()
    fittedParameters, pcov = scipy.optimize.curve_fit(func, [xData, yData], zData, p0 = initialParameters)

    ScatterPlot(data)
    SurfacePlot(func, data, fittedParameters)
    ContourPlot(func, data, fittedParameters)

    print('fitted prameters', fittedParameters)

    modelPredictions = func(data, *fittedParameters) 

    absError = modelPredictions - zData

    SE = numpy.square(absError) # squared errors
    MSE = numpy.mean(SE) # mean squared errors
    RMSE = numpy.sqrt(MSE) # Root Mean Squared Error, RMSE
    Rsquared = 1.0 - (numpy.var(absError) / numpy.var(zData))
    print('RMSE:', RMSE)
    print('R-squared:', Rsquared)

Answer 2

Here is an example of using scipy's differential_evolution genetic algorithm to fit a single data set to two different overlapping straight lines, and also automatically find the breakpoint to switch from one model to another. The scipy implementation of Differential Evolution uses the Latin Hypercube algorithm to ensure a thorough search of parameter space, which requires bounds within which to search - in this example, those bounds are taken from the data max and min values. The example completes the fitting with a call to curve_fit() without passing any bounds just in case the optimal parameters are outside the bounds used for the genetic algorithm.

import numpy, scipy, matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from scipy.optimize import curve_fit
from scipy.optimize import differential_evolution
import warnings

xData = numpy.array([19.1647, 18.0189, 16.9550, 15.7683, 14.7044, 13.6269, 12.6040, 11.4309, 10.2987, 9.23465, 8.18440, 7.89789, 7.62498, 7.36571, 7.01106, 6.71094, 6.46548, 6.27436, 6.16543, 6.05569, 5.91904, 5.78247, 5.53661, 4.85425, 4.29468, 3.74888, 3.16206, 2.58882, 1.93371, 1.52426, 1.14211, 0.719035, 0.377708, 0.0226971, -0.223181, -0.537231, -0.878491, -1.27484, -1.45266, -1.57583, -1.61717])
yData = numpy.array([0.644557, 0.641059, 0.637555, 0.634059, 0.634135, 0.631825, 0.631899, 0.627209, 0.622516, 0.617818, 0.616103, 0.613736, 0.610175, 0.606613, 0.605445, 0.603676, 0.604887, 0.600127, 0.604909, 0.588207, 0.581056, 0.576292, 0.566761, 0.555472, 0.545367, 0.538842, 0.529336, 0.518635, 0.506747, 0.499018, 0.491885, 0.484754, 0.475230, 0.464514, 0.454387, 0.444861, 0.437128, 0.415076, 0.401363, 0.390034, 0.378698])


def func(xArray, breakpoint, slopeA, offsetA, slopeB, offsetB):
    returnArray = []
    for x in xArray:
        if x < breakpoint:
            returnArray.append(slopeA * x + offsetA)
        else:
            returnArray.append(slopeB * x + offsetB)
    return returnArray


# function for genetic algorithm to minimize (sum of squared error)
def sumOfSquaredError(parameterTuple):
    warnings.filterwarnings("ignore") # do not print warnings by genetic algorithm
    val = func(xData, *parameterTuple)
    return numpy.sum((yData - val) ** 2.0)


def generate_Initial_Parameters():
    # min and max used for bounds
    maxX = max(xData)
    minX = min(xData)
    maxY = max(yData)
    minY = min(yData)
    slope = 10.0 * (maxY - minY) / (maxX - minX) # times 10 for safety margin

    parameterBounds = []
    parameterBounds.append([minX, maxX]) # search bounds for breakpoint
    parameterBounds.append([-slope, slope]) # search bounds for slopeA
    parameterBounds.append([minY, maxY]) # search bounds for offsetA
    parameterBounds.append([-slope, slope]) # search bounds for slopeB
    parameterBounds.append([minY, maxY]) # search bounds for offsetB


    result = differential_evolution(sumOfSquaredError, parameterBounds, seed=3)
    return result.x

# by default, differential_evolution completes by calling curve_fit() using parameter bounds
geneticParameters = generate_Initial_Parameters()

fittedParameters, pcov = curve_fit(func, xData, yData, geneticParameters)
print('Parameters:', fittedParameters)
print()

modelPredictions = func(xData, *fittedParameters) 

absError = modelPredictions - yData

SE = numpy.square(absError) # squared errors
MSE = numpy.mean(SE) # mean squared errors
RMSE = numpy.sqrt(MSE) # Root Mean Squared Error, RMSE
Rsquared = 1.0 - (numpy.var(absError) / numpy.var(yData))

print()
print('RMSE:', RMSE)
print('R-squared:', Rsquared)

print()


##########################################################
# graphics output section
def ModelAndScatterPlot(graphWidth, graphHeight):
    f = plt.figure(figsize=(graphWidth/100.0, graphHeight/100.0), dpi=100)
    axes = f.add_subplot(111)

    # first the raw data as a scatter plot
    axes.plot(xData, yData,  'D')

    # create data for the fitted equation plot
    xModel = numpy.linspace(min(xData), max(xData))
    yModel = func(xModel, *fittedParameters)

    # now the model as a line plot
    axes.plot(xModel, yModel)

    axes.set_xlabel('X Data') # X axis data label
    axes.set_ylabel('Y Data') # Y axis data label

    plt.show()
    plt.close('all') # clean up after using pyplot

graphWidth = 800
graphHeight = 600
ModelAndScatterPlot(graphWidth, graphHeight)