One of our aims with dust was to enable the creation of fast particle filters. Most of the high level interface for this is within the package mcstate. Typically, when using a dust model with mcstate, you would define a function in R which compares the model state at some point in time to some data, returning a likelihood.

It is possible to implement this comparison directly in the dust model, which may slightly speed up the particle filter (because the compare function will be evaluated in parallel, and because of slightly reduced data copying), but also allows running the particle filter on a GPU (see vignette("gpu")).

This vignette outlines the steps in implementing the comparison directly as part of the model. This is not required for basic use of dust models, and we would typically recommend this only after your model has stabilised and you are looking to extract potential additional speed-ups or accelerate the model on a GPU.

volatility <- dust::dust_example("volatility")

To demonstrate the approach, we simulate some data from the model itself:

data <- local({
mod <- volatility$new(list(alpha = 0.91, sigma = 1), 0, 1L, seed = 1L) mod$update_state(state = matrix(rnorm(1L, 0, 1L), 1))
times <- seq(0, 100, by = 1)
res <- mod$simulate(times) observed <- res[1, 1, -1] + rnorm(length(times) - 1, 0, 1) data.frame(time = times[-1], observed = observed) }) head(data) #> time observed #> 1 1 -1.162705 #> 2 2 -1.025096 #> 3 3 -1.142348 #> 4 4 -1.073973 #> 5 5 4.231444 #> 6 6 3.391091 plot(observed ~ time, data, type = "o", pch = 19, las = 1) As in the mcstate vignette we need some way of comparing model output to data. The likelihood function used there is: volatility_compare <- function(state, observed, pars) { dnorm(observed$observed, pars$gamma * drop(state), pars$tau, log = TRUE)
}

i.e., the probability is normally distributed with mean of the equal to gamma multiplied by the modelled value, standard deviation of tau and evaluated at the observed value. Our aim here is to adapt this so that it is implemented as part of the C++ model. This requires:

• describing the types of the observed data at each time point in a C++ struct (here it will be a single floating-point value, but the data could be arbitrarily complicated)
• implementing a method to do the comparison
• describe how to marshal the data from R into this C++ structure
class volatility {
public:
using real_type = double;
using internal_type = dust::no_internal;
using rng_state_type = dust::random::generator<real_type>;

struct data_type {
real_type observed;
};

struct shared_type {
real_type alpha;
real_type sigma;
real_type gamma;
real_type tau;
real_type x0;
};

volatility(const dust::pars_type<volatility>& pars) : shared(pars.shared) {
}

size_t size() {
return 1;
}

std::vector<real_type> initial(size_t time) {
std::vector<real_type> state(1);
state[0] = shared->x0;
return state;
}

void update(size_t time, const real_type * state,
rng_state_type& rng_state, real_type * state_next) {
const real_type x = state[0];
state_next[0] = shared->alpha * x +
shared->sigma * dust::random::normal<real_type>(rng_state, 0, 1);
}

real_type compare_data(const real_type * state, const data_type& data,
rng_state_type& rng_state) {
return dust::density::normal(data.observed, shared->gamma * state[0],
shared->tau, true);
}

private:
dust::shared_ptr<volatility> shared;
};

// Helper function for accepting values with defaults
inline double with_default(double default_value, cpp11::sexp value) {
return value == R_NilValue ? default_value : cpp11::as_cpp<double>(value);
}

namespace dust {

template <>
dust::pars_type<volatility> dust_pars<volatility>(cpp11::list pars) {
using real_type = volatility::real_type;
real_type x0 = 0;
real_type alpha = with_default(0.91, pars["alpha"]);
real_type sigma = with_default(1, pars["sigma"]);
real_type gamma = with_default(1, pars["gamma"]);
real_type tau = with_default(1, pars["tau"]);

volatility::shared_type shared{alpha, sigma, gamma, tau, x0};
return dust::pars_type<volatility>(shared);
}

template <>
volatility::data_type dust_data<volatility>(cpp11::list data) {
return volatility::data_type{cpp11::as_cpp<double>(data["observed"])};
}

}

The first part, the data definition, is the definition

  struct data_type {
real_type observed;
};

which replaces the usual

  using data_type = dust::no_data;

This structure can contain whatever you want, including things like a std::vector of values. In our use we’ve typically only had real_type and int though, even for complex models.

The comparison is implemented by the method compare_data, which has a standard signature for the function which takes the current state, the data at the current time point, and the RNG state:

  real_type compare_data(const real_type * state, const data_type& data,
rng_state_type& rng_state) {
return dust::density::normal(data.observed, shared->gamma * state[0],
shared->tau, true);
}

This looks very much like the R version above:

• dnorm is replaced with the dust function dust::density::normal (do not use R API functions here, as this will be evaluated in a multi-threaded context)
• the random number generator is available here, if your comparison is itself stochastic
• unlike the R version where the comparison returns a vector across all particles, the C++ comparison is done for each particle

Finally, the data marshalling is done by the dust_data template, within the dust namespace

namespace dust {
template <>
volatility::data_type dust_data<volatility>(cpp11::list data) {
return volatility::data_type{cpp11::as_cpp<double>(data["observed"])};
}
}

Here, you can use any function you could use from cpp11, much like within the dust_pars template specialisation. The input will be a list, corresponding to the data at a single time point. The data.frame above will first be processed with dust::dust_data, so the first few entries look like:

head(dust::dust_data(data), 3)
#> [[1]]
#> [[1]][[1]]
#> [1] 1
#>
#> [[1]][[2]]
#> [[1]][[2]]$time #> [1] 1 #> #> [[1]][[2]]$observed
#> [1] -1.162705
#>
#>
#>
#> [[2]]
#> [[2]][[1]]
#> [1] 2
#>
#> [[2]][[2]]
#> [[2]][[2]]$time #> [1] 2 #> #> [[2]][[2]]$observed
#> [1] -1.025096
#>
#>
#>
#> [[3]]
#> [[3]][[1]]
#> [1] 3
#>
#> [[3]][[2]]
#> [[3]][[2]]$time #> [1] 3 #> #> [[3]][[2]]$observed
#> [1] -1.142348

This is definitely a bit fiddly! If using odin.dust, then this would be somewhat simplified as you could provide a single C++ file containing something like

// [[odin.dust::compare_data(observed = real_type)]]
// [[odin.dust::compare_function]]
template <typename T>
typename T::real_type compare(const typename T::real_type * state,
const typename T::data_type& data,
const typename T::internal_type internal,
std::shared_ptr<const typename T::shared_type> shared,
typename T::rng_state_type& rng_state) {
return dust::density::normal(data.observed, odin(gamma) * odin(value),
odin(tau), true);
}

and the correct code would be generated (the annotations above the function are special to odin.dust and help it build the interface, along with the odin() calls to locate quantities within the data structure).

For other examples, see the contents of the files system.file("examples/sir.cpp", package = "dust") and system.file("examples/sirs.cpp", package = "dust"), which are the basis of the sir and sirs models in dust::dust_example.

Once set up, the compare function can be used. First, create the model

mod <- volatility$new(list(alpha = 0.91, sigma = 1), 0, 30L) We can confirm that we can use this model to compare with data: mod$has_compare()
#> [1] TRUE

Next, set data into the object:

mod$set_data(dust::dust_data(data)) #> NULL Then, run to any point in the data set: y <- mod$run(1)

We can now compute the likelihood at this point:

mod$compare_data() #> [1] -1.5783600 -1.7410663 -2.6094400 -2.6534276 -2.4507912 -2.0436490 #> [7] -1.6446071 -4.4509425 -2.4026332 -1.0057864 -1.4763666 -1.9148131 #> [13] -2.2234221 -3.1445129 -1.4364302 -2.7617363 -1.4199344 -1.0179984 #> [19] -4.4711165 -2.4418638 -1.0104311 -1.1724981 -0.9990181 -1.0538634 #> [25] -1.4394982 -3.4777918 -0.9909773 -0.9278664 -2.4413582 -2.2643326 This will line up with the R version: volatility_compare(y, data[1, ], list(tau = 1, gamma = 1)) #> [1] -1.5783600 -1.7410663 -2.6094400 -2.6534276 -2.4507912 -2.0436490 #> [7] -1.6446071 -4.4509425 -2.4026332 -1.0057864 -1.4763666 -1.9148131 #> [13] -2.2234221 -3.1445129 -1.4364302 -2.7617363 -1.4199344 -1.0179984 #> [19] -4.4711165 -2.4418638 -1.0104311 -1.1724981 -0.9990181 -1.0538634 #> [25] -1.4394982 -3.4777918 -0.9909773 -0.9278664 -2.4413582 -2.2643326 You can also run a basic bootstrap particle filter using this approach: mod$update_state(pars = list(alpha = 0.91, sigma = 1), time = 0)
res <- mod$filter(save_trajectories = TRUE) This gives an overall likelihood: res$log_likelihood
#> [1] -178.4907

and, as we provided save_trajectories = TRUE, filtered trajectories during the simulation:

matplot(t(drop(res\$trajectories)), type = "l", lty = 1, col = "#00000022")
points(observed ~ time, data, type = "p", pch = 19, col = "blue")

Typically, you would use the much higher level interface in mcstate for this, though.

Some additional work is required if you want to run the comparison on a GPU, see vignette("gpu") for more details.