Understanding QR Decomposition

I’ve got a worked example (in R), that I’m trying to understand further. I’m using Limma to create a linear model and I’m trying to understand what’s happening step by step in the fold change calculations. I’m mostly trying to figure out what happens to calculate the coefficients. From what I can figure out, QR decomposition is used to get the coefficients, so I’m essentially looking for an explanation or a way to see step-by-step the equations being calculation, or or the source code for qr() in R to trace it myself.

Using the following Data:

expression_data <- c(1.27135202935009, 1.41816160331787, 1.2572772420417, 1.70943398046296, 1.30290218641586, 0.632660015122616, 1.73084258791384, 0.863826352944684, 0.62481665344628, 0.356064235030147, 1.31542028558644, 0.30549909383238, 0.464963176430548, 0.132181421105667, -0.284799809563931, 0.216198538884642, -0.0841133304341238, -0.00184472290008803, -0.0924271878885008, -0.340291804468472, -0.236829711453303, 0.0529690806587626, 0.16321956624511, -0.310513510587778, -0.12970035111176, -0.126398635780533, 0.152550803185228, -0.458542514769473, 0.00243517688116406, -0.0190192219685527, 0.199329876859774, 0.0493831375210439, -0.30903829000185, -0.289604319193543, -0.110019942085281, -0.220289950537685, 0.0680403723818882, -0.210977291862137, 0.253649629045288, 0.0740109953273042, 0.115109148186167, 0.187043445057404, 0.705155251555554, 0.105479342752451, 0.344672919872447, 0.303316487542805, 0.332595721664644, 0.0512213943473417, 0.440756755046719, 0.091642538588249, 0.477236022595909, 0.109140019847968, 0.685001267317616, 0.183154080053337, 0.314190891668279, -0.123285017407119, 0.603094973500324, 1.53723917249845, 0.180518835745199, 1.5520102749957, -0.339656677699664, 0.888791974821514, 0.321402618155527, 1.31133008668306, 0.287587853884556, -0.513896569786498, 1.01400498573403, -0.145552182640197, -0.0466811491949621, 1.34418631328095, -0.188666887863983, 0.920227741574566, -0.0182196762358299, 1.18398082848213, 0.0680539755381465, 0.389472802053599, 1.14920099633956, 1.35363045061024, -0.0400907708395635, 1.14405154287124, 0.365672853509181, -0.0742688460368051, 1.60927415300638, -0.0312210890874907, -0.302097025523754, 0.214897201115632, 2.029775196118, 1.46210810601113, -0.126836819148653, -0.0799005522761045, 0.958505775644153, -0.209758749029421, 0.273568395649965, 0.488150388217536, -0.230312627718208, -0.0115780974342431, 0.351708198671371, 0.11803520077305, -0.201488605868396, 0.0814169684941098, 1.32266103732873, 1.9077004570343, 1.34748531668521, 1.37847539147601, 1.85761827653095, 1.11327229058024, 1.21377936983249, 1.167867701785, 1.3119314966728, 1.01502530573911, 1.22109375841952, 1.23026951795161, 1.30638557237133, 1.02569437924906, 0.812852833149196) 

treatment <- c('A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'A', 'B', 'A', 'C', 'A', 'C', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'A', 'C', 'A', 'B', 'A', 'C', 'B', 'B', 'A', 'C', 'A', 'C', 'C', 'A', 'C', 'B', 'C', 'A', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'A', 'C', 'B', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'B', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A')

variation <- c(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3)

…and the following model design

design               <- model.matrix(~0 + factor(treatment,
                                                 levels=unique(treatment)) +
                                          factor(variation))
colnames(design)     <- c(unique(treatment),
                          paste0("b",
                                 unique(variation)[-1]))
#expression_data consists of more than the data given. The data given is just one row from the object
fit                  <- lmFit((expression_data), design)

cont_mat             <- makeContrasts(B-A,
                                      levels=design)
fit2                 <- contrasts.fit(fit,
                                      contrasts=cont_mat)
fit2                 <- eBayes(fit2)

Gives me a fold change of -0.8709646.

Getting the coefficients can be done via:

qr.solve(design, expression_data)

Then it’s a simple case of B-A to get the fold change.

Now the bit that’s perplexing me is how qr.solve actually works, it calls the qr function, but I can’t seem to find the source for that.

Does anyone have a good explanation of qr decomposition, or a way for me to trace exactly what’s happening to derive the coefficients?

Thanks for any help!

Answer

QR.regression <- function(y, X)
{
  nr <- length(y)
  nc <- NCOL(X)

  # Householder transformations
  for (j in seq_len(nc))
  {
    id <- seq.int(j, nr)
    sigma <- sum(X[id,j]^2)
    s <- sqrt(sigma)
    diag_ej <- X[j,j]
    gamma <- 1.0 / (sigma + abs(s * diag_ej))
    kappa <- if (diag_ej < 0) s else -s
    X[j,j] <- X[j,j] - kappa
    if (j < nc)
    for (k in seq.int(j+1, nc))
    {
      yPrime <- sum(X[id,j] * X[id,k]) * gamma
      X[id,k] <- X[id,k] - X[id,j] * yPrime
    }

    yPrime <- sum(X[id,j] * y[id]) * gamma
    y[id] <- y[id] - X[id,j] * yPrime

    X[j,j] <- kappa

  } # end Householder

  # residual sum of squares
  rss <- sum(y[seq.int(nc+1, nr)]^2)

  # Backsolve
  beta <- rep(NA, nc)
  for (j in seq.int(nc, 1))
  {
    beta[j] <- y[j]
    if (j < nc)
    for (i in seq.int(j+1, nc))
      beta[j] <- beta[j] - X[j,i] * beta[i]
    beta[j] <- beta[j] / X[j,j]
  }

  # set zeros in the lower triangular side of X (which stores) 
  # not really necessary, this is just to return R for illustration
  for (i in seq_len(ncol(X)))
    X[seq.int(i+1, nr),i] <- 0

  list(R=X[1:nc,1:nc], y=y, beta=beta, rss=rss)
}

# benchmark results
fit <- lm(expression_data ~ 0+design)
# OLS by QR decomposition
y <- expression_data
X <- design
res <- QR.regression(y, X)
res$beta
# [1]  1.43235881  0.56139421  0.07744044 -0.15611038 -0.15021796    
all.equal(res$beta, coef(fit), check.attributes=FALSE)
# [1] TRUE
all.equal(res$rss, sum(residuals(fit)^2))
# [1] TRUE

Q <- X %*% solve(res$R)
round(crossprod(Q), 3)
#   1 2 3 4 5
# 1 1 0 0 0 0
# 2 0 1 0 0 0
# 3 0 0 1 0 0
# 4 0 0 0 1 0
# 5 0 0 0 0 1

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : A_Skelton73 , Answer Author : javlacalle