# Coordinates: Regression the way we know it

In our post series on linear regression in machine learning, up to now, we have already done quite a bit of work: we first gave mathematical definition of supervised learning. We then described how to interpret the concept of linear regression as a class of supervised learners. Along the way, we gave an overview of an important and underestimated tool in linear algebra: the pseudo-inverse.

Our approach discussed linear regression in the highest possible generality. We interpreted linear regression as the existence of a so-called learned hypothesis : a linear map $h_\Delta: \mathfrak{x}\mapsto \mathfrak{y}$ between two finite dimensional inner product spaces $\mathfrak{X}$ and $\mathfrak{y}$…

Today, we introduce coordinates on the inner product spaces $\mathfrak{X}$ and $\mathfrak{y}$ and compute the matrix associated to the learned hypothesis $h_\Delta$. This matrix will indeed coincide with the famous OLS matrix found in any book on linear regression.

Let’s begin with recapping exactly what we mean by linear regression: as mentioned above, we’ll start with two finite dimensional inner product spaces $\mathfrak{X}$ and $\mathfrak{y}$, together with a dataset $\Delta \subset \mathfrak{X}\times \mathfrak{y}$ of finitely many points such that the features $x \in \Delta$ span $\mathfrak{X}$.
We’ll write $\Delta = \big( (x_1,y_1), \ldots, (x_d,yd) \big)$ For any linear map $h \in \text{Hom}(\mathfrak{X},\mathfrak{y})$, we define the cost function as $$c(\Delta, h)=\sqrt{\sum_{(x,y)\in \Delta} \vert \vert h(x)-y \vert \vert^2}$$ In our second post, we showed that there exists a unique linear map $h\Delta$ which minimizes the value $c(\Delta, -)$.

We also gave a more or less explicit description of this $h_\Delta$: look at the map $$\text{ev}_\Delta: \text{Hom}(\mathfrak{X},\mathfrak{y})\longrightarrow \mathfrak{y}^\Delta: h\mapsto (h(x))_{x\in \Delta}$$ Then $$h_\Delta = \text{ev}^+_\Delta ((y)_{y\in \Delta})$$ Where $\text{ev}^+$ is the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse of $\text{ev}$.

Now, if we introduce coordinates on $\mathfrak{X}$ and $\mathfrak{y}$. then the space of liner maps $\textrm{Hom}_{\mathbb{R}}(\mathfrak{X},\mathfrak{y})$ is naturally identified with the space of matrices $\text{Mat}_{n\times m}(\mathbb{R})$ as we all know from basic linear algebra.
The space $\mathfrak{y}^\Delta$ is in turn naturally isomorphic to $\text{Mat}_{d\times n}(\mathbb{R})$ (where $d=\vert \Delta \vert$). Using these two identifications, we can reinterpret $\text{ev}_{\Delta}$ as a linear map of the form: $$\overline{\text{ev}}_\Delta: \text{Mat}_{n\times m}(\mathbb{R})\longrightarrow \text{Mat}_{d\times n}(\mathbb{R})$$ We now have the following:

The above map is given by right multiplication by the matrix $X$ whose $k$-th column consists of the coordinates of the feature $x_k$ in the dataset $\Delta = \big( (x_1,y_1), \ldots, (x_d,y_d) \big)$

Moreover, it is nothing more than an exercise in formality to show that the operation of taking the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse of a map is compatible with this reinterpration in the sense that $$\overline{\big(\text{ev}_\Delta^+\big)} = \bigg(\overline{\text{ev}_\Delta}\bigg)^+$$ Combining this with the above above lemma now yields that the linear map $\overline{\big(\text{ev}_\Delta^+\big)}$ is simply given by multiplying by $X^+$. Now we recall that the learned hypothesis $h_\Delta$ is given by evaluating $\text{ev}_\Delta$ at the sequence $(y)_{y \in \Delta}$. Putting everything together, we conclude that the matrix associated to $h_\Delta$ is given by $Y\cdot X^+$ where $Y$ is the matrix whose column vectors are the coordinates of the labels $y_1,\ldots , y_d$.

Summarizing, we obtain:

The matrix corresponding to the learned hypothesis $h_\Delta$ is given by $$Y\cdot X^+ = Y\cdot (X^t\cdot X)^{-1}\cdot X^t$$

Note that the last equation follows from the fact that $X^+ = (X^t\cdot X)^{-1}\cdot X^t$ if the matrix $X$ is injective