Re: fminunc_compat verbose mode

[Olaf Till]

On Wed, Dec 08, 2010 at 02:57:10PM -0800, rsyed wrote:
> 
> I'm using the fminunc_compat function

This is a function from Octave Forge package optimization, aiming at
fminunc compatibility when fminunc was not available in Octave
itself. But now it is.

> in Octave 3.2.4 and I set the various
> options to turn off any print statements during the function call.  The
> options I set are below along with one of the calls to fminunc_compat:
> 
> options = optimset_compat('Diagnostics', 'off',
> 'Display','off','TolFun',tol,'LargeScale','off', 'MaxFunEval', 1000);
> 
> fp1D = fminunc_compat(@fitgaussian1D,ip1D,options,mx,x1D);
> 
> The function still prints the values of nev, imin, ymin, and done during
> each of the iterations.  Anyone have any ideas?  Thanks!

fminunc_compat is a frontend to minimize, which again is a frontend,
by default to nelder_mead_min. I won't go through the code for option
passing, but a test shows me that transforming "Display", "off" in
nelder_mead_min to verbose == false in minimize does not work, which
explains that you can not switch the messages off.

nelder_mead_min is probably seldom the most suitable backend. You
could use bfgsmin.m directly, or fminunc from Octave itself, or maybe
d2_min. As for fminunc, there is no need now to use optimset_compat,
since Octave has now optimset (which is buggy in Octave-3.2.4, but
probably works with all implemented Matlab-compatible options).

Olaf