Cursera: machine learning ex8.

machine_learning/mlclass-ex8-008/mlclass-ex8/computeNumericalGradient.m

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+function numgrad = computeNumericalGradient(J, theta)
+%COMPUTENUMERICALGRADIENT Computes the gradient using "finite differences"
+%and gives us a numerical estimate of the gradient.
+%   numgrad = COMPUTENUMERICALGRADIENT(J, theta) computes the numerical
+%   gradient of the function J around theta. Calling y = J(theta) should
+%   return the function value at theta.
+
+% Notes: The following code implements numerical gradient checking, and 
+%        returns the numerical gradient.It sets numgrad(i) to (a numerical 
+%        approximation of) the partial derivative of J with respect to the 
+%        i-th input argument, evaluated at theta. (i.e., numgrad(i) should 
+%        be the (approximately) the partial derivative of J with respect 
+%        to theta(i).)
+%                
+
+numgrad = zeros(size(theta));
+perturb = zeros(size(theta));
+e = 1e-4;
+for p = 1:numel(theta)
+    % Set perturbation vector
+    perturb(p) = e;
+    loss1 = J(theta - perturb);
+    loss2 = J(theta + perturb);
+    % Compute Numerical Gradient
+    numgrad(p) = (loss2 - loss1) / (2*e);
+    perturb(p) = 0;
+end
+
+end