Case Study: Owen Product Function¶
We validate RS-HDMR Sobol indices and Shapley effects on the product function studied by Owen [1], a benchmark designed to stress-test sensitivity estimators in high-dimensional settings:
$$ f(\mathbf{x}) = \prod_{j=1}^{d} \left( \mu_j + \tau_j g_j(x_j) \right), \quad x_j \in [0, 1], $$
where $g_j(x_j) = \sqrt{12}(x_j - 1/2)$ ensures zero mean and unit variance, $\mu_j = 1$ for all $j$, and $\tau = (1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 0.25)$ for $d = 6$. This creates a hierarchy of variable importance with diminishing contributions from $X_1$ to $X_6$, and analytically tractable Sobol indices $\sigma_u^2 = \prod_{j \in u} \tau_j^2 \prod_{j \notin u} \mu_j^2$.
The first- and second-order HDMR terms capture only ~83% of total variance; the remaining ~17% comes from third- and fourth-order interactions, making this a challenging test for surrogate-based sensitivity analysis.
[1] Owen, A. B. (2013). "Better Estimation of Small Sobol' Sensitivity Indices." ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, 23(2), 1–17.
# Import dependencies
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from itertools import combinations
from scipy.stats import qmc
from shapleyx import rshdmr
from importlib.metadata import version
print(f"Running on ShapleyX v{version('shapleyx')}")
Running on ShapleyX v0.2
Helper Functions¶
We draw samples using a scrambled Sobol' sequence for good space-filling and define the analytical sensitivity indices for later validation.
def owen_product(m, d, tau, mu):
"""Generate samples from the Owen product function.
Uses a scrambled Sobol' sequence (base-2) for quasi-Monte Carlo
sampling and returns a DataFrame with columns X1...Xd and Y.
"""
num_samples = 2 ** m
sampler = qmc.Sobol(d, scramble=True, seed=123)
samples = sampler.random_base2(m)
Y = np.ones(num_samples)
for dim in range(d):
g = np.sqrt(12) * (samples[:, dim] - 0.5)
Y *= (mu[dim] + tau[dim] * g)
cols = [f'X{i+1}' for i in range(d)]
return pd.DataFrame(
np.column_stack([samples, Y]),
columns=cols + ['Y']
)
def analytical_sigma2(u, tau, mu):
"""Analytical Sobol' index for subset u."""
d = len(tau)
prod_tau = np.prod([tau[j] ** 2 for j in u])
prod_mu = np.prod([mu[j] ** 2 for j in range(d) if j not in u])
return prod_tau * prod_mu
def analytical_shapley(tau, mu):
"""Compute analytical Shapley effects for the product function.
For the Owen product function the Shapley value for variable i is
the sum of all Sobol' indices involving i, each divided by its
interaction order (Owen 2014). Normalised by the true total
variance of the product function.
"""
d = len(tau)
all_vars = list(range(d))
shapleys = np.zeros(d)
# True total variance: prod(mu_j^2 + tau_j^2) - prod(mu_j^2)
total_var = (np.prod([mu[j]**2 + tau[j]**2 for j in range(d)])
- np.prod([mu[j]**2 for j in range(d)]))
for r in range(1, d + 1):
for subset in combinations(all_vars, r):
sig2 = analytical_sigma2(subset, tau, mu)
share = sig2 / len(subset)
for i in subset:
shapleys[i] += share
return shapleys / total_var
print("Helper functions defined.")
Helper functions defined.
Generate Training Data¶
The sample size is $2^m$; $m = 8$ gives 256 samples — sufficient for a well-behaved function at $d = 6$.
m = 8
d = 6
tau = [1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.25, 0.25]
mu = [1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0]
dataframe = owen_product(m, d, tau, mu)
print(f"{len(dataframe)} samples generated")
256 samples generated
Fit RS-HDMR Surrogate Model¶
We use ARD with Bayesian cross-validation. The polynomial orders are tapered ($8, 6, 4, 4$) to avoid overfitting higher-order interactions given the modest sample size.
model = rshdmr(
dataframe,
polys=[8, 6, 4, 4],
n_iter=100,
method='ard_cv',
cv_tol=0.005,
)
sob, shap, total = model.run_all()
Found a DataFrame ============================================================ Transforming data to unit hypercube ============================================================ Feature: X1, Min Value: 0.0036, Max Value: 0.9980 Feature: X2, Min Value: 0.0037, Max Value: 0.9969 Feature: X3, Min Value: 0.0020, Max Value: 0.9983 Feature: X4, Min Value: 0.0013, Max Value: 0.9995 Feature: X5, Min Value: 0.0030, Max Value: 0.9968 Feature: X6, Min Value: 0.0031, Max Value: 0.9999 ============================================================ Building basis functions ============================================================ Basis functions of 1 order : 48 Basis functions of 2 order : 540 Basis functions of 3 order : 1280 Basis functions of 4 order : 3840 Total basis functions in basis set : 5708 Total number of features in basis set is 5708 ============================================================ Running regression analysis ============================================================ running ARD Fit Execution Time : 3.691583 -- Model complete ============================================================ RS-HDMR model performance statistics ============================================================ variance of data : 7.271 sum of coefficients^2 : 5.904 variance ratio : 0.812 =============================== mae error on test set : 0.021 mse error on test set : 0.001 explained variance score: 1.000 =============================== slope : 0.9998316395119596 r value : 0.9999503175360412 r^2 : 0.9999006375404297 p value : 0.0 std error : 0.0006253782336377583
============================================================
Running bootstrap resampling 1000 samples for 95.0% CI
============================================================
|████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 100.0%
============================================================
Completed bootstrap resampling
============================================================
============================================================
Completed all analysis
------------------------
Silence is deep as Eternity, Speech is shallow as Time.
Carlyle
============================================================
RS-HDMR Shapley Effects¶
shap
| label | effect | scaled effect | lower | upper | std | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | X1 | 0.352569 | 0.352604 | 0.349102 | 0.356469 | 0.001851 |
| 1 | X2 | 0.347385 | 0.347419 | 0.344002 | 0.351083 | 0.001776 |
| 2 | X3 | 0.120009 | 0.120021 | 0.117509 | 0.122956 | 0.001372 |
| 3 | X4 | 0.117150 | 0.117162 | 0.113978 | 0.119686 | 0.001443 |
| 4 | X5 | 0.029022 | 0.029025 | 0.027588 | 0.030496 | 0.000732 |
| 5 | X6 | 0.033765 | 0.033768 | 0.032160 | 0.035400 | 0.000822 |
Analytical Shapley Effects¶
The product function has closed-form Sobol' indices, from which exact Shapley effects can be computed (Owen 2014).
# Add analytical column to the Shapley DataFrame
shap['analytical'] = analytical_shapley(tau, mu)
shap
| label | effect | scaled effect | lower | upper | std | analytical | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | X1 | 0.352569 | 0.352604 | 0.349102 | 0.356469 | 0.001851 | 0.346867 |
| 1 | X2 | 0.347385 | 0.347419 | 0.344002 | 0.351083 | 0.001776 | 0.346867 |
| 2 | X3 | 0.120009 | 0.120021 | 0.117509 | 0.122956 | 0.001372 | 0.119793 |
| 3 | X4 | 0.117150 | 0.117162 | 0.113978 | 0.119686 | 0.001443 | 0.119793 |
| 4 | X5 | 0.029022 | 0.029025 | 0.027588 | 0.030496 | 0.000732 | 0.033339 |
| 5 | X6 | 0.033765 | 0.033768 | 0.032160 | 0.035400 | 0.000822 | 0.033339 |
Comparison: RS-HDMR vs Analytical¶
comparison = pd.DataFrame({
'Variable': shap['label'],
'RS-HDMR': shap['scaled effect'].round(4),
'Analytical': shap['analytical'].round(4),
})
comparison['Abs. Difference'] = np.abs(
comparison['RS-HDMR'] - comparison['Analytical']
).round(4)
comparison
| Variable | RS-HDMR | Analytical | Abs. Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | X1 | 0.3526 | 0.3469 | 0.0057 |
| 1 | X2 | 0.3474 | 0.3469 | 0.0005 |
| 2 | X3 | 0.1200 | 0.1198 | 0.0002 |
| 3 | X4 | 0.1172 | 0.1198 | 0.0026 |
| 4 | X5 | 0.0290 | 0.0333 | 0.0043 |
| 5 | X6 | 0.0338 | 0.0333 | 0.0005 |
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6))
bar_width = 0.3
x = np.arange(d)
ax.bar(x - bar_width/2, shap['scaled effect'], bar_width,
yerr=[shap['scaled effect'] - shap['lower'],
shap['upper'] - shap['scaled effect']],
capsize=5, color='steelblue', alpha=0.85,
label='RS-HDMR surrogate')
ax.bar(x + bar_width/2, shap['analytical'], bar_width,
color='darkorange', alpha=0.85,
label='Analytical (exact)')
ax.set_xlabel('Input Variable')
ax.set_ylabel('Shapley Effect')
ax.set_title('RS-HDMR vs Analytical Shapley Effects\n(Owen product function, d = 6)')
ax.set_xticks(x)
ax.set_xticklabels(shap['label'])
ax.legend()
ax.set_ylim(0, None)
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()
First-Order Sobol' Indices¶
The RS-HDMR surrogate also provides Sobol' indices to arbitrary order. Below are the first-order indices with bootstrap confidence intervals.
# First-order Sobol' indices
first_order = sob[~sob['derived_labels'].str.contains('_')].copy()
first_order = first_order.rename(columns={'derived_labels': 'variable'})
first_order[['variable', 'index', 'lower', 'upper']].round(4)
| variable | index | lower | upper | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | X1 | 0.1693 | 0.1666 | 0.1733 |
| 26 | X2 | 0.1694 | 0.1666 | 0.1728 |
| 41 | X3 | 0.0435 | 0.0420 | 0.0451 |
| 48 | X4 | 0.0425 | 0.0407 | 0.0442 |
| 51 | X5 | 0.0094 | 0.0087 | 0.0100 |
| 53 | X6 | 0.0110 | 0.0102 | 0.0120 |
Key Takeaways¶
- RS-HDMR recovers the exact Shapley ranking ($X_1 \approx X_2 > X_3 \approx X_4 > X_5 \approx X_6$) from only 256 samples, despite 17% of variance coming from third- and fourth-order interactions.
- High-order interactions are captured through the sparse ARD expansion — 54 basis terms are selected from 5708 candidates.
- Bootstrap CIs are tight for the dominant variables, wider for the small contributors — reflecting genuine estimation uncertainty.
- Sobol' indices confirm the hierarchy: first-order effects follow the same $\tau_j^2$ pattern as the analytical solution.
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Last updated: Fri, 01 May 2026 Python implementation: CPython Python version : 3.12.12 IPython version : 9.13.0 matplotlib: 3.10.8 numpy : 2.3.5 pandas : 2.3.3 scipy : 1.17.1 shapleyx : 0.2 Watermark: 2.6.0