PINTS (Probabilistic Inference on Noisy Time-Series) is a framework for optimisation and Bayesian inference. Although it can be used as a general-purpose inference tool, it was developed specifically for models of noisy time-series, such as arise in electrochemistry and cardiac electrophysiology.
PINTS is described in this publication in JORS, and can be cited using the information given in our CITATION file. More information about PINTS papers can be found in the papers directory.
PINTS can work with any model that implements the pints.ForwardModel interface. This has just two methods:
n_parameters() --> Returns the dimension of the parameter space.
simulate(parameters, times) --> Returns a vector of model evaluations at
the given times, using the given parameters
Experimental data sets in PINTS are defined simply as lists (or arrays) of times and corresponding experimental values.
If you have this kind of data, and if your model (or model wrapper) implements the two methods above, then you are ready to start using PINTS to infer parameter values using optimisation or sampling.
A brief example is shown below:
(Left) A noisy experimental time series and a computational forward model.
(Right) Example code for an optimisation problem.
The full code can be viewed here but a friendlier, more elaborate, introduction can be found on the examples page.
Beyond time-series models, PINTS can be used on any error function or log-likelihood that takes real-valued, continuous parameters.
A graphical overview of the methods included in PINTS can be viewed here.
PINTS comes with a number of detailed examples, hosted here on github. In addition, there is a full API documentation, hosted on readthedocs.io.
The latest release of PINTS can be installed without downloading (cloning) the git repository, by opening a console and typing
$ pip install --upgrade pip
$ pip install pints
Note that you'll need Python 3.6 or newer.
If you prefer to have the latest cutting-edge version, you can instead install from the repository, by typing
$ git clone https://github.com/pints-team/pints.git
$ cd pints
$ pip install -e .[dev,docs]
To uninstall again, type:
$ pip uninstall pints
To see what's changed in the latest release, see the CHANGELOG.
There are lots of ways to contribute to PINTS development, and anyone is free to join in! For example, you can report problems or make feature requests on the issues pages.
Similarly, if you want to contribute documentation or code you can tell us your idea on this page, and then provide a pull request for review. Because PINTS is a big project, we've written extensive contribution guidelines to help standardise the code — but don't worry, this will become clear during review.
PINTS is fully open source. For more information about its license, see LICENSE.
Questions, suggestions, or bug reports? Open an issue and let us know.
Alternatively, feel free to email us at pints at maillist.ox.ac.uk.