## Derivation of the Sigmoid Function

by Suraj Rampure (suraj.rampure@berkeley.edu)

Often, we read that logistic regression maximizes the log-odds of an event. What exactly does that mean? Where does the sigmoid function come from?

First, some context. Typically, we study binary classification – that is, classifying a test point x$x$ as belonging to class 1 or class 0 (for example, determining whether or not a certain patient has breast cancer, where x$x$ is all of their health information).

In order to do this, we model the probability of a point belonging to either class, and use some cutoff/threshold value to determine when we predict class 1 vs. class 0. We use logistic regression to do this – logistic regression is a form of regression that takes in a set of variables and outputs a probability, that is, a continuous value between 0 or 1. To be clear, logistic regression on its own is not a form of classification. In order to use logistic regression for classification, we require a decision boundary.

As a concrete example, suppose we somehow predict that the probability that one certain individual has breast cancer to be 68%. If we choose a decision boundary of 50%, that would mean any individual with a probability greater than (or equal to) 50% we would predict to have breast cancer, and any individual with less than 50% we would predict does not have breast cancer. In this case, with a 50% decision boundary, we would say this individual does have breast cancer, but with a 70% decision boundary, we would say they do not.

Moving forward, p$p$ will refer to the probability of a point belonging to class 1 (hence, 1p$1-p$ is the probability it belongs to class 0).

In statistics, we say that the "odds" of an event that occurs with probability p$p$ is p1p$\frac{p}{1-p}$. Sometimes this is referred to as "odds-in-favor", as opposed to "odds-against" (or 1pp$\frac{1-p}{p}$, as is commonly used in sports betting). The odds of an event with p=23$p = \frac{2}{3}$ is 2, sometimes denoted as 2:1$2:1$ or "two-to-one".

By log-odds, we quite literally mean log(p1p)$\log(\frac{p}{1-p})$ (with log$\log$ representing the natural log, ln()$\ln(\cdot)$). Suppose we set the log-odds of p$p$ to some value α$\alpha$, e.g. log(p1p)=α$\log(\frac{p}{1-p}) = \alpha$. We can actually solve for p$p$ in this expression:

log(p1p)elog(p1p)p1ppp(1+eα)pp=α=eα=eα=eαpeα=eα=eα1+eα=eα1+eαeαeα=11+eα

This resulting function α11+eα$\alpha \mapsto \frac{1}{1 + e^{-\alpha}}$ is referred to as the sigmoid function, σ(x)=11+ex$\sigma(x) = \frac{1}{1 + e^{-x}}$.

Looking at a graph of σ(x)$\sigma(x)$, we see that it accepts any value in $\mathbb{R}$ as an input, and outputs values in the range [0,1]$[0, 1]$ – perfect for a probability distribution.

Now, recall, we set the log-odds of p$p$ equal to α$\alpha$. Instead, we can set the log-odds equal to some linear function of x$x$, and optimize this function.

p=11+e(θ0+θ1x)

And, since p$p$ represents the probability of our test point x$x$ belonging to class 1, we can be more specific and say

P(Y=1|x)=σ(θ0+θ1x)=11+e(θ0+θ1x)

where Y$Y$ is the class of point x$x$.

We also don't need to restrict ourselves to using a single scalar input variable. In vector form, if we say θ=[θ0θ1...θk]T$\theta = \begin{bmatrix} \theta_0 & \theta_1 & ... & \theta_k \end{bmatrix}^T$ is our weight vector and ϕ(x)$\phi(\textbf{x})$ is our feature vector, i.e. ϕ(x)=[1ϕ1(x)ϕ2(x)...ϕk(x)]T$\phi(\textbf{x})= \begin{bmatrix} 1 & \phi_1(\textbf{x}) & \phi_2(\textbf{x}) & ... \phi_k(\textbf{x}) \end{bmatrix}^T$, we can say

P(Y=1|x)=σ(ϕT(x)θ)=11+eϕT(x)θ=11+e(θ0+θ1ϕ1(x)+...+θkϕk(x))

(Notice, we use x$\textbf{x}$ to represent a vector, and x$x$ to represent a scalar.)

As a concrete example, suppose we want to determine the probability of a baby growing to be over 6 feet tall, given their mother's height x1$x_1$, father's height x2$x_2$, and height at age 2 x3$x_3$. We can say x=1x1x2x3$\textbf{x} = \begin{bmatrix} 1 \\ x_1 \\ x_2 \\ x_3 \end{bmatrix}$. Suppose we let one feature be a bias term, another feature be the average of their parents' heights and a third be the sin$\sin$ of their age 2 height; we could then say ϕT(x)=[1x1+x22sin(x3)]$\phi^T(x) = \begin{bmatrix} 1 & \frac{x_1 + x_2}{2} & \sin(x_3) \end{bmatrix}$ (these aren't necessary good features, as this is just an example). Since this is a linear model, of course, we'd have θ=θ0θ1θ2$\theta = \begin{bmatrix} \theta_0 \\ \theta_1 \\ \theta_2 \end{bmatrix}$. Then,

P(Y=1|x)=σ(ϕT(x)θ)=11+e(θ0+θ1x1+x22+θ2sin(x3))

Then, using the appropriate loss function and a training set, we could determine the optimal set of weights θ$\theta$ to create the best predictor. We've now performed logistic regression, but we haven't yet built a classifier – a classifier outputs "1" or "0", and we have a function P(Y=1|x)$P(Y = 1 | \textbf{x})$ that outputs continuous values in the range [0,1]$[0, 1]$.

Suppose the cutoff boundary for our classifier is p0$p_0$, meaning probabilities greater than or equal to p0$p_0$ are classified as 1, and below p0$p_0$ as 0. Then:

classify(x)={10P(Y=1|x)p0P(Y=1|x)<p0

Note: The decision to classify the case P(Y=1|x)=p0$P(Y = 1|\textbf{x}) = p_0$ as class 1 was arbitrary. We could equivalently set it to class 0.