standard error does not get properly sorted in result of `compare` method

[chvandorp]

The result of the arviz.compare function is a dataframe with models sorted by elpd. However, the standard error in this table does not follow the same order of the models: instead it seems to be determined by the order the dictionary was defined.

Here's a Stan model to generate some samples, and a python script to reproduce the results. The Stan model simply models normally distributed data, but the standard deviation sigma is assumed "known" (i.e. given in the data block). When sigma is small, the data has a lot of outliers and we get a large standard deviation for the elpd.

// test-stan-model.stan
data {
    int N;
    vector[N] X;
    real<lower=0> sigma;
}

parameters {
    real mu;
}

model {
    X ~ normal(mu, sigma);
}

generated quantities {
    vector[N] log_lik;
    for ( i in 1:N ) {
        log_lik[i] = normal_lpdf(X[i] | mu, sigma);
    }
}

In the python script, we generate some Gaussian data and fit 2 models with a good and a bad sigma. We then use the arviz.compare function to compare these models.

import arviz
import cmdstanpy
import scipy.stats as sts

sm = cmdstanpy.CmdStanModel(stan_file="test-stan-model.stan")

data = {
    "N" : 1000,
    "X" : sts.norm.rvs(0.0, 1.0, size=1000)
}

data["sigma"] = 1.0 ## good sigma
sam1 = sm.sample(data=data)
adata1 = arviz.from_cmdstanpy(sam1)

data["sigma"] = 0.1 ## bad sigma

sam2 = sm.sample(data=data)
adata2 = arviz.from_cmdstanpy(sam2)

# compare the 2 models
comp_dict = {
    "M1" : adata1,
    "M2" : adata2,
}

print(arviz.compare(comp_dict, method="bb-pseudo-bma").to_markdown())

# compare again, but now with opposite names!!
comp_dict = {
    "M1" : adata2,
    "M2" : adata1,
}

print(arviz.compare(comp_dict, method="bb-pseudo-bma").to_markdown())

This is the expected result (first model comparison)

	rank	elpd_loo	p_loo	elpd_diff	weight	se	dse	warning	scale
M1	0	-1438.56	1.01548	0	1	23.0421	0	False	log
M2	1	-50529.1	99.3074	49090.6	0	2304.15	2311.18	False	log

And this is the result when we swap the model names:

	rank	elpd_loo	p_loo	elpd_diff	weight	se	dse	warning	scale
M2	0	-1438.56	1.01548	0	1	2387.07	0	False	log
M1	1	-50529.1	99.3074	49090.6	0	23.8712	2311.18	False	log

The table should be identical to the first one, except with opposite model names. However, also the se column has the wrong order!

I'm using arviz version 0.18.0, and python version 3.10

[ahartikainen]

True

https://github.com/arviz-devs/arviz/blob/0f71f9e12353a399cdd25138913e2fb73251fbcb/arviz/stats/stats.py#L273

That names should actually be ics.index

[OriolAbril]

I think this should have been fixed by https://github.com/arviz-devs/arviz/pull/2351, but I am still leaving the issue open for now to add a test checking for this.