Python package for concise, transparent, and accurate predictive modeling.
All sklearn-compatible and easy to use.
For interpretability in NLP, check out our new package: imodelsX
π docs β’ π demo notebooks
Modern machine-learning models are increasingly complex, often making them difficult to interpret. This package provides a simple interface for fitting and using state-of-the-art interpretable models, all compatible with scikit-learn. These models can often replace black-box models (e.g. random forests) with simpler models (e.g. rule lists) while improving interpretability and computational efficiency, all without sacrificing predictive accuracy! Simply import a classifier or regressor and use the fit
and predict
methods, same as standard scikit-learn models.
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from imodels import get_clean_dataset, HSTreeClassifierCV # import any imodels model here
# prepare data (a sample clinical dataset)
X, y, feature_names = get_clean_dataset('csi_pecarn_pred')
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(
X, y, random_state=42)
# fit the model
model = HSTreeClassifierCV(max_leaf_nodes=4) # initialize a tree model and specify only 4 leaf nodes
model.fit(X_train, y_train, feature_names=feature_names) # fit model
preds = model.predict(X_test) # discrete predictions: shape is (n_test, 1)
preds_proba = model.predict_proba(X_test) # predicted probabilities: shape is (n_test, n_classes)
print(model) # print the model
------------------------------
Decision Tree with Hierarchical Shrinkage
Prediction is made by looking at the value in the appropriate leaf of the tree
------------------------------
|--- FocalNeuroFindings2 <= 0.50
| |--- HighriskDiving <= 0.50
| | |--- Torticollis2 <= 0.50
| | | |--- value: [0.10]
| | |--- Torticollis2 > 0.50
| | | |--- value: [0.30]
| |--- HighriskDiving > 0.50
| | |--- value: [0.68]
|--- FocalNeuroFindings2 > 0.50
| |--- value: [0.42]
Install with pip install imodels
(see here for help).
Model | Reference | Description |
---|---|---|
Rulefit rule set | ποΈ, π, π | Fits a sparse linear model on rules extracted from decision trees |
Skope rule set | ποΈ, π | Extracts rules from gradient-boosted trees, deduplicates them, then linearly combines them based on their OOB precision |
Boosted rule set | ποΈ, π, π | Sequentially fits a set of rules with Adaboost |
Slipper rule set | ποΈ, Β Β Β Β Β , γ €γ €π | Sequentially learns a set of rules with SLIPPER |
Bayesian rule set | ποΈ, π, π | Finds concise rule set with Bayesian sampling (slow) |
Optimal rule list | ποΈ, π, π | Fits rule list using global optimization for sparsity (CORELS) |
Bayesian rule list | ποΈ, π, π | Fits compact rule list distribution with Bayesian sampling (slow) |
Greedy rule list | ποΈ, π | Uses CART to fit a list (only a single path), rather than a tree |
OneR rule list | ποΈ, Β Β Β Β Β , π | Fits rule list restricted to only one feature |
Optimal rule tree | ποΈ, π, π | Fits succinct tree using global optimization for sparsity (GOSDT) |
Greedy rule tree | ποΈ, π, π | Greedily fits tree using CART |
C4.5 rule tree | ποΈ, π, π | Greedily fits tree using C4.5 |
TAO rule tree | ποΈ, Β Β Β Β Β , γ €γ €π | Fits tree using alternating optimization |
Iterative random forest |
ποΈ, π, π | Repeatedly fit random forest, giving features with high importance a higher chance of being selected |
Sparse integer linear model |
ποΈ, Β Β Β Β Β , γ €γ €π | Sparse linear model with integer coefficients |
Tree GAM | ποΈ, π, π | Generalized additive model fit with short boosted trees |
Greedy tree sums | ποΈ, Β Β Β Β Β , γ €γ €π | Sum of small trees with very few total rules (FIGS) |
Hierarchical shrinkage wrapper |
ποΈ, Β Β Β Β Β , γ €γ €π | Improve a decision tree, random forest, or gradient-boosting ensemble with ultra-fast, post-hoc regularization |
Distillation wrapper |
ποΈ | Train a black-box model, then distill it into an interpretable model |
AutoML wrapper | ποΈ | Automatically fit and select an interpretable model |
More models | β | (Coming soon!) Lightweight Rule Induction, MLRules, ... |
Docs ποΈ, Reference code implementation π, Research paper π
Demos are contained in the notebooks folder.
Quickstart demo
Shows how to fit, predict, and visualize with different interpretable modelsAutogluon demo
Fit/select an interpretable model automatically using Autogluon AutoMLQuickstart colab demo
Shows how to fit, predict, and visualize with different interpretable modelsClinical decision rule notebook
Shows an example of usingimodels
for deriving a clinical decision rule
Posthoc analysis
We also include some demos of posthoc analysis, which occurs after fitting models: posthoc.ipynb shows different simple analyses to interpret a trained model and uncertainty.ipynb contains basic code to get uncertainty estimates for a modelThe final form of the above models takes one of the following forms, which aim to be simultaneously simple to understand and highly predictive:
Rule set | Rule list | Rule tree | Algebraic models |
---|---|---|---|
Different models and algorithms vary not only in their final form but also in different choices made during modeling, such as how they generate, select, and postprocess rules:
Rule candidate generation | Rule selection | Rule postprocessing |
---|---|---|
Ex. RuleFit vs. SkopeRules
RuleFit and SkopeRules differ only in the way they prune rules: RuleFit uses a linear model whereas SkopeRules heuristically deduplicates rules sharing overlap.Ex. Bayesian rule lists vs. greedy rule lists
Bayesian rule lists and greedy rule lists differ in how they select rules; bayesian rule lists perform a global optimization over possible rule lists while Greedy rule lists pick splits sequentially to maximize a given criterion.Ex. FPSkope vs. SkopeRules
FPSkope and SkopeRules differ only in the way they generate candidate rules: FPSkope uses FPgrowth whereas SkopeRules extracts rules from decision trees.Different models support different machine-learning tasks. Current support for different models is given below (each of these models can be imported directly from imodels (e.g. from imodels import RuleFitClassifier
):
Model | Binary classification | Regression | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Rulefit rule set | RuleFitClassifier | RuleFitRegressor | |
Skope rule set | SkopeRulesClassifier | ||
Boosted rule set | BoostedRulesClassifier | BoostedRulesRegressor | |
SLIPPER rule set | SlipperClassifier | ||
Bayesian rule set | BayesianRuleSetClassifier | Fails for large problems | |
Optimal rule list (CORELS) | OptimalRuleListClassifier | Requires corels, fails for large problems | |
Bayesian rule list | BayesianRuleListClassifier | ||
Greedy rule list | GreedyRuleListClassifier | ||
OneR rule list | OneRClassifier | ||
Optimal rule tree (GOSDT) | OptimalTreeClassifier | Requires gosdt, fails for large problems | |
Greedy rule tree (CART) | GreedyTreeClassifier | GreedyTreeRegressor | |
C4.5 rule tree | C45TreeClassifier | ||
TAO rule tree | TaoTreeClassifier | TaoTreeRegressor | |
Iterative random forest | IRFClassifier | Requires irf | |
Sparse integer linear model | SLIMClassifier | SLIMRegressor | Requires extra dependencies for speed |
Tree GAM | TreeGAMClassifier | TreeGAMRegressor | |
Greedy tree sums (FIGS) | FIGSClassifier | FIGSRegressor | |
Hierarchical shrinkage | HSTreeClassifierCV | HSTreeRegressorCV | Wraps any sklearn tree-based model |
Distillation | DistilledRegressor | Wraps any sklearn-compatible models | |
AutoML model | AutoInterpretableClassifierοΈ | AutoInterpretableRegressorοΈ |
Data-wrangling functions for working with popular tabular datasets (e.g. compas).
These functions, in conjunction with imodels-data and imodels-experiments, make it simple to download data and run experiments on new models.Explain classification errors with a simple posthoc function.
Fit an interpretable model to explain a previous model's errors (ex. in this notebookπ).Fast and effective discretizers for data preprocessing.
Discretizer | Reference | Description |
---|---|---|
MDLP | ποΈ, π, π | Discretize using entropy minimization heuristic |
Simple | ποΈ, π | Simple KBins discretization |
Random Forest | ποΈ | Discretize into bins based on random forest split popularity |
Rule-based utils for customizing models
The code here contains many useful and customizable functions for rule-based learning in the util folder. This includes functions / classes for rule deduplication, rule screening, and converting between trees, rulesets, and neural networks.After developing and playing with imodels
, we developed a few new models to overcome limitations of existing interpretable models.
π Paper, π Post, π Citation
Fast Interpretable Greedy-Tree Sums (FIGS) is an algorithm for fitting concise rule-based models. Specifically, FIGS generalizes CART to simultaneously grow a flexible number of trees in a summation. The total number of splits across all the trees can be restricted by a pre-specified threshold, keeping the model interpretable. Experiments across a wide array of real-world datasets show that FIGS achieves state-of-the-art prediction performance when restricted to just a few splits (e.g. less than 20).
Example FIGS model. FIGS learns a sum of trees with a flexible number of trees; to make its prediction, it sums the result from each tree.
π Paper (ICML 2022), π Post, π Citation
Hierarchical shrinkage is an extremely fast post-hoc regularization method which works on any decision tree (or tree-based ensemble, such as Random Forest). It does not modify the tree structure, and instead regularizes the tree by shrinking the prediction over each node towards the sample means of its ancestors (using a single regularization parameter). Experiments over a wide variety of datasets show that hierarchical shrinkage substantially increases the predictive performance of individual decision trees and decision-tree ensembles.
HS Example. HS applies post-hoc regularization to any decision tree by shrinking each node towards its parent.
MDI+ is a novel feature importance framework, which generalizes the popular mean decrease in impurity (MDI) importance score for random forests. At its core, MDI+ expands upon a recently discovered connection between linear regression and decision trees. In doing so, MDI+ enables practitioners to (1) tailor the feature importance computation to the data/problem structure and (2) incorporate additional features or knowledge to mitigate known biases of decision trees. In both real data case studies and extensive real-data-inspired simulations, MDI+ outperforms commonly used feature importance measures (e.g., MDI, permutation-based scores, and TreeSHAP) by substantional margins.
Readings
Reference implementations (also linked above)
The code here heavily derives from the wonderful work of previous projects. We seek to to extract out, unify, and maintain key parts of these projects.- pycorels - by @fingoldin and the original CORELS team
- sklearn-expertsys - by @tmadl and @kenben based on original code by Ben Letham
- rulefit - by @christophM
- skope-rules - by the skope-rules team (including @ngoix, @floriangardin, @datajms, Bibi Ndiaye, Ronan Gautier)
- boa - by @wangtongada
Related packages
- gplearn: symbolic regression/classification
- pysr: fast symbolic regression
- pygam: generative additive models
- interpretml: boosting-based gam
- h20 ai: gams + glms (and more)
- optbinning: data discretization / scoring models
Updates
- For updates, star the repo, see this related repo, or follow @csinva_
- Please make sure to give authors of original methods / base implementations appropriate credit!
- Contributing: pull requests very welcome!
If it's useful for you, please star/cite the package, and make sure to give authors of original methods / base implementations credit:
@software{
imodels2021,
title = {imodels: a python package for fitting interpretable models},
journal = {Journal of Open Source Software},
publisher = {The Open Journal},
year = {2021},
author = {Singh, Chandan and Nasseri, Keyan and Tan, Yan Shuo and Tang, Tiffany and Yu, Bin},
volume = {6},
number = {61},
pages = {3192},
doi = {10.21105/joss.03192},
url = {https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.03192},
}