In recent years, there has been growing attention to interpretable machine learning models which can give explanatory insights on their behaviour. Thanks to their interpretability, decision trees have been intensively studied for classification tasks and, due to the remarkable advances in mixed integer programming (MIP), various approaches have been proposed to formulate the problem of training an Optimal Classification Tree (OCT) as a MIP model. We present a novel mixed integer quadratic formulation for the OCT problem, which exploits the generalization capabilities of Support Vector Machines for binary classification. Our model, denoted as Margin Optimal Classification Tree (MARGOT), encompasses maximum margin multivariate hyperplanes nested in a binary tree structure. To enhance the interpretability of our approach, we analyse two alternative versions of MARGOT, which include feature selection constraints inducing sparsity of the hyperplanes' coefficients. First, MARGOT has been tested on non-linearly separable synthetic datasets in a 2-dimensional feature space to provide a graphical representation of the maximum margin approach. Finally, the proposed models have been tested on benchmark datasets from the UCI repository. The MARGOT formulation turns out to be easier to solve than other OCT approaches, and the generated tree better generalizes on new observations. The two interpretable versions effectively select the most relevant features, maintaining good prediction quality.

This study addresses the predictive limitation of probabilistic circuits and introduces transformations as a remedy to overcome it. We demonstrate this limitation in robotic scenarios. We motivate that independent component analysis is a sound tool to preserve the independence properties of probabilistic circuits. Our approach is an extension of joint probability trees, which are model-free deterministic circuits. By doing so, it is demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to achieve higher likelihoods while using fewer parameters compared to the joint probability trees on seven benchmark data sets as well as on real robot data. Furthermore, we discuss how to integrate transformations into tree-based learning routines. Finally, we argue that exact inference with transformed quantile parameterized distributions is not tractable. However, our approach allows for efficient sampling and approximate inference.

Across various sectors such as healthcare, criminal justice, national security, finance, and technology, large-scale machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) systems are being deployed to make critical data-driven decisions. Many have asked if we can and should trust these ML systems to be making these decisions. Two critical components are prerequisites for trust in ML systems: interpretability, or the ability to understand why the ML system makes the decisions it does, and fairness, which ensures that ML systems do not exhibit bias against certain individuals or groups. Both interpretability and fairness are important and have separately received abundant attention in the ML literature, but so far, there have been very few methods developed to directly interpret models with regard to their fairness. In this paper, we focus on arguably the most popular type of ML interpretation: feature importance scores. Inspired by the use of decision trees in knowledge distillation, we propose to leverage trees as interpretable surrogates for complex black-box ML models. Specifically, we develop a novel fair feature importance score for trees that can be used to interpret how each feature contributes to fairness or bias in trees, tree-based ensembles, or tree-based surrogates of any complex ML system. Like the popular mean decrease in impurity for trees, our Fair Feature Importance Score is defined based on the mean decrease (or increase) in group bias. Through simulations as well as real examples on benchmark fairness datasets, we demonstrate that our Fair Feature Importance Score offers valid interpretations for both tree-based ensembles and tree-based surrogates of other ML systems.

In this study, we examine how event data from campus management systems can be used to analyze the study paths of higher education students. The main goal is to offer valuable guidance for their study planning. We employ process and data mining techniques to explore the impact of sequences of taken courses on academic success. Through the use of decision tree models, we generate data-driven recommendations in the form of rules for study planning and compare them to the recommended study plan. The evaluation focuses on RWTH Aachen University computer science bachelor program students and demonstrates that the proposed course sequence features effectively explain academic performance measures. Furthermore, the findings suggest avenues for developing more adaptable study plans.

Decision trees offer the benefit of easy interpretation because they allow the classification of input data based on if--then rules. However, as decision trees are constructed by an algorithm that achieves clear classification with minimum necessary rules, the trees possess the drawback of extracting only minimum rules, even when various latent rules exist in data. Approaches that construct multiple trees using randomly selected feature subsets do exist. However, the number of trees that can be constructed remains at the same scale because the number of feature subsets is a combinatorial explosion. Additionally, when multiple trees are constructed, numerous rules are generated, of which several are untrustworthy and/or highly similar. Therefore, we propose "MAABO-MT" and "GS-MRM" algorithms that strategically construct trees with high estimation performance among all possible trees with small computational complexity and extract only reliable and non-similar rules, respectively. Experiments are conducted using several open datasets to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results confirm that MAABO-MT can discover reliable rules at a lower computational cost than other methods that rely on randomness. Furthermore, the proposed method is confirmed to provide deeper insights than single decision trees commonly used in previous studies. Therefore, MAABO-MT and GS-MRM can efficiently extract rules from combinatorially exploded decision trees.

The division of one physical 5G communications infrastructure into several virtual network slices with distinct characteristics such as bandwidth, latency, reliability, security, and service quality is known as 5G network slicing. Each slice is a separate logical network that meets the requirements of specific services or use cases, such as virtual reality, gaming, autonomous vehicles, or industrial automation. The network slice can be adjusted dynamically to meet the changing demands of the service, resulting in a more cost-effective and efficient approach to delivering diverse services and applications over a shared infrastructure. This paper assesses various machine learning techniques, including the logistic regression model, linear discriminant model, k-nearest neighbor's model, decision tree model, random forest model, SVC BernoulliNB model, and GaussianNB model, to investigate the accuracy and precision of each model on detecting network slices. The report also gives an overview of 5G network slicing.

Machine learning models, particularly the black-box models, are widely favored for their outstanding predictive capabilities. However, they often face scrutiny and criticism due to the lack of interpretability. Paradoxically, their strong predictive capabilities suggest a deep understanding about the underlying data, implying significant potential for interpretation. Leveraging the emerging concept of knowledge distillation, we introduced the method of distillation decision tree (DDT). This method enables the distillation of knowledge about the data from a black-box model into a decision tree, thereby facilitating the interpretation of the black-box model. Constructed through the knowledge distillation process, the interpretability of DDT relies significantly on the stability of its structure. We establish the theoretical foundations for the structural stability of DDT, demonstrating that its structure can achieve stability under mild assumptions. Furthermore, we develop algorithms for efficient construction of (hybrid) DDTs. A comprehensive simulation study validates DDT's ability to provide accurate and reliable interpretations. Additionally, we explore potential application scenarios and provide corresponding case studies to illustrate how DDT can be applied to real-world problems.

Liberalism-oriented political philosophy reasons that all individuals should be treated equally independently of their protected characteristics. Related work in machine learning has translated the concept of \emph{equal treatment} into terms of \emph{equal outcome} and measured it as \emph{demographic parity} (also called \emph{statistical parity}). Our analysis reveals that the two concepts of equal outcome and equal treatment diverge; therefore, demographic parity does not faithfully represent the notion of \emph{equal treatment}. We propose a new formalization for equal treatment by (i) considering the influence of feature values on predictions, such as computed by Shapley values decomposing predictions across its features, (ii) defining distributions of explanations, and (iii) comparing explanation distributions between populations with different protected characteristics. We show the theoretical properties of our notion of equal treatment and devise a classifier two-sample test based on the AUC of an equal treatment inspector. We study our formalization of equal treatment on synthetic and natural data. We release \texttt{explanationspace}, an open-source Python package with methods and tutorials.

While investigating methods to predict small molecule potencies, we found random forests or support vector machines paired with extended-connectivity fingerprints (ECFP) consistently outperformed recently developed methods. A detailed investigation into regression algorithms and molecular fingerprints revealed gradient-boosted decision trees, particularly CatBoost, in conjunction with a combination of ECFP, Avalon, and ErG fingerprints, as well as 200 molecular properties, to be most effective. Incorporating a graph neural network fingerprint further enhanced performance. We successfully validated our model across 22 Therapeutics Data Commons ADMET benchmarks. Our findings underscore the significance of richer molecular representations for accurate property prediction.

Recent research has shown that artificial intelligence (AI) models can exhibit bias in performance when trained using data that are imbalanced by protected attribute(s). Most work to date has focused on deep learning models, but classical AI techniques that make use of hand-crafted features may also be susceptible to such bias. In this paper we investigate the potential for race bias in random forest (RF) models trained using radiomics features. Our application is prediction of tumour molecular subtype from dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) of breast cancer patients. Our results show that radiomics features derived from DCE-MRI data do contain race-identifiable information, and that RF models can be trained to predict White and Black race from these data with 60-70% accuracy, depending on the subset of features used. Furthermore, RF models trained to predict tumour molecular subtype using race-imbalanced data seem to produce biased behaviour, exhibiting better performance on test data from the race on which they were trained.