XGBoost Alternative Base Learners

XGBoost, short for "Extreme Gradient Boosting," is one of the strongest machine learning algorithms for handling tabular data, a well-deserved reputation due to its success in winning numerous Kaggle competitions. XGBoost is an ensemble machine learning algorithm that usually consists of Decision Trees. The Decision Trees that make up XGBoost are individually referred to as gbtree, short for "gradient boosted tree." The first Decision Tree in the XGBoost ensemble is the base learner whose mistakes all subsequent trees learn from. Although Decision Trees are generally preferred as base learners due to their excellent ensemble scores, in some cases, alternative base learners may outperform them.