Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown exceptional performance in text processing. Notably, LLMs can synthesize information from large datasets and explain their decisions similarly to human reasoning through a chain of thought (CoT). An emerging application of LLMs is the handling and interpreting of numerical data, where fine-tuning enhances their performance over basic inference methods. This paper proposes a novel approach to training LLMs using knowledge transfer from a random forest (RF) ensemble, leveraging its efficiency and accuracy. By converting RF decision paths into natural language statements, we generate outputs for LLM fine-tuning, enhancing the model's ability to classify and explain its decisions. Our method includes verifying these rules through established classification metrics, ensuring their correctness. We also examine the impact of preprocessing techniques on the representation of numerical data and their influence on classification accuracy and rule correctness

Many Machine Learning (ML) models are referred to as black box models, providing no real insights into why a prediction is made. Feature importance and explainability are important for increasing transparency and trust in ML models, particularly in settings such as healthcare and finance. With quantum computing's unique capabilities, such as leveraging quantum mechanical phenomena like superposition, which can be combined with ML techniques to create the field of Quantum Machine Learning (QML), and such techniques may be applied to QML models. This article explores feature importance and explainability insights in QML compared to Classical ML models. Utilizing the widely recognized Iris dataset, classical ML algorithms such as SVM and Random Forests, are compared against hybrid quantum counterparts, implemented via IBM's Qiskit platform: the Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) and Quantum Support Vector Classifier (QSVC). This article aims to provide a comparison of the insights generated in ML by employing permutation and leave one out feature importance methods, alongside ALE (Accumulated Local Effects) and SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) explainers.

Understanding the decisions of tree-based ensembles and their relationships is pivotal for machine learning model interpretation. Recent attempts to mitigate the human-in-the-loop interpretation challenge have explored the extraction of the decision structure underlying the model taking advantage of graph simplification and path emphasis. However, while these efforts enhance the visualisation experience, they may either result in a visually complex representation or compromise the interpretability of the original ensemble model. In addressing this challenge, especially in complex scenarios, we introduce the Decision Predicate Graph (DPG) as a model-agnostic tool to provide a global interpretation of the model. DPG is a graph structure that captures the tree-based ensemble model and learned dataset details, preserving the relations among features, logical decisions, and predictions towards emphasising insightful points. Leveraging well-known graph theory concepts, such as the notions of centrality and community, DPG offers additional quantitative insights into the model, complementing visualisation techniques, expanding the problem space descriptions, and offering diverse possibilities for extensions. Empirical experiments demonstrate the potential of DPG in addressing traditional benchmarks and complex classification scenarios.

This is my first post and this post is for an absolute beginner. If you are stuck somewhere in this tutorial then don't worry about that. This post is just for you to make you familiar with the machine learning process, In the upcoming series of posts, we will discuss in-depth about the concepts. In this post, you will make your first machine learning project (step-by-step) in Python. This post is 1 day of the "10 days of machine learning project" post series.

This paper presents an open-source Python toolbox called Ensemble Feature Importance (EFI) to provide machine learning (ML) researchers, domain experts, and decision makers with robust and accurate feature importance quantification and more reliable mechanistic interpretation of feature importance for prediction problems using fuzzy sets. The toolkit was developed to address uncertainties in feature importance quantification and lack of trustworthy feature importance interpretation due to the diverse availability of machine learning algorithms, feature importance calculation methods, and dataset dependencies. EFI merges results from multiple machine learning models with different feature importance calculation approaches using data bootstrapping and decision fusion techniques, such as mean, majority voting and fuzzy logic. The main attributes of the EFI toolbox are: (i) automatic optimisation of ML algorithms, (ii) automatic computation of a set of feature importance coefficients from optimised ML algorithms and feature importance calculation techniques, (iii) automatic aggregation of importance coefficients using multiple decision fusion techniques, and (iv) fuzzy membership functions that show the importance of each feature to the prediction task. The key modules and functions of the toolbox are described, and a simple example of their application is presented using the popular Iris dataset.

A Decision Tree follows a tree-like structure (hence the name) whereby a node represents a specific attribute, a branch represents a decision rule, and leaf nodes represent an outcome. We will show this structure later so you can see what we mean but you can imagine it is like one of the decision trees you used to draw in high school maths, just on a far more complicated scale. The algorithm itself works by splitting the data according to different attributes at each node while attempting to reduce a selection measure (often the Gini index). In essence, the aim of a Decision Tree classifier is to split the data according to attributes while being able to classify the data accurately into predefined groups (our target variable). For this decision tree implementation we will use the iris dataset from sklearn which is relatively simple to understand and is easy to implement.

In this series, we will start by discussing how to train, visualize, and make predictions with Decision trees. After that, we will go through a training algorithm known as CART which is used by Scikit-learn, and lastly, we would discuss how to regularize the trees and use them for regression tasks. Decision trees are versatile machine learning algorithm capable of performing both regression and classification task and even work in case of tasks which has multiple outputs. They are powerful algorithms, capable of fitting even complex datasets. They are also the fundamental components of Random Forests, which is one of the most powerful machine learning algorithms available today.

Current limitations in boosted tree modelling prevent the effective scaling to datasets with a large feature number, particularly when investigating the magnitude and directionality of various features on classification. We present a novel methodology, Hollow-tree Super (HOTS), to resolve and visualize feature importance in boosted tree models involving a large number of features. Further, HOTS allows for investigation of the directionality and magnitude various features have on classification. Using the Iris dataset, we first compare HOTS to Gini Importance, Partial Dependence Plots, and Permutation Importance, and demonstrate how HOTS resolves the weaknesses present in these methods. We then show how HOTS can be utilized in high dimensional neuroscientific data, by taking 60 Schizophrenic subjects and applying the method to determine which brain regions were most important for classification of schizophrenia as determined by the PANSS. HOTS effectively replicated and supported the findings of Gini importance, Partial Dependence Plots and Permutation importance within the Iris dataset. When applied to the schizophrenic brain dataset, HOTS was able to resolve the top 10 most important features for classification, as well as their directionality for classification and magnitude compared to other features. Cross-validation supported that these same 10 features were consistently used in the decision-making process across multiple trees, and these features were localised primarily to the occipital and parietal cortices, commonly disturbed brain regions in those with Schizophrenia. It is imperative that a methodology is developed that is able to handle the demands of working with large datasets that contain a large number of features. HOTS represents a unique way to investigate both the directionality and magnitude of feature importance when working at scale with boosted-tree modelling.

The general goal of a classification model is to find a decision boundary. The purpose of the decision boundaries is to identify those regions of the input class space that corresponds to each class. In this article, I will take you through the concept of decision boundary in machine learning. To explain the concept of decision boundaries in machine learning, I will first create a Logistic Regression model. So now let's import some libraries and get started with the task: I will use the iris dataset to fit a Linear Regression model.

Many important questions about a model cannot be answered just by explaining how much each feature contributes to its output. To answer a broader set of questions, we generalize a popular, mathematically well-grounded explanation technique, Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP). Our new method - Generalized Shapley Additive Explanations (G-SHAP) - produces many additional types of explanations, including: 1) General classification explanations; Why is this sample more likely to belong to one class rather than another? 2) Intergroup differences; Why do our model's predictions differ between groups of observations? 3) Model failure; Why does our model perform poorly on a given sample? We formally define these types of explanations and illustrate their practical use on real data.