The rSAFE
package is a model agnostic tool for making an interpretable white-box model more accurate using alternative black-box model called surrogate model. Based on the complicated model, such as neural network or random forest, new features are being extracted and then used in the process of fitting a simpler interpretable model, improving its overall performance.
The package can be installed from GitHub using the code below:
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ModelOriented/rSAFE")
In this vignette we present an example of an application of the rSAFE
package in case of regression problems. It is based on apartments
and apartmentsTest
datasets which come from the DALEX
package but are also available in the rSAFE
package. We will use these artificial datasets to predict the price per square meter of an apartment based on features such as construction year, surface, floor, number of rooms and district. It should be mentioned that four of these variables are continuous while the fifth one is categorical.
First we fit a random forest model to the original apartments
dataset - this is our complex model that will serve us as a surrogate.
library(randomForest)
set.seed(111)
model_rf1 <- randomForest(m2.price ~ construction.year + surface + floor + no.rooms + district, data = apartments)
We also create an explainer
object that will be used later to create new variables and at the end to compare models performance.
library(DALEX)
explainer_rf1 <- explain(model_rf1, data = apartmentsTest[1:3000,2:6], y = apartmentsTest[1:3000,1], label = "rf1", verbose = FALSE)
explainer_rf1
#> Model label: rf1
#> Model class: randomForest.formula,randomForest
#> Data head :
#> construction.year surface floor no.rooms district
#> 1001 1976 131 3 5 Srodmiescie
#> 1002 1978 112 9 4 Mokotow
Now, we create a safe_extractor
object using rSAFE
package and our surrogate model. Setting the argument verbose=FALSE
stops progress bar from printing.
safe_extractor <- safe_extraction(explainer_rf1, penalty = 25, verbose = FALSE)
Now, let’s print summary for the new object we have just created.
print(safe_extractor)
#> Variable 'construction.year' - selected intervals:
#> (-Inf, 1937]
#> (1937, 1992]
#> (1992, Inf)
#> Variable 'surface' - selected intervals:
#> (-Inf, 47]
#> (47, 101]
#> (101, Inf)
#> Variable 'floor' - selected intervals:
#> (-Inf, 5]
#> (5, Inf)
#> Variable 'no.rooms' - selected intervals:
#> (-Inf, 3]
#> (3, Inf)
#> Variable 'district' - created levels:
#> Bemowo, Bielany, Ursus, Ursynow, Praga, Wola -> Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola
#> Zoliborz, Mokotow, Ochota -> Mokotow_Ochota_Zoliborz
#> Srodmiescie -> Srodmiescie
We can see transformation propositions for all variables in our dataset.
In the plot below we can see which points have been chosen to be the breakpoints for a particular variable:
plot(safe_extractor, variable = "construction.year")
For factor variables we can observe in which order levels have been merged and what is the optimal clustering:
plot(safe_extractor, variable = "district")
Now we can use our safe_extractor
object to create new categorical features in the given dataset.
data1 <- safely_transform_data(safe_extractor, apartmentsTest[3001:6000,], verbose = FALSE)
district | m2.price | construction.year | surface | floor | no.rooms | construction.year_new | surface_new | floor_new | no.rooms_new | district_new |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bielany | 3542 | 1979 | 21 | 6 | 1 | (1937, 1992] | (-Inf, 47] | (5, Inf) | (-Inf, 3] | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
Srodmiescie | 5631 | 1997 | 107 | 2 | 4 | (1992, Inf) | (101, Inf) | (-Inf, 5] | (3, Inf) | Srodmiescie |
Bielany | 2989 | 1994 | 41 | 9 | 2 | (1992, Inf) | (-Inf, 47] | (5, Inf) | (-Inf, 3] | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
Ursynow | 3822 | 1968 | 28 | 2 | 2 | (1937, 1992] | (-Inf, 47] | (-Inf, 5] | (-Inf, 3] | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
Ursynow | 2337 | 1971 | 146 | 3 | 6 | (1937, 1992] | (101, Inf) | (-Inf, 5] | (3, Inf) | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
Ochota | 3381 | 1956 | 97 | 8 | 3 | (1937, 1992] | (47, 101] | (5, Inf) | (-Inf, 3] | Mokotow_Ochota_Zoliborz |
We can also perform feature selection if we wish. For each original feature it keeps exactly one of their forms - original one or transformed one.
vars <- safely_select_variables(safe_extractor, data1, which_y = "m2.price", verbose = FALSE)
data1 <- data1[,c("m2.price", vars)]
print(vars)
#> [1] "surface" "floor" "no.rooms"
#> [4] "construction.year_new" "district_new"
It can be observed that for some features the original form was preferred and for others the transformed one.
Here are the first few rows for our data after feature selection:
m2.price | surface | floor | no.rooms | construction.year_new | district_new |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
3542 | 21 | 6 | 1 | (1937, 1992] | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
5631 | 107 | 2 | 4 | (1992, Inf) | Srodmiescie |
2989 | 41 | 9 | 2 | (1992, Inf) | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
3822 | 28 | 2 | 2 | (1937, 1992] | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
2337 | 146 | 3 | 6 | (1937, 1992] | Bemowo_Bielany_Praga_Ursus_Ursynow_Wola |
3381 | 97 | 8 | 3 | (1937, 1992] | Mokotow_Ochota_Zoliborz |
Now, we perform transformations on another data that will be used later in explainers:
data2 <- safely_transform_data(safe_extractor, apartmentsTest[6001:9000,], verbose = FALSE)[,c("m2.price", vars)]
Let’s fit the models to data containing newly created columns. We consider a linear model as a white-box model.
model_lm2 <- lm(m2.price ~ ., data = data1)
explainer_lm2 <- explain(model_lm2, data = data2, y = apartmentsTest[6001:9000,1], label = "lm2", verbose = FALSE)
set.seed(111)
model_rf2 <- randomForest(m2.price ~ ., data = data1)
explainer_rf2 <- explain(model_rf2, data2, apartmentsTest[6001:9000,1], label = "rf2", verbose = FALSE)
Moreover, we create a linear model based on original apartments
dataset and its corresponding explainer in order to check if our methodology improves results.
Final step is the comparison of all the models we have created.
mp_lm1 <- model_performance(explainer_lm1)
mp_rf1 <- model_performance(explainer_rf1)
mp_lm2 <- model_performance(explainer_lm2)
mp_rf2 <- model_performance(explainer_rf2)
plot(mp_lm1, mp_rf1, mp_lm2, mp_rf2, geom = "boxplot")
In the plot above we can see that the linear model based on transformed features has generally more accurate predictions that the one fitted to the original dataset.
The package was created as a part of master’s diploma thesis at Warsaw University of Technology at Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science by Anna Gierlak.