Welcome! Today's topic is an essential technique in data science and machine learning, called Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE). It's a method used for feature selection, that is, for choosing the relevant input variables in our training data.
In Recursive Feature Elimination, we initially fit the model using all available features. Then we recursively eliminate the least important features and fit the model again. We continue this process until we are left with the specified number of features. What we achieve at the end is a model that's potentially more efficient and performs better.
Sound exciting? Let's go ahead and dive into action!
The concept of Recursive Feature Elimination is simple yet powerful. It is based on the idea of recursively removing the least important features from the model. The process involves the following steps:
- Fit the model using all available features.
- Rank the features based on their importance to the model using a specific criterion (like coefficients, feature importance, etc.).
- Remove the least important feature(s) from the model.
- Repeat steps 1-3 until the desired number of features is reached.
Our exploration of RFE starts with generating some data. We will use a utility from Scikit-learn called make_classification to create a mock (synthetic) dataset. It is extremely useful for trying out different algorithms and understanding their impacts. Here is how we do it.
The make_classification function generates a random n-class classification problem. In the above example, we've generated data with 1000 samples and 10 features, out of which only 5 features are informative. The rest 5 features are redundant.
After generating the dataset, we can split the data into training and testing sets using the train_test_split function from Scikit-learn, so that we can train our model on the training data and evaluate it on the testing data. We will skip this step in this lesson, and focus on applying RFE directly.
Now comes the engaging part — applying the RFE. We will be using the Scikit-learn's RFE function. It simplifies the whole recursive feature elimination process under the hood and gives the user a comfortable way to apply it.
Before applying RFE, let's talk about DecisionTreeClassifier brieflt, which we will use as the base estimator in RFE. A decision tree is a flowchart-like structure in which each internal node represents a feature, each branch represents a decision rule, and each leaf node represents the outcome. It's a popular choice for classification tasks. We will use it as the base estimator in RFE to rank the features.
Having that, let's now see how to use it in practice:
In the above code, we first initialize a DecisionTreeClassifier model, which will be our base estimator. Then we instantiate the RFE function with the base model and the desired number of features to select. Finally, we fit the RFE to our training data.
The last step in applying RFE is getting the rankings of the features. RFE provides an attribute called ranking_ which gives the ranking of all features. The most important features are assigned rank 1. So, let's get the ranking now.
The output of the above code will be:
This output indicates the rank assigned to each feature. Features with a rank of 1 are considered most informative for the model according to RFE analysis. We can also get the selected features using the support_ attribute of the RFE object.
A True value in the output indicates that the corresponding feature is selected by RFE. In this case, the selected features are the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th features.
While analyzing the result, think about this: what if we had used all the features without selection? Thinking about this gives us a clear understanding of why feature selection is an essential step in machine learning model development.
Feature selection not only improves the efficiency of the model by reducing the computational complexity but also improves its performance by eliminating irrelevant and redundant features. Using techniques like RFE, we can narrow down the most significant features from hundreds or thousands of features in our dataset.
Moreover, by understanding which features are most definitive to the model’s decisions, we can gain insightful knowledge about the problem at hand. This is especially useful in data-driven decision making where understanding the most influential factors becomes crucial.
Congratulations! You've just understood the concept of Recursive Feature Elimination, and you learned how to generate synthetic data with Scikit-learn and apply RFE on that data. Furthermore, you also got hands-on with interpreting the RFE results, understanding the importance of each feature in the model.
Remember that understanding the theory behind the process is equally essential as getting hands-on. So, make sure you understand the insight you gained from this lesson.
Now, it's time to practice implementing and interpreting Recursive Feature Elimination for different datasets and models. This practice will give you a greater intuition of how to go about choosing features in real scenarios. Not to mention, it will bring you one step closer to becoming a data science expert. Happy learning!
