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Posit AI Weblog: TensorFlow characteristic columns: Reworking your information recipes-style


It’s 2019; nobody doubts the effectiveness of deep studying in laptop imaginative and prescient. Or pure language processing. With “regular,” Excel-style, a.okay.a. tabular information nevertheless, the state of affairs is totally different.

Principally there are two instances: One, you’ve got numeric information solely. Then, creating the community is easy, and all can be about optimization and hyperparameter search. Two, you’ve got a mixture of numeric and categorical information, the place categorical may very well be something from ordered-numeric to symbolic (e.g., textual content). On this latter case, with categorical information getting into the image, there may be a particularly good thought you may make use of: embed what are equidistant symbols right into a high-dimensional, numeric illustration. In that new illustration, we are able to outline a distance metric that enables us to make statements like “biking is nearer to operating than to baseball,” or “😃 is nearer to 😂 than to 😠.” When not coping with language information, this method is known as entity embeddings.

Good as this sounds, why don’t we see entity embeddings used on a regular basis? Properly, making a Keras community that processes a mixture of numeric and categorical information used to require a little bit of an effort. With TensorFlow’s new characteristic columns, usable from R by a mix of tfdatasets and keras, there’s a a lot simpler strategy to obtain this. What’s extra, tfdatasets follows the favored recipes idiom to initialize, refine, and apply a characteristic specification %>%-style. And eventually, there are ready-made steps for bucketizing a numeric column, or hashing it, or creating crossed columns to seize interactions.

This submit introduces characteristic specs ranging from a situation the place they don’t exist: mainly, the established order till very not too long ago. Think about you’ve got a dataset like that from the Porto Seguro car insurance competition the place a few of the columns are numeric, and a few are categorical. You wish to prepare a completely related community on it, with all categorical columns fed into embedding layers. How will you do this? We then distinction this with the characteristic spec means, which makes issues loads simpler – particularly when there’s a number of categorical columns.
In a second utilized instance, we exhibit the usage of crossed columns on the rugged dataset from Richard McElreath’s rethinking package deal. Right here, we additionally direct consideration to a couple technical particulars which can be value figuring out about.

Mixing numeric information and embeddings, the pre-feature-spec means

Our first instance dataset is taken from Kaggle. Two years in the past, Brazilian automobile insurance coverage firm Porto Seguro requested contributors to foretell how likely it is a car owner will file a claim based mostly on a mixture of traits collected through the earlier 12 months. The dataset is relatively massive – there are ~ 600,000 rows within the coaching set, with 57 predictors. Amongst others, options are named in order to point the kind of the info – binary, categorical, or steady/ordinal.
Whereas it’s frequent in competitions to attempt to reverse-engineer column meanings, right here we simply make use of the kind of the info, and see how far that will get us.

Concretely, this implies we wish to

  • use binary options simply the best way they’re, as zeroes and ones,
  • scale the remaining numeric options to imply 0 and variance 1, and
  • embed the explicit variables (each by itself).

We’ll then outline a dense community to foretell goal, the binary consequence. So first, let’s see how we may get our information into form, in addition to construct up the community, in a “handbook,” pre-feature-columns means.

When loading libraries, we already use the variations we’ll want very quickly: Tensorflow 2 (>= beta 1), and the event (= Github) variations of tfdatasets and keras:

On this first model of making ready the info, we make our lives simpler by assigning totally different R varieties, based mostly on what the options symbolize (categorical, binary, or numeric qualities):

# downloaded from https://www.kaggle.com/c/porto-seguro-safe-driver-prediction/information
path <- "prepare.csv"

porto <- read_csv(path) %>%
  select(-id) %>%
  # to acquire variety of distinctive ranges, later
  mutate_at(vars(ends_with("cat")), issue) %>%
  # to simply hold them other than the non-binary numeric information
  mutate_at(vars(ends_with("bin")), as.integer)

porto %>% glimpse()
Observations: 595,212
Variables: 58
$ goal         <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_01      <dbl> 2, 1, 5, 0, 0, 5, 2, 5, 5, 1, 5, 2, 2, 1, 5, 5,…
$ ps_ind_02_cat  <fct> 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_ind_03      <dbl> 5, 7, 9, 2, 0, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 1, 3, 11, 3…
$ ps_ind_04_cat  <fct> 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1,…
$ ps_ind_05_cat  <fct> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_06_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_07_bin  <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1,…
$ ps_ind_08_bin  <int> 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_09_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0,…
$ ps_ind_10_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_11_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_12_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_13_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_14      <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_15      <dbl> 11, 3, 12, 8, 9, 6, 8, 13, 6, 4, 3, 9, 10, 12, …
$ ps_ind_16_bin  <int> 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_17_bin  <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_18_bin  <int> 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1,…
$ ps_reg_01      <dbl> 0.7, 0.8, 0.0, 0.9, 0.7, 0.9, 0.6, 0.7, 0.9, 0.…
$ ps_reg_02      <dbl> 0.2, 0.4, 0.0, 0.2, 0.6, 1.8, 0.1, 0.4, 0.7, 1.…
$ ps_reg_03      <dbl> 0.7180703, 0.7660777, -1.0000000, 0.5809475, 0.…
$ ps_car_01_cat  <fct> 10, 11, 7, 7, 11, 10, 6, 11, 10, 11, 11, 11, 6,…
$ ps_car_02_cat  <fct> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_car_03_cat  <fct> -1, -1, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1…
$ ps_car_04_cat  <fct> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9,…
$ ps_car_05_cat  <fct> 1, -1, -1, 1, -1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 1,…
$ ps_car_06_cat  <fct> 4, 11, 14, 11, 14, 14, 11, 11, 14, 14, 13, 11, …
$ ps_car_07_cat  <fct> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_car_08_cat  <fct> 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0,…
$ ps_car_09_cat  <fct> 0, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 2, 0, 2, 2, 2, 0,…
$ ps_car_10_cat  <fct> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_car_11_cat  <fct> 12, 19, 60, 104, 82, 104, 99, 30, 68, 104, 20, …
$ ps_car_11      <dbl> 2, 3, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 1, 2,…
$ ps_car_12      <dbl> 0.4000000, 0.3162278, 0.3162278, 0.3741657, 0.3…
$ ps_car_13      <dbl> 0.8836789, 0.6188165, 0.6415857, 0.5429488, 0.5…
$ ps_car_14      <dbl> 0.3708099, 0.3887158, 0.3472751, 0.2949576, 0.3…
$ ps_car_15      <dbl> 3.605551, 2.449490, 3.316625, 2.000000, 2.00000…
$ ps_calc_01     <dbl> 0.6, 0.3, 0.5, 0.6, 0.4, 0.7, 0.2, 0.1, 0.9, 0.…
$ ps_calc_02     <dbl> 0.5, 0.1, 0.7, 0.9, 0.6, 0.8, 0.6, 0.5, 0.8, 0.…
$ ps_calc_03     <dbl> 0.2, 0.3, 0.1, 0.1, 0.0, 0.4, 0.5, 0.1, 0.6, 0.…
$ ps_calc_04     <dbl> 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2,…
$ ps_calc_05     <dbl> 1, 1, 2, 4, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_calc_06     <dbl> 10, 9, 9, 7, 6, 8, 8, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10, 8, …
$ ps_calc_07     <dbl> 1, 5, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 5,…
$ ps_calc_08     <dbl> 10, 8, 8, 8, 10, 11, 8, 6, 9, 9, 9, 10, 11, 8, …
$ ps_calc_09     <dbl> 1, 1, 2, 4, 2, 3, 3, 1, 4, 1, 4, 1, 1, 3, 3, 2,…
$ ps_calc_10     <dbl> 5, 7, 7, 2, 12, 8, 10, 13, 11, 11, 7, 8, 9, 8, …
$ ps_calc_11     <dbl> 9, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 3, 7, 4, 3, 6, 9, 6, 2, 4, 5,…
$ ps_calc_12     <dbl> 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 5, 3, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2,…
$ ps_calc_13     <dbl> 5, 1, 7, 4, 1, 0, 0, 3, 1, 0, 3, 1, 3, 4, 3, 6,…
$ ps_calc_14     <dbl> 8, 9, 7, 9, 3, 9, 10, 6, 5, 6, 6, 10, 8, 3, 9, …
$ ps_calc_15_bin <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_calc_16_bin <int> 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1,…
$ ps_calc_17_bin <int> 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1,…
$ ps_calc_18_bin <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_calc_19_bin <int> 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_calc_20_bin <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0,…

We break up off 25% for validation.

# train-test break up
id_training <- sample.int(nrow(porto), measurement = 0.75*nrow(porto))

x_train <- porto[id_training,] %>% select(-goal)
x_test <- porto[-id_training,] %>% select(-goal)
y_train <- porto[id_training, "target"]
y_test <- porto[-id_training, "target"] 

The one factor we wish to do to the information earlier than defining the community is scaling the numeric options. Binary and categorical options can keep as is, with the minor correction that for the explicit ones, we’ll truly move the community the numeric illustration of the issue information.

Right here is the scaling.

train_means <- colMeans(x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)]) %>% unname()
train_sds <- apply(x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)], 2, sd)  %>% unname()
train_sds[train_sds == 0] <- 0.000001

x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)] <- sweep(
  x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)],
  2,
  train_means
  ) %>%
  sweep(2, train_sds, "/")
x_test[sapply(x_test, is.double)] <- sweep(
  x_test[sapply(x_test, is.double)],
  2,
  train_means
  ) %>%
  sweep(2, train_sds, "/")

When constructing the community, we have to specify the enter and output dimensionalities for the embedding layers. Enter dimensionality refers back to the variety of totally different symbols that “are available in”; in NLP duties this may be the vocabulary measurement whereas right here, it’s merely the variety of values a variable can take.
Output dimensionality, the capability of the inner illustration, can then be calculated based mostly on some heuristic. Beneath, we’ll observe a well-liked rule of thumb that takes the sq. root of the dimensionality of the enter.

In order half one of many community, right here we construct up the embedding layers in a loop, every wired to the enter layer that feeds it:

# variety of ranges per issue, required to specify enter dimensionality for
# the embedding layers
n_levels_in <- map(x_train %>% select_if(is.issue), compose(size, ranges)) %>%
  unlist() 

# output dimensionality for the embedding layers, want +1 as a result of Python is 0-based
n_levels_out <- n_levels_in %>% sqrt() %>% trunc() %>% `+`(1)

# every embedding layer will get its personal enter layer
cat_inputs <- map(n_levels_in, perform(l) layer_input(form = 1)) %>%
  unname()

# assemble the embedding layers, connecting every to its enter
embedding_layers <- vector(mode = "listing", size = length(cat_inputs))
for (i in 1:length(cat_inputs)) {
  embedding_layer <-  cat_inputs[[i]] %>% 
    layer_embedding(input_dim = n_levels_in[[i]] + 1, output_dim = n_levels_out[[i]]) %>%
    layer_flatten()
  embedding_layers[[i]] <- embedding_layer
}

In case you had been questioning in regards to the flatten layer following every embedding: We have to squeeze out the third dimension (launched by the embedding layers) from the tensors, successfully rendering them rank-2.
That’s as a result of we wish to mix them with the rank-2 tensor popping out of the dense layer processing the numeric options.

So as to have the ability to mix it with something, we now have to really assemble that dense layer first. Will probably be related to a single enter layer, of form 43, that takes within the numeric options we scaled in addition to the binary options we left untouched:

# create a single enter and a dense layer for the numeric information
quant_input <- layer_input(form = 43)
  
quant_dense <- quant_input %>% layer_dense(models = 64)

Are components assembled, we wire them collectively utilizing layer_concatenate, and we’re good to name keras_model to create the ultimate graph.

intermediate_layers <- list(embedding_layers, list(quant_dense)) %>% flatten()
inputs <- list(cat_inputs, list(quant_input)) %>% flatten()

l <- 0.25

output <- layer_concatenate(intermediate_layers) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 30, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(fee = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 10, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(fee = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 5, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(fee = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 1, activation = "sigmoid", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l))

mannequin <- keras_model(inputs, output)

Now, when you’ve truly learn by the entire of this half, chances are you’ll want for a better strategy to get thus far. So let’s change to characteristic specs for the remainder of this submit.

Characteristic specs to the rescue

In spirit, the best way characteristic specs are outlined follows the instance of the recipes package. (It received’t make you hungry, although.) You initialize a characteristic spec with the prediction goal – feature_spec(goal ~ .), after which use the %>% to inform it what to do with particular person columns. “What to do” right here signifies two issues:

  • First, the best way to “learn in” the info. Are they numeric or categorical, and if categorical, what am I alleged to do with them? For instance, ought to I deal with all distinct symbols as distinct, leading to, doubtlessly, an unlimited depend of classes – or ought to I constrain myself to a hard and fast variety of entities? Or hash them, even?
  • Second, non-compulsory subsequent transformations. Numeric columns could also be bucketized; categorical columns could also be embedded. Or options may very well be mixed to seize interplay.

On this submit, we exhibit the usage of a subset of step_ features. The vignettes on Feature columns and Feature specs illustrate extra features and their software.

Ranging from the start once more, right here is the entire code for information read-in and train-test break up within the characteristic spec model.

Knowledge-prep-wise, recall what our targets are: go away alone if binary; scale if numeric; embed if categorical.
Specifying all of this doesn’t want quite a lot of traces of code:

Be aware how right here we’re passing within the coaching set, and similar to with recipes, we received’t must repeat any of the steps for the validation set. Scaling is taken care of by scaler_standard(), an non-compulsory transformation perform handed in to step_numeric_column.
Categorical columns are supposed to make use of the entire vocabulary and pipe their outputs into embedding layers.

Now, what truly occurred once we referred to as match()? Rather a lot – for us, as we removed a ton of handbook preparation. For TensorFlow, nothing actually – it simply got here to learn about a number of items within the graph we’ll ask it to assemble.

However wait, – don’t we nonetheless need to construct up that graph ourselves, connecting and concatenating layers?
Concretely, above, we needed to:

  • create the proper variety of enter layers, of right form; and
  • wire them to their matching embedding layers, of right dimensionality.

So right here comes the actual magic, and it has two steps.

First, we simply create the enter layers by calling layer_input_from_dataset:

`

inputs <- layer_input_from_dataset(porto %>% select(-goal))

And second, we are able to extract the options from the characteristic spec and have layer_dense_features create the mandatory layers based mostly on that info:

layer_dense_features(ft_spec$dense_features())

With out additional ado, we add a number of dense layers, and there may be our mannequin. Magic!

output <- inputs %>%
  layer_dense_features(ft_spec$dense_features()) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 30, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(fee = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 10, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(fee = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 5, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(fee = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 1, activation = "sigmoid", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l))

mannequin <- keras_model(inputs, output)

How will we feed this mannequin? Within the non-feature-columns instance, we might have needed to feed every enter individually, passing an inventory of tensors. Now we are able to simply move it the entire coaching set all of sudden:

mannequin %>% match(x = coaching, y = coaching$goal)

Within the Kaggle competitors, submissions are evaluated using the normalized Gini coefficient, which we are able to calculate with the assistance of a brand new metric out there in Keras, tf$keras$metrics$AUC(). For coaching, we are able to use an approximation to the AUC because of Yan et al. (2003) (Yan et al. 2003). Then coaching is as simple as:

auc <- tf$keras$metrics$AUC()

gini <- custom_metric(title = "gini", perform(y_true, y_pred) {
  2*auc(y_true, y_pred) - 1
})

# Yan, L., Dodier, R., Mozer, M. C., & Wolniewicz, R. (2003). 
# Optimizing Classifier Efficiency through an Approximation to the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Statistic.
roc_auc_score <- perform(y_true, y_pred) {

  pos = tf$boolean_mask(y_pred, tf$forged(y_true, tf$bool))
  neg = tf$boolean_mask(y_pred, !tf$forged(y_true, tf$bool))

  pos = tf$expand_dims(pos, 0L)
  neg = tf$expand_dims(neg, 1L)

  # unique paper suggests efficiency is strong to precise parameter selection
  gamma = 0.2
  p     = 3

  distinction = tf$zeros_like(pos * neg) + pos - neg - gamma

  masked = tf$boolean_mask(distinction, distinction < 0.0)

  tf$reduce_sum(tf$pow(-masked, p))
}

mannequin %>%
  compile(
    loss = roc_auc_score,
    optimizer = optimizer_adam(),
    metrics = list(auc, gini)
  )

mannequin %>%
  match(
    x = coaching,
    y = coaching$goal,
    epochs = 50,
    validation_data = list(testing, testing$goal),
    batch_size = 512
  )

predictions <- predict(mannequin, testing)
Metrics::auc(testing$goal, predictions)

After 50 epochs, we obtain an AUC of 0.64 on the validation set, or equivalently, a Gini coefficient of 0.27. Not a nasty consequence for a easy totally related community!

We’ve seen how utilizing characteristic columns automates away plenty of steps in establishing the community, so we are able to spend extra time on truly tuning it. That is most impressively demonstrated on a dataset like this, with greater than a handful categorical columns. Nonetheless, to clarify a bit extra what to concentrate to when utilizing characteristic columns, it’s higher to decide on a smaller instance the place we are able to simply do some peeking round.

Let’s transfer on to the second software.

Interactions, and what to look out for

To exhibit the usage of step_crossed_column to seize interactions, we make use of the rugged dataset from Richard McElreath’s rethinking package deal.

We wish to predict log GDP based mostly on terrain ruggedness, for plenty of nations (170, to be exact). Nonetheless, the impact of ruggedness is totally different in Africa versus different continents. Citing from Statistical Rethinking

It is smart that ruggedness is related to poorer nations, in a lot of the world. Rugged terrain means transport is troublesome. Which suggests market entry is hampered. Which suggests lowered gross home product. So the reversed relationship inside Africa is puzzling. Why ought to troublesome terrain be related to larger GDP per capita?

If this relationship is in any respect causal, it could be as a result of rugged areas of Africa had been protected in opposition to the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. Slavers most popular to raid simply accessed settlements, with straightforward routes to the ocean. These areas that suffered beneath the slave commerce understandably proceed to endure economically, lengthy after the decline of slave-trading markets. Nonetheless, an consequence like GDP has many influences, and is moreover an odd measure of financial exercise. So it’s arduous to make sure what’s happening right here.

Whereas the causal state of affairs is troublesome, the purely technical one is well described: We wish to study an interplay. We may depend on the community discovering out by itself (on this case it most likely will, if we simply give it sufficient parameters). However it’s a wonderful event to showcase the brand new step_crossed_column.

Loading the dataset, zooming in on the variables of curiosity, and normalizing them the best way it’s accomplished in Rethinking, we now have:

Observations: 170
Variables: 3
$ log_gdp <dbl> 0.8797119, 0.9647547, 1.1662705, 1.1044854, 0.9149038,…
$ rugged  <dbl> 0.1383424702, 0.5525636891, 0.1239922606, 0.1249596904…
$ africa  <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, …

Now, let’s first neglect in regards to the interplay and do the very minimal factor required to work with this information.
rugged must be a numeric column, whereas africa is categorical in nature, which implies we use one of many step_categorical_[...] features on it. (On this case we occur to know there are simply two classes, Africa and not-Africa, so we may as nicely deal with the column as numeric like within the earlier instance; however in different functions that received’t be the case, so right here we present a way that generalizes to categorical options on the whole.)

So we begin out making a characteristic spec and including the 2 predictor columns. We verify the consequence utilizing feature_spec’s dense_features() methodology:

ft_spec <- coaching %>%
  feature_spec(log_gdp ~ .) %>%
  step_numeric_column(rugged) %>%
  step_categorical_column_with_identity(africa, num_buckets = 2) 
  match()

ft_spec$dense_features()
$rugged
NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None)

Hm, that doesn’t look too good. The place’d africa go? In actual fact, there may be yet one more factor we should always have accomplished: convert the explicit column to an indicator column. Why?

The rule of thumb is, every time you’ve got one thing categorical, together with crossed, it’s essential to then remodel it into one thing numeric, which incorporates indicator and embedding.

Being a heuristic, this rule works total, and it matches our instinct. There’s one exception although, step_bucketized_column, which though it “feels” categorical truly doesn’t want that conversion.

Due to this fact, it’s best to complement that instinct with a easy lookup diagram, which can be a part of the feature columns vignette.

With this diagram, the straightforward rule is: We at all times want to finish up with one thing that inherits from DenseColumn. So:

  • step_numeric_column, step_indicator_column, and step_embedding_column are standalone;
  • step_bucketized_column is, too, nevertheless categorical it “feels”; and
  • all step_categorical_column_[...], in addition to step_crossed_column, have to be remodeled utilizing one the dense column varieties.

For use with Keras, all features need to end up inheriting from DenseColumn somehow.

Determine 1: To be used with Keras, all options want to finish up inheriting from DenseColumn in some way.

Thus, we are able to repair the state of affairs like so:

ft_spec <- coaching %>%
  feature_spec(log_gdp ~ .) %>%
  step_numeric_column(rugged) %>%
  step_categorical_column_with_identity(africa, num_buckets = 2) %>%
  step_indicator_column(africa) %>%
  match()

and now ft_spec$dense_features() will present us

$rugged
NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None)

$indicator_africa
IndicatorColumn(categorical_column=IdentityCategoricalColumn(key='africa', number_buckets=2.0, default_value=None))

What we actually wished to do is seize the interplay between ruggedness and continent. To this finish, we first bucketize rugged, after which cross it with – already binary – africa. As per the foundations, we lastly remodel into an indicator column:

ft_spec <- coaching %>%
  feature_spec(log_gdp ~ .) %>%
  step_numeric_column(rugged) %>%
  step_categorical_column_with_identity(africa, num_buckets = 2) %>%
  step_indicator_column(africa) %>%
  step_bucketized_column(rugged,
                         boundaries = c(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8)) %>%
  step_crossed_column(africa_rugged_interact = c(africa, bucketized_rugged),
                      hash_bucket_size = 16) %>%
  step_indicator_column(africa_rugged_interact) %>%
  match()

Taking a look at this code chances are you’ll be asking your self, now what number of options do I’ve within the mannequin?
Let’s verify.

$rugged
NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None)

$indicator_africa
IndicatorColumn(categorical_column=IdentityCategoricalColumn(key='africa', number_buckets=2.0, default_value=None))

$bucketized_rugged
BucketizedColumn(source_column=NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None), boundaries=(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8))

$indicator_africa_rugged_interact
IndicatorColumn(categorical_column=CrossedColumn(keys=(IdentityCategoricalColumn(key='africa', number_buckets=2.0, default_value=None), BucketizedColumn(source_column=NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None), boundaries=(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8))), hash_bucket_size=16.0, hash_key=None))

We see that each one options, unique or remodeled, are saved, so long as they inherit from DenseColumn.
Which means, for instance, the non-bucketized, steady values of rugged are used as nicely.

Now establishing the coaching goes as anticipated.

inputs <- layer_input_from_dataset(df %>% select(-log_gdp))

output <- inputs %>%
  layer_dense_features(ft_spec$dense_features()) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 8, activation = "relu") %>%
  layer_dense(models = 8, activation = "relu") %>%
  layer_dense(models = 1)

mannequin <- keras_model(inputs, output)

mannequin %>% compile(loss = "mse", optimizer = "adam", metrics = "mse")

historical past <- mannequin %>% match(
  x = coaching,
  y = coaching$log_gdp,
  validation_data = list(testing, testing$log_gdp),
  epochs = 100)

Simply as a sanity verify, the ultimate loss on the validation set for this code was ~ 0.014. However actually this instance did serve totally different functions.

In a nutshell

Characteristic specs are a handy, elegant means of constructing categorical information out there to Keras, in addition to to chain helpful transformations like bucketizing and creating crossed columns. The time you save information wrangling might go into tuning and experimentation. Get pleasure from, and thanks for studying!

Yan, Lian, Robert H Dodier, Michael Mozer, and Richard H Wolniewicz. 2003. “Optimizing Classifier Efficiency through an Approximation to the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Statistic.” In Proceedings of the twentieth Worldwide Convention on Machine Studying (ICML-03), 848–55.


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