我试图了解如何获得已分解为虚拟变量的分类变量的特征重要性。我正在使用 scikit-learn，它不会像 R 或 h2o 那样为您处理分类变量。
如果我将一个分类变量分解为虚拟变量，我会在该变量中获得每个类的单独特征重要性。
我的问题是，通过简单地将这些虚拟变量重要性重新组合成分类变量的重要性值是否有意义？
来自统计学习要素的第 368 页：
的平方相对重要性是在选择它作为分裂变量的所有内部节点上的这种平方改进的总和
这让我认为，由于重要性值已经通过在选择变量的每个节点处求和一个度量来创建，我应该能够结合虚拟变量的变量重要性值来“恢复”分类变量的重要性。当然，我不希望它完全正确，但无论如何这些值都是非常精确的值，因为它们是通过随机过程找到的。
我编写了以下 python 代码（在 jupyter 中）作为调查：
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import animation, rc
from sklearn.datasets import load_diabetes
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
import re
#%matplotlib inline
from IPython.display import HTML
from IPython.display import set_matplotlib_formats
plt.rcParams['figure.autolayout'] = False
plt.rcParams['figure.figsize'] = 10, 6
plt.rcParams['axes.labelsize'] = 18
plt.rcParams['axes.titlesize'] = 20
plt.rcParams['font.size'] = 14
plt.rcParams['lines.linewidth'] = 2.0
plt.rcParams['lines.markersize'] = 8
plt.rcParams['legend.fontsize'] = 14
# Get some data, I could not easily find a free data set with actual categorical variables, so I just created some from continuous variables
data = load_diabetes()
df = pd.DataFrame(data.data, columns=[data.feature_names])
df = df.assign(target=pd.Series(data.target))
# Functions to plot the variable importances
def autolabel(rects, ax):
"""
Attach a text label above each bar displaying its height
"""
for rect in rects:
height = rect.get_height()
ax.text(rect.get_x() + rect.get_width()/2.,
1.05*height,
f'{round(height,3)}',
ha='center',
va='bottom')
def plot_feature_importance(X,y,dummy_prefixes=None, ax=None, feats_to_highlight=None):
# Find the feature importances by fitting a random forest
forest = RandomForestClassifier(n_estimators=100)
forest.fit(X,y)
importances_dummy = forest.feature_importances_
# If there are specified dummy variables, combing them into a single categorical
# variable by summing the importances. This code assumes the dummy variables were
# created using pandas get_dummies() method names the dummy variables as
# featurename_categoryvalue
if dummy_prefixes is None:
importances_categorical = importances_dummy
labels = X.columns
else:
dummy_idx = np.repeat(False,len(X.columns))
importances_categorical = []
labels = []
for feat in dummy_prefixes:
feat_idx = np.array([re.match(f'^{feat}_', col) is not None for col in X.columns])
importances_categorical = np.append(importances_categorical,
sum(importances_dummy[feat_idx]))
labels = np.append(labels,feat)
dummy_idx = dummy_idx | feat_idx
importances_categorical = np.concatenate((importances_dummy[~dummy_idx],
importances_categorical))
labels = np.concatenate((X.columns[~dummy_idx], labels))
importances_categorical /= max(importances_categorical)
indices = np.argsort(importances_categorical)[::-1]
# Plotting
if ax is None:
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
plt.title("Feature importances")
rects = ax.bar(range(len(importances_categorical)),
importances_categorical[indices],
tick_label=labels[indices],
align="center")
autolabel(rects, ax)
if feats_to_highlight is not None:
highlight = [feat in feats_to_highlight for feat in labels[indices]]
rects2 = ax.bar(range(len(importances_categorical)),
importances_categorical[indices]*highlight,
tick_label=labels[indices],
color='r',
align="center")
rects = [rects,rects2]
plt.xlim([-0.6, len(importances_categorical)-0.4])
ax.set_ylim((0, 1.125))
return rects
# Create importance plots leaving everything as categorical variables. I'm highlighting bmi and age as I will convert those into categorical variables later
X = df.drop('target',axis=1)
y = df['target'] > 140.5
plot_feature_importance(X,y, feats_to_highlight=['bmi', 'age'])
plt.title('Feature importance with bmi and age left as continuous variables')
#Create an animation of what happens to variable importance when I split bmi and age into n (n equals 2 - 25) different classes
# %%capture
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
def animate(i):
ax.clear()
# Split one of the continuous variables up into a categorical variable with i balanced classes
X_test = X.copy()
n_categories = i+2
X_test['bmi'] = pd.cut(X_test['bmi'],
np.percentile(X['bmi'], np.linspace(0,100,n_categories+1)),
labels=[chr(num+65) for num in range(n_categories)])
X_test['age'] = pd.cut(X_test['age'],
np.percentile(X['age'], np.linspace(0,100,n_categories+1)),
labels=[chr(num+65) for num in range(n_categories)])
X_test = pd.get_dummies(X_test, drop_first=True)
# Plot the feature importances
rects = plot_feature_importance(X_test,y,dummy_prefixes=['bmi', 'age'],ax=ax, feats_to_highlight=['bmi', 'age'])
plt.title(f'Feature importances for {n_categories} bmi and age categories')
ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['bottom'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['left'].set_visible(False)
return [rects,]
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, frames=24, interval=1000)
HTML(anim.to_html5_video())
以下是一些结果：
我们可以观察到变量重要性主要取决于类别的数量，这导致我质疑这些图表的实用性。尤其是age 达到比其连续对应物更高的价值的重要性。
最后，如果我将它们保留为虚拟变量（仅 bmi）的示例：
# Split one of the continuous variables up into a categorical variable with i balanced classes
X_test = X.copy()
n_categories = 5
X_test['bmi'] = pd.cut(X_test['bmi'],
np.percentile(X['bmi'], np.linspace(0,100,n_categories+1)),
labels=[chr(num+65) for num in range(n_categories)])
X_test = pd.get_dummies(X_test, drop_first=True)
# Plot the feature importances
rects = plot_feature_importance(X_test,y, feats_to_highlight=['bmi_B','bmi_C','bmi_D', 'bmi_E'])
plt.title(f"Feature importances for {n_categories} bmi categories")
