Minimal depth interaction from randomForestExplainer package - r

Question

So when using the minimal depth interaction feature of the randomForestExplainer package, in R, I'm getting some hard to interpret results.
I simulated some data (x1, x2,..., x5) where x1 is binary and x2-x5 are continuous. In my model, there are no interactions.
Im using the randomForest package to create a random forest and then running it through the randomForestExplainer package.
Here's the code I'm using to simulate the data and random forest:
library(randomForest)
library(randomForestExplainer)
n <- 100
p <- 4
# Create data:
xrandom <- matrix(rnorm(n*p)+5, nrow=n)
colnames(xrandom)<- paste0("x",2:5)
d <- data.frame(xrandom)
d$x1 <- factor(sample(1:2, n, replace=T))
# Equation:
y <- d$x2 + rnorm(n)/5
y[d$x1==1] <- y[d$x1==1]+5
d$y <- y
# Random Forest:
fr <- randomForest(y ~ ., data=d,localImp=T)
# Random Forest Explainer:
interactions_frame <- min_depth_interactions(fr, names(d)[-6])
head(interactions_frame, 2)
This produces the following:
variable root_variable mean_min_depth occurrences interaction
1 x1 x1 4.670732 0 x1:x1
2 x1 x2 2.606190 221 x2:x1
uncond_mean_min_depth
1 1.703252
2 1.703252
So, my question is, if x1:x1 has 0 occurrence ( which is expected) then how can it also have a mean_min_depth?
Surely if it has 0 occurrences, then it can't possibly have a minimum depth? [or rather, the min depth = 0 or NA]
What's going on here? Am I misinterpreting something?
Thanks

Answer 1

My understanding is this has to do with the choice of the mean_sample argument of min_depth_interactions. The default choice replaces NAs with the depth of maximum subtree whose root is x1. Details below.
What is this argument mean_sample for? It specifies how to deal with trees where the interaction of interest is not present. There are three options:
relevant_trees. This only considers the trees where the interaction of interest is present. In your example, this gives NA for mean_min_depth of interaction x1:x1, which is the behavior you were looking for.
interactions_frame <- min_depth_interactions(fr, names(d)[-6], mean_sample = "relevant_trees")
head(interactions_frame, 2)
variable root_variable mean_min_depth occurrences interaction uncond_mean_min_depth
1 x1 x1 NA 0 x1:x1 1.947475
2 x1 x2 1.426606 218 x2:x1 1.947475
all_trees. There is a major problem with relevant_trees, that is for an interaction only showing up in a small number of trees, taking the mean of conditional minimum depth ignores the fact that this interaction is not that important. In this case, a small mean conditional minimum depth doesn't mean an interaction is important. To address this, specifying mean_sample = "all_trees" replaces the conditional minimum depth for the interaction of interest by the mean depth of maximal subtree of the root variable. Basically, if we are looking at the interaction of x1:x2, it says for a tree where this interaction is absent, give it a value of the deepest tree whose root is x1. This gives a (hopefully large) numeric value to mean_min_depth of interaction x1:x2 thus making it less important.
interactions_frame <- min_depth_interactions(fr, names(d)[-6], mean_sample = "all_trees")
head(interactions_frame, 2)
variable root_variable mean_min_depth occurrences interaction uncond_mean_min_depth
1 x1 x1 4.787879 0 x1:x1 1.97568
2 x1 x2 3.654522 218 x2:x1 1.97568
top_trees. Now this is the default choice for mean_sample. My understanding is it's similar to all_trees, but tries to down-weight the contribution of replacing missing values. The motivation, is all_trees pulls mean_min_depth close to the same value when there are many parameters but not enough observations, i.e. shallow trees. To reduce the contribution of replacing missing values, top_trees only calculates the mean conditional minimal depth on a subset of n trees, where n is the number of trees where ANY interactions with specified roots are present. Let's say in your example, out of those 500 trees only 300 have any interaction x1:whatever, then we only consider those 300 trees when filling in value for x1:x1. Because there are 0 occurrence of this interaction, replacing 500 NAs vs replacing 300 NAs with the same value doesn't affect the mean, so it's the same value 4.787879. (There's a slight difference between our results, I think it has to do with seed values).
interactions_frame <- min_depth_interactions(fr, names(d)[-6], mean_sample = "top_trees")
head(interactions_frame, 2)
variable root_variable mean_min_depth occurrences interaction uncond_mean_min_depth
variable root_variable mean_min_depth occurrences interaction uncond_mean_min_depth
1 x1 x1 4.787879 0 x1:x1 1.947475
2 x1 x2 2.951051 218 x2:x1 1.947475
This answer is based on my understanding of the package author's thesis: https://rawgit.com/geneticsMiNIng/BlackBoxOpener/master/randomForestExplainer_Master_thesis.pdf