Machine Learning Suggestions [closed] - azure-machine-learning-studio

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I have data of a lot of students who got selected by some colleges based on their marks. Iam new to machine Learning. Can I have some suggestions how can I add Azure Machine Learning for predicting the colleges that they can get based on their marks

Try a multi-class logistic regression - also look at this https://gallery.cortanaanalytics.com/Experiment/da44bcd5dc2d4e059ebbaf94527d3d5b?fromlegacydomain=1

Apart from logistic regression, as #neerajkh suggested, I would try as well
One vs All classifiers. This method use to work very well in multiclass problems (I assume you have many inputs, which are the marks of the students) and many outputs (the different colleges).
To implement one vs all algorithm I would use Support Vector Machines (SVM). It is one of the most powerful algorithms (until deep learning came into the scene, but you don't need deep learning here)
If you could consider changing framework, I would suggest to use python libraries. In python it is very straightforward to compute very very fast the problem you are facing.

use randomforesttrees and feed this ML algorithm to OneVsRestClassifer which is a multi class classifier

Keeping in line with other posters' suggestions of using multi-class classification, you could use artificial neural networks (ANNs)/multilayer perceptron to do this. Each output node could be a college and, because you would be using a sigmoid transfer function (logistic) the output for each of the nodes could be directly viewed as the probability of that college accepting a particular student (when trying to make predictions).

Why don't you try softmax regression?
In extremely simple terms, Softmax takes an input and produces the probability distribution of the input belonging to each one of your classes. So in other words based on some input (grade in this case), your model can output the probability distribution that represents the "chance" a given sudent has to be accepted to each college.

I know this is an old thread but I will go ahead and add my 2 cents too.
I would recommend adding multi-class, multi-label classifier. This allows you to find more than one college for a student. Of course this is much easier to do with an ANN but is much harder to configure (say with the configuration of the network; number of nodes/hidden nodes or even the activation function for that matter).
The easiest method to do this as #Hoap Humanoid suggests is to use a Support Vector Classifier.
To do any of these method its a given that you have to havea well diverse data set. I cant say the number of data points you need that you have to experiment with but the accuracy of the model is dependent on number of data points and its diversity.

This is very subjective. Just applying any algorithm that classifies into categories won't be a good idea. Without performing Exploratory Data Analysis and checking following things you can't be sure of a doing predictive analytics, apart from missing values:
Quantitative and Qualitative variable.
Univariate, Bivariate and multivariate distribution.
Variable relationship to your response(college) variable.
Looking for outliers(multivariate and univariate).
Required variable transformation.
Can be the Y variable broken down into chunks for example location, for example whether a candidate can be a part of Colleges in California or New York. If there is a higher chance of California, then what college. In this way you could capture Linear + non-linear relationships.
For base learners you can fit Softmax regression model or 1 vs all Logistic regression which does not really matters a lot and CART for non-linear relationship. I would also do K-nn and K-means to check for different groups within data and decide on predictive learners.
I hope this makes sense!

The Least-square support vector machine (LSSVM) is a powerful algorithm for this application. Visit http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/sista/lssvmlab/ for more information.

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Clarifying the aim of linear regression with multiple predictor variables and how to plot using ggplot2 [closed]

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I'm trying to learn the intricacies of linear regression for prediction, and I'd like to ask two questions:
I've got one dependent variable (call it X) and, let's say, ten independent variables. I can use lm() to generate a model. But my question is this: is the aim of generating a model (or, more likely, multiple models) to identify the single best predictor of X, or is the aim to discover the best combination of predictors of X? I assumed the latter, but after several hours of reading online I am now unsure.
If the aim is to discover the best combination of predictors of X, then (once I've identified that combination) how is a combination plotted properly? Plotting one line is easy, but for a combination would it be proper to (a) plot ten distinct regression lines (one per independent variable) or (b) plot a single line that somehow represents the combination? I've provided the summary() I'm working with in case it facilitates answering this question.
Is the aim of generating a model (or, more likely, multiple models) to identify the single best predictor of X, or is the aim to discover the best combination of predictors of X?
This depends mainly on the situation/context you are in. If you are always going to have access to these predictors, then yes, you'd like to identify the best model that will (likely) use a combination of these predictors. Obviously you want to keep in mind issues like overfitting and make sure the predictors you include are actually contributing something meaningful to your model, but there's no reason not to include multiple predictors if they make your model meaningfully better.
However, in many real world scenarios predictors are not free. It might cost $10,000 to collect each predictor and the organization you are working for only has the budget to collect one predictor. Thus, you might only be interested in the single best predictor because it is not practical to collect more than one going forward. In this case you'd also just be interested in how well that variable predicts in a simple regression, not a multiple regression, since you won't be controlling for other variables in the future anyway (but looking at the multiple regression results could still provide insight).
how is a combination plotted properly?
Again, this depends on context. However, in most cases you probably don't want to plot 10 regression lines because that's too overwhelming to look at and you will probably never have 10 variables that meaningfully contribute to your model. I'm actually kind of surprised your adjusted R^2 is not lower given you have quite a few variables so close to zero, unless they're just on massive scales.
First, who is viewing this graph? Is it you? If so, what information do you need to see that isn't being conveyed by the beta parameters? If it's someone else, who are they? Are they a stakeholder who knows nothing about statistics? If that's the case, you want a pretty simple graph that drives home your main point. Second, what is the purpose of your predictions and how does the process you are predicting unfold in the real world? Let's say I'm predicting how well people perform on the job given their scores on some different selection measures. The first thing you need to consider is, how is that selection happening? Are candidates screened on their answers to some personality questions and only the top scorers get an interview? In that case, it might be useful to create multiple graphs that show that process. However, candidates might be reviewed holistically and assigned a sum score based on all these predictors. In that case one regression line makes sense because you are interested in how these predictors act in concert.
There is no one answer to this question because the answers depend on the reason you're doing a regression in the first place. Once you identify the reason you're trying to predict this thing and the context that the process is happening in you should probably be able to determine what makes most sense. There is no "right" answer you'll find in a textbook because most real life problems are not in textbooks.

How should I select features for logistic regression in R? [closed]

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I tried several ways of selecting predictors for a logistic regression in R. I used lasso logistic regression to get rid of irrelevant features, cutting their number from 60 to 24, then I used those 24 variables in my stepAIC logistic regression, after which I further cut 1 variable with p-value of approximately 0.1. What other feature selection methods I can or even should use? I tried to look for Anova correlation coefficient analysis, but I didn't find any examples for R. And I think I cannot use correlation heatmap in this situation since my output is categorical? I seen some instances recommending Lasso and StepAIC, and other instances criticising them, but I didn't find any definitive comprehensive alternative, which left me confused.
Given the methodological nature of your question you might also get a more detailed answer at Cross Validated: https://stats.stackexchange.com/
From your information provided, 23-24 independent variables seems quite a number to me. If you do not have a large sample, remember that overfitting might be an issue (i.e. low cases to variables ratio). Indications of overfitting are large parameter estimates & standard errors, or failure of convergence, for instance. You obviously have already used stepwise variable selection according to stepAIC which would have also been my first try if I would have chosen to let the model do the variable selection.
If you spot any issues with standard errors/parameter estimates further options down the road might be to collapse categories of independent variables, or check whether there is any evidence of multicollinearity which could also result in deleting highly-correlated variables and narrow down the number of remaining features.
Apart from a strictly mathematical approach you might also want to identify features that are likely to be related to your outcome of interest according to your underlying content hypothesis and your previous experience, meaning to look at the model from your point of view as expert in your field of interest.
If sample size is not an issue and the point is reduction of feature numbers, you may consider running a principal component analysis (PCA) to find out about highly correlated features and do the regression with the PCAs instead which are non-correlated linear combination of your "old" features. A package to accomplish PCA is factoextra using prcomp or princomp arguments http://www.sthda.com/english/articles/31-principal-component-methods-in-r-practical-guide/118-principal-component-analysis-in-r-prcomp-vs-princomp/

DESeq2 design matrix including RIN as covariate in the formula [closed]

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I have been following the last DESeq2 pipeline to perform an RNAseq analysis. My problem is the rin of the experimental samples is quite low compared to the control ones. Iread a paper in which they perform RNAseq analysis with time-course RNA degradation and conclude that including RIN value as a covariate can mitigate some of the effects of low rin in samples.
My question is how I should construct the design in the DESeq2 object:
~conditions+rin
~conditions*rin
~conditions:rin
none of them... :)
I cannot find proper resources where explain how to construct these models (I am new to the field...) and I recognise I crashed against a wall with these kinds of things. I would appreciate also some links to good resources to be able to understand which one is correct and why.
Thank you so much
Turns out to be quite long for typing in a comment.
It depends on your data.
First of all, counts ~conditions:rin does not make sense in your case, because conditions is categorical. You cannot fit only an interaction term model.
I would go with counts ~condition + rin, this assumes there is a condition effect and a linear effect from rin. And the counts' dependency of rin is independent of condition.
As you mentioned, rin in one of the conditions is quite low, but is there any reason to suspect the relationship between rin and counts to differ in the two conditions? If you fit counts ~condition * rin, you are assuming a condition effect and a rin effect that is different in conditions. Meaning a different slope for rin effect if you plot counts vs rin. You need to take a few genes out, and see whether this is true. And also, for fitting this model, you need quite a lot of samples to estimate the effects accurately. See if both of these holds

Do I need to normalize (or scale) data for randomForest (R package)? [closed]

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I am doing regression task - do I need to normalize (or scale) data for randomForest (R package)? And is it neccessary to scale also target values?
And if - I want to use scale function from caret package, but I did not find how to get data back (descale, denormalize). Do not you know about some other function (in any package) which is helpfull with normalization/denormalization?
Thanks,
Milan
No, scaling is not necessary for random forests.
The nature of RF is such that convergence and numerical precision issues, which can sometimes trip up the algorithms used in logistic and linear regression, as well as neural networks, aren't so important. Because of this, you don't need to transform variables to a common scale like you might with a NN.
You're don't get any analogue of a regression coefficient, which measures the relationship between each predictor variable and the response. Because of this, you also don't need to consider how to interpret such coefficients which is something that is affected by variable measurement scales.
Scaling is done to Normalize data so that priority is not given to a particular feature.
Role of Scaling is mostly important in algorithms that are distance based and require Euclidean Distance.
Random Forest is a tree-based model and hence does not require feature scaling.
This algorithm requires partitioning, even if you apply Normalization then also> the result would be the same.
I do not see any suggestions in either the help page or the Vignette that suggests scaling is necessary for a regression variable in randomForest. This example at Stats Exchange does not use scaling either.
Copy of my comment: The scale function does not belong to pkg:caret. It is part of the "base" R package. There is an unscale function in packages grt and DMwR that will reverse the transformation, or you could simply multiply by the scale attribute and then add the center attribute values.
Your conception of why "normalization" needs to be done may require critical examination. The test of non-normality is only needed after the regressions are done and may not be needed at all if there are no assumptions of normality in the goodness of fit methodology. So: Why are you asking? Searching in SO and Stats.Exchange might prove useful:
citation #1 ; citation #2 ; citation #3
The boxcox function is a commonly used tranformation when one does not have prior knowledge of twhat a distribution "should" be and when you really need to do a tranformation. There are many pitfalls in applying transformations, so the fact that you need to ask the question raises concerns that you may be in need of further consultations or self-study.
Guess, what will happen in the following example?
Imagine, you have 20 predictive features, 18 of them are in [0;10] range and the other 2 in [0;1,000,000] range (taken from a real-life example). Question1: what feature importances will Random Forest assign. Question2: what will happen to the feature importance after scaling the 2 large-range features?
Scaling is important. It is that Random Forest is less sensitive to the scaling then other algorithms and can work with "roughly"-scaled features.
If you are going to add interactions to dataset - that is, new variable being some function of other variables (usually simple multiplication), and you dont feel what that new variable stands for (cant interprete it), then you should calculate this variable using scaled variables.
Random Forest uses information gain / gini coefficient inherently which will not be affected by scaling unlike many other machine learning models which will (such as k-means clustering, PCA etc). However, it might 'arguably' fasten the convergence as hinted in other answers

Unsupervised Learning in R? Classify Matrices - what is the right package? [closed]

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Recently I watched a lot of Stanford's hilarious Open Classroom's video lectures. Particularly the part about unsupervised Machine Learning got my attention. Unfortunately it stops were it might get even more interesting.
Basically I am looking to classify discrete matrices by an unsupervised algorithm. Those matrices just contain discrete values of the same range. Let's say I have 1000s of 20x15 matrices that with values ranging from 1-3. I just started to read through the literature and I feel that image classification is way more complex (color histograms) and that my case is rather a simplification of what is done there.
I also looked at the Machine Learning and Cluster Cran Task Views but do not know where to start with a practical example.
So my question is: which package / algorithm would be a good pick to start playing around and working on the problem in R?
EDIT:
I realized that I might have been to imprecise: My matrix contains discrete choice data – so mean clustering might(!) not be the right idea. I do understand with what you said about vectors and observation but I am hoping for some function that accepts matrices or data.frames, because I have several observations over time.
EDIT2:
I realize that a package / function, introduction that focuses on unsupervised classification of categorical data is what would help me the most right now.
... classify discrete matrices by an unsupervised algorithm
You must mean cluster them. Classification is commonly done by supervised algorithms.
I feel that image classification is way more complex (color histograms) and that my case is rather a simplification of what is done there
Without knowing what your matrices represent, it's hard to tell what kind of algorithm you need. But a starting point might be to flatten your 20*15 matrices to produce length-300 vectors; each element of such a vector would then be a feature (or variable) to base a clustering on. This is the way must ML packages, including the Cluster package you link to, work: "In case of a matrix or data frame, each row corresponds to an observation, and
each column corresponds to a variable."
So far I found daisy from the cluster package respectively the argument "gower" which refers to Gower's similarity coefficient to handle multiple modes of data. Gower seems to be a fairly only distance metric, still it's what I found for use with categorical data.
You might want to start from here : http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/MachineLearning.html

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