EXGBoost (EXGBoost v0.2.1)

Elixir bindings for the XGBoost library. EXGBoost provides an implementation of XGBoost that works with Nx tensors.

Xtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) is an optimized distributed gradient boosting library designed to be highly efficient, flexible and portable. It implements machine learning algorithms under the Gradient Boosting framework. XGBoost provides a parallel tree boosting (also known as GBDT, GBM) that solve many data science problems in a fast and accurate way. The same code runs on major distributed environment (Hadoop, SGE, MPI) and can solve problems beyond billions of examples.

installation

Installation

def deps do
[
  {:exgboost, "~> 0.2.1"}
]
end

api-data-structures

API Data Structures

EXGBoost's top-level EXGBoost API works directly and only with Nx tensors. However, under the hood, it leverages the structs defined in the EXGBoost.Booster and EXGBoost.DMatrix modules. These structs are wrappers around the structs defined in the XGBoost library. The two main structs used are DMatrix to represent the data matrix that will be used to train the model, and Booster which represents the model.

The top-level EXGBoost API does not expose the structs directly. Instead, the structs are exposed through the EXGBoost.Booster and EXGBoost.DMatrix modules. Power users might wish to use these modules directly. For example, if you wish to use the Booster struct directly then you can use the EXGBoost.Booster.booster/2 function to create a Booster struct from a DMatrix and a keyword list of options. See the EXGBoost.Booster and EXGBoost.DMatrix modules source for more implementation details.

basic-usage

Basic Usage

key = Nx.Random.key(42)
{X, _} = Nx.Random.normal(key, 0, 1, shape: {10, 5})
{y, _} = Nx.Random.normal(key, 0, 1, shape: {10})
model = EXGBoost.train(X,y)
EXGBoost.predict(model, X)

training

Training

EXGBoost is designed to feel familiar to the users of the Python XGBoost library. EXGBoost.train/2 is the primary entry point for training a model. It accepts a Nx tensor for the features and a Nx tensor for the labels. EXGBoost.train/2 returns a trainedBooster struct that can be used for prediction. EXGBoost.train/2 also accepts a keyword list of options that can be used to configure the training process. See the XGBoost documentation for the full list of options.

EXGBoost.train/2 uses the EXGBoost.Training.train/1 function to perform the actual training. EXGBoost.Training.train/1 and can be used directly if you wish to work directly with the DMatrix and Booster structs.

One of the main features of EXGBoost.train/2 is the ability for the end user to provide a custom training function that will be used to train the model. This is done by passing a function to the :obj option. The function must accept a DMatrix and a Booster and return a Booster. The function will be called at each iteration of the training process. This allows the user to implement custom training logic. For example, the user could implement a custom loss function or a custom metric function. See the XGBoost documentation for more information on custom loss functions and custom metric functions.

Another feature of EXGBoost.train/2 is the ability to provide a validation set for early stopping. This is done by passing a list of 3-tuples to the :evals option. Each 3-tuple should contain a Nx tensor for the features, a Nx tensor for the labels, and a string label for the validation set name. The validation set will be used to calculate the validation error at each iteration of the training process. If the validation error does not improve for :early_stopping_rounds iterations then the training process will stop. See the XGBoost documentation for a more detailed explanation of early stopping.

Early stopping is achieved through the use of callbacks. EXGBoost.train/2 accepts a list of callbacks that will be called at each iteration of the training process. The callbacks can be used to implement custom logic. For example, the user could implement a callback that will print the validation error at each iteration of the training process or to provide a custom setup function for training. See the EXGBoost.Training.Callback module for more information on callbacks.

Please notes that callbacks are called in the order that they are provided. If you provide multiple callbacks that modify the same parameter then the last callback will trump the previous callbacks. For example, if you provide a callback that sets the :early_stopping_rounds parameter to 10 and then provide a callback that sets the :early_stopping_rounds parameter to 20 then the :early_stopping_rounds parameter will be set to 20.

You are also able to pass parameters to be applied to the Booster model using the :params option. These parameters will be applied to the Booster model before training begins. This allows you to set parameters that are not available as options to EXGBoost.train/2. See the XGBoost documentation for a full list of parameters.

EXGBoost.train(X,
              y,
              obj: &EXGBoost.Training.train/1,
              evals: [{X_test, y_test, "test"}],
              learning_rates: fn i -> i/10 end,
              num_boost_round: 10,
              early_stopping_rounds: 3,
              params: [max_depth: 3, eval_metric: ["rmse","logloss"]])

prediction

Prediction

EXGBoost.predict/2 is the primary entry point for making predictions with a trained model. It accepts a Booster struct (which is the output of EXGBoost.train/2). EXGBoost.predict/2 returns a Nx tensor containing the predictions. EXGBoost.predict/2 also accepts a keyword list of options that can be used to configure the prediction process.

preds = EXGBoost.train(X, y) |> EXGBoost.predict(X)

Link to this section Summary

Functions

Get current values of the global configuration.

Run prediction in-place, Unlike EXGBoost.predict/2, inplace prediction does not cache the prediction result.

Predict with a booster model against a tensor

Set global configuration.

Train a new booster model given a data tensor and a label tensor

Check the build information of the xgboost library.

Check the version of the xgboost library.

Link to this section Functions

@spec get_config() :: map()

Get current values of the global configuration.

Global configuration consists of a collection of parameters that can be applied in the global scope. See Global Parameters in EXGBosst.Parameters for the full list of parameters supported in the global configuration.

Link to this function

inplace_predict(boostr, data, opts \\ [])

Run prediction in-place, Unlike EXGBoost.predict/2, inplace prediction does not cache the prediction result.

options

Options

  • :base_margin - Base margin used for boosting from existing model.

  • :missing - Value used for missing values. If None, defaults to Nx.Constant.nan().

  • :predict_type -

    • value - Output model prediction values.
    • margin - Output the raw untransformed margin value.
  • :output_margin - Whether to output the raw untransformed margin value.

  • :validate_features - See EXGBoost.predict/2 for details.

  • :iteration_range - See EXGBoost.predict/2 for details.

  • :strict_shape - See EXGBoost.predict/2 for details.

Returns an Nx.Tensor containing the predictions.

Link to this function

predict(bst, x, opts \\ [])

Predict with a booster model against a tensor

The full model will be used unless iteration_range is specified, meaning user have to either slice the model or use the best_iteration attribute to get prediction from best model returned from early stopping.

options

Options

  • :output_margin - Whether to output the raw untransformed margin value.

  • :pred_leaf - When this option is on, the output will be a matrix of (nsample, ntrees) with each record indicating the predicted leaf index of each sample in each tree. Note that the leaf index of a tree is unique per tree, so you may find leaf 1 in both tree 1 and tree 0.

  • :pred_contribs - When this is true the output will be a matrix of size (nsample, nfeats + 1) with each record indicating the feature contributions (SHAP values) for that prediction. The sum of all feature contributions is equal to the raw untransformed margin value of the prediction. Note the final column is the bias term.

  • :approx_contribs - Approximate the contributions of each feature. Used when pred_contribs or pred_interactions is set to true. Changing the default of this parameter (False) is not recommended.

  • :pred_interactions - When this is true the output will be a matrix of size (nsample, nfeats + 1, nfeats + 1) indicating the SHAP interaction values for each pair of features. The sum of each row (or column) of the interaction values equals the corresponding SHAP value (from pred_contribs), and the sum of the entire matrix equals the raw untransformed margin value of the prediction. Note the last row and column correspond to the bias term.

  • :validate_features - When this is true, validate that the Booster's and data's feature_names are identical. Otherwise, it is assumed that the feature_names are the same.

  • :training - Whether the prediction value is used for training. This can effect dart booster, which performs dropouts during training iterations but use all trees for inference. If you want to obtain result with dropouts, set this parameter to true. Also, the parameter is set to true when obtaining prediction for custom objective function.

  • :iteration_range - Specifies which layer of trees are used in prediction. For example, if a random forest is trained with 100 rounds. Specifying iteration_range=(10, 20), then only the forests built during [10, 20) (half open set) rounds are used in this prediction.

  • :strict_shape - When set to true, output shape is invariant to whether classification is used. For both value and margin prediction, the output shape is (n_samples, n_groups), n_groups == 1 when multi-class is not used. Default to False, in which case the output shape can be (n_samples, ) if multi-class is not used.

Returns an Nx.Tensor containing the predictions.

Link to this function

set_config(config)

@spec set_config(map()) :: :ok | {:error, String.t()}

Set global configuration.

Global configuration consists of a collection of parameters that can be applied in the global scope. See Global Parameters in EXGBosst.Parameters for the full list of parameters supported in the global configuration.

Link to this function

train(x, y, opts \\ [])

@spec train(Nx.Tensor.t(), Nx.Tensor.t(), Keyword.t()) :: EXGBoost.Booster.t()

Train a new booster model given a data tensor and a label tensor

options

Options

  • :obj - Specify the learning task and the corresponding learning objective. This function must accept two arguments: preds, dtrain. preds is an array of predicted real valued scores. dtrain is the training data set. This function returns gradient and second order gradient.

  • :num_boost_rounds - Number of boosting iterations.

  • :evals - A list of 3-Tuples {X, y, label} to use as a validation set for early-stopping.

  • :early_stopping_rounds - Activates early stopping. Target metric needs to increase/decrease (depending on metric) at least every early_stopping_rounds round(s) to continue training. Requires at least one item in :evals. If there's more than one, will use the last eval set. If there’s more than one metric in the eval_metric parameter given in the booster's params, the last metric will be used for early stopping. If early stopping occurs, the model will have two additional fields: bst.best_score, bst.best_iteration. If these values are nil then no early stopping occurred.

  • :verbose_eval - Requires at least one item in evals. If verbose_eval is true then the evaluation metric on the validation set is printed at each boosting stage. If verbose_eval is an integer then the evaluation metric on the validation set is printed at every given verbose_eval boosting stage. The last boosting stage / the boosting stage found by using early_stopping_rounds is also printed. Example: with verbose_eval=4 and at least one item in evals, an evaluation metric is printed every 4 boosting stages, instead of every boosting stage.

  • :learning_rates - Either an arity 1 function that accept an integer parameter epoch and returns the corresponding learning rate or a list with the same length as num_boost_rounds.

  • :callbacks - List of EXGBoost.Training.Callback that are called during a given event. It is possible to use predefined callbacks by using EXGBoost.Callback module. Callbacks should be in the form of a keyword list where the only valid keys are :before_training, :after_training, :before_iteration, and :after_iteration. The value of each key should be a list of functions that accepts a booster and an iteration and returns a booster. The function will be called at the appropriate time with the booster and the iteration as the arguments. The function should return the booster. If the function returns a booster with a different memory address, the original booster will be replaced with the new booster. If the function returns the original booster, the original booster will be used. If the function returns a booster with the same memory address but different contents, the behavior is undefined.

  • opts - Refer to EXGBoost.Parameters for the full list of options.

Link to this function

xgboost_build_info()

@spec xgboost_build_info() :: map()

Check the build information of the xgboost library.

Returns a map containing information about the build.

Link to this function

xgboost_version()

@spec xgboost_version() :: {integer(), integer(), integer()} | {:error, String.t()}

Check the version of the xgboost library.

Returns a 3-tuple in the form of {major, minor, patch}.