Ensembles of Classifiers

Evgueni Smirnov
 Outline
• Methods for Independently Constructing Ensembles
– Majority Vote
– Bagging and Random Forest
– Randomness Injection
– Feature-Selection Ensembles
– Error-Correcting Output Coding
• Methods for Coordinated Construction of Ensembles
– Boosting
– Stacking
• Reliable Classification: Meta-Classifier Approach
• Co-Training and Self-Training
 Ensembles of Classifiers
• Basic idea is to learn a set of
classifiers (experts) and to allow them
to vote.
• Advantage: improvement in
predictive accuracy.
• Disadvantage: it is difficult to
understand an ensemble of classifiers.
 Why do ensembles work?
Dietterich(2002) showed that ensembles overcome three problems:
• The Statistical Problem arises when the hypothesis space is too
large for the amount of available data. Hence, there are many
hypotheses with the same accuracy on the data and the learning
algorithm chooses only one of them! There is a risk that the
accuracy of the chosen hypothesis is low on unseen data!
• The Computational Problem arises when the learning algorithm
cannot guarantees finding the best hypothesis.
• The Representational Problem arises when the hypothesis space
does not contain any good approximation of the target class(es).

The statistical problem and computational problem result in the

variance component of the error of the classifiers!
The representational problem results in the bias component of the
error of the classifiers!
 Methods for Independently
Constructing Ensembles
One way to force a learning algorithm to construct
multiple hypotheses is to run the algorithm several
times and provide it with somewhat different data in
each run. This idea is used in the following methods:
• Majority Voting
• Bagging
• Randomness Injection
• Feature-Selection Ensembles
• Error-Correcting Output Coding.
 Majority Vote

Original
D Training data

Step 1:
Build Multiple C1 C2 Ct -1 Ct
Classifiers

Step 2:
Combine C*
Classifiers
 Why Majority Voting works?
• Suppose there are 25
base classifiers
– Each classifier has
error rate,  = 0.35
– Assume errors made
by classifiers are
uncorrelated
– Probability that the
ensemble classifier makes
a wrong prediction:
25
 25  i
P( X  13)     (1   ) 25i  0.06
i 13  i 
 Bagging
• Employs simplest way of combining predictions that
belong to the same type.
• Combining can be realized with voting or averaging
• Each model receives equal weight
• “Idealized” version of bagging:
– Sample several training sets of size n (instead of just
having one training set of size n)
– Build a classifier for each training set
– Combine the classifier’s predictions
• This improves performance in almost all cases if
learning scheme is unstable (i.e. decision trees)
 Bagging classifiers
Classifier generation
Let n be the size of the training set.
For each of t iterations:
Sample n instances with replacement from the
training set.
Apply the learning algorithm to the sample.
Store the resulting classifier.

classification
For each of the t classifiers:
Predict class of instance using classifier.
Return class that was predicted most often.
 Why does bagging work?
• Bagging reduces variance by voting/
averaging, thus reducing the overall expected
error
– In the case of classification there are pathological
situations where the overall error might increase
– Usually, the more classifiers the better
 Random Forest
Classifier generation
Let n be the size of the training set.
For each of t iterations:
(1) Sample n instances with replacement from
the training set.
(2) Learn a decision tree s.t. the variable
for any new node is the best variable among m
randomly selected variables.
(3) Store the resulting decision tree.

Classification
For each of the t decision trees:
Predict class of instance.
Return class that was predicted most often.
 Bagging and Random Forest
• Bagging usually improves decision trees.
• Random forest usually outperforms
bagging due to the fact that errors of the
decision trees in the forest are less
correlated.
 Randomization Injection

• Inject some randomization into a standard

learning algorithm (usually easy):
– Neural network: random initial weights
– Decision tree: when splitting, choose one of the
top N attributes at random (uniformly)
• Dietterich (2000) showed that 200 randomized
trees are statistically significantly better than
C4.5 for over 33 datasets!
 Feature-Selection Ensembles
• Key idea: Provide a different subset of the input
features in each call of the learning algorithm.
• Example: Venus&Cherkauer (1996) trained an
ensemble with 32 neural networks. The 32
networks were based on 8 different subsets of 119
available features and 4 different algorithms. The
ensemble was significantly better than any of the
neural networks!
 Error-Correcting Output Codes
• Exhaustive Codes:
Binary Classification Problems
BP1 BP2 BP3 BP4 BP5 BP6 BP7
y1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1

y2 +1 +1 +1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Classes

y3 +1 -1 -1 +1 +1 -1 -1

y4 -1 +1 -1 +1 -1 +1 -1

• We receive 2(K-1)-1 number of binary classifiers. The

final classification rule is the nearest neighbor.
Assume that for an instance x we have a code word
[+1,+1, +1, +1,+1, +1, -1].
Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC)
• An ECOC matrix M has to satisfy two properties:
– Row separation: any class code word in M should be well-separated
from all other class code words M
– Column separation: any class-partition code word in M should be
well-separated from all other class-partition code words and their
complements.
Binary Classification Problems
BP1 BP2 BP3 BP4 BP5 BP6 BP7
y1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1

y2 +1 +1 +1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Classes

y3 +1 -1 -1 +1 +1 -1 -1

y4 -1 +1 -1 +1 -1 +1 -1

Example. For Exhaustive ECOC:

• the Hamming distance between class code words is 2^(|Y|-2);
• the minimal Hamming distance between class partition code words is 1.
 Error-Correcting Output Codes
• The number K of classes is greater than 2 and
we have a binary classifier L only.
• One-Against- All Strategy:
Binary Classification Problems
BP1 BP2 BP3 BP4
y1 +1 -1 -1 -1
y2 -1 +1 -1 -1
Classes

y3 -1 -1 +1 -1
y4 -1 -1 -1 +1

• We receive K number of binary classifiers. The

final classification rule is majority vote.
 Error-Correcting Output Codes
• One-Against- One Strategy :
Binary Classification Problems

BP1 BP2 BP3 BP4 BP5 BP4

y1 +1 +1 +1 0 0 0
y2 -1 0 0 +1 +1 0
Classes

y3 0 -1 0 -1 0 +1
y4 0 0 -1 0 -1 -1

• We receive K(K-1)/2 number of binary classifiers.

The final classification rule is majority vote.
 Error-Correcting Output Codes
• Minimal Codes:
Binary Classification Problems
BP1 BP2
y1 +1 -1
Classes y2 +1 +1

y3 -1 -1

y4 -1 +1

• We receive log2(K) number of binary classifiers. The

code word determines exactly the class.
• Problem: an error of one binary classifier causes error
of the whole ensemble.
 Methods for Coordinated
Construction of Ensembles

The key idea is to learn complementary classifiers so

that instance classification is realized by taking an
weighted sum of the classifiers. This idea is used in
two methods:
• Boosting
• Stacking.
 Boosting
• Also uses voting/averaging but models are
weighted according to their performance
• Iterative procedure: new models are influenced
by performance of previously built ones
– New model is encouraged to become expert for
instances classified incorrectly by earlier models
– Intuitive justification: models should be experts
that complement each other
• There are several variants of this algorithm
 AdaBoost.M1
classifier generation
Assign equal weight to each training instance.
For each of t iterations:
Learn a classifier from weighted dataset.
Compute error e of classifier on weighted dataset.
If e equal to zero, or e greater or equal to 0.5:
Terminate classifier generation.
For each instance in dataset:
If instance classified correctly by classifier:
Multiply weight of instance by e / (1 - e).
Normalize weight of all instances.

classification
Assign weight of zero to all classes.
For each of the t classifiers:
Add -log(e / (1 - e)) to weight of class predicted
by the classifier.
Return class with highest weight.
 Remarks on Boosting
• Boosting can be applied without weights using re-
sampling with probability determined by weights;
• Boosting decreases exponentially the training error in
the number of iterations;
• Boosting works well if base classifiers are not too
complex and their error doesn’t become too large too
quickly!
• Boosting reduces the bias component of the error of
simple classifiers!
 Stacking
• Uses meta learner instead of voting to
combine predictions of base learners
– Predictions of base learners (level-0 models) are
used as input for meta learner (level-1 model)
• Base learners usually different learning
schemes
• Hard to analyze theoretically: “black magic”
 Stacking

BC1 0

BC2 1
instance1

BCn 1

meta instances BC1 BC2 … BCn Class

instance1 0 1 1 1
 Stacking

BC1 1

BC2 0
instance2

BCn 0

meta instances BC1 BC2 … BCn Class

instance1 0 1 1 1
instance2 1 0 0 0
 Stacking

Meta Classifier

meta instances BC1 BC2 … BCn Class

instance1 0 1 1 1
instance2 1 0 0 0
 Stacking

BC1 0
1
BC2 1
instance Meta Classifier

BCn 1

meta instance BC1 BC2 … BCn

instance 0 1 1
 More on stacking
• Predictions on training data can’t be used to generate
data for level-1 model! The reason is that the level-0
classifier that better fit training data will be chosen by
the level-1 model! Thus,
• k-fold cross-validation-like scheme is employed! An
example for k = 3!
train train test
train test train

test train train

Meta Data test test test

 More on stacking
• If base learners can output probabilities it’s
better to use those as input to meta learner
• Which algorithm to use to generate meta
learner?
– In principle, any learning scheme can be
applied
– David Wolpert: “relatively global, smooth”
model
• Base learners do most of the work
• Reduces risk of overfitting
 Some Practical Advices
• If the classifier is unstable (high variance), then apply
bagging!
• If the classifier is stable and simple (high bias) then
apply boosting!
• If the classifier is stable and complex then apply
randomization injection!
• If you have many classes and a binary classifier then
try error-correcting codes! If it does not work then use
a complex binary classifier!
 Reliable Classification
• Classifiers applied in critical applications with
high misclassification costs need to determine
whether classifications they assign to
individual instances are indeed correct.
• We consider one of the simplest approaches
that is related to ensembles of classifiers:
– Meta-Classifier Approach
The Task of Reliable Classification
Given:
• Instance space X.
• Classifier space H.
• Class set Y.
• Training sets D  X x Y.
Find:
• Classifier h  H, h: X  Y that correctly classifies
future, unseen instances. If h cannot classify an
instance correctly, symbol “?” is returned.
 Meta Classifier Approach

instance BC

BC Class Meta Class

instance1 0 1 0
…………………………………………..
instancen 1 1 1
 Meta Classifier Approach

instance BC

MC

meta instances Meta Class

instance1 0
…………………..
instancen 1
 Meta Classifier Approach
Combined Classifier

instance BC

MC

The classification of the base classifier BC is outputted if the

meta classifier decides that the instance is classified correctly.
Theorem. The precision of the meta classifier equals the
accuracy of the combined classifier on the classified
instances.
Co-Training (WWW application)
• Consider the problem of learning to classify pages
of hypertext from the www, given labeled training
data consist of individual web pages along with
their correct classifications.
• The task of classifying a web page can be done by
considering just the words on the web page, and
the words on hyperlinks that point to the web
page.
 Co-Training
Professor Faloutsos my advisor
 The Co-Training algorithm
• Given:
– Set L of labeled training examples
– Set U of unlabeled examples
• Loop:
– Learn hyperlink-based classifier H from L
– Learn full-text classifier F from L
– Allow H to label p positive and n negative
examples from U
– Allow F to label p positive and n negative example
from U
– Add these self-labeled examples to L
 The Self-Training algorithm
• Given:
– Set L of labeled training examples
– Set U of unlabeled examples
• Loop:
– Learn a classifier H from L
– Allow H to label p positive and n negative
examples from U
– Add these self-labeled examples to L
 Learning to Classify Web using
Co-Training
• Mitchell(1999) reported an experiment to co-train
text classifiers that recognize course home pages.
• In experiment, he used 16 labeled examples, 800
unlabeled pages.
• Mitchell(1999) found that the Co-training
algorithm does improve classification accuracy
when learning to classify web pages.
Learning to Classify Web using
Co-Training
 When does Co-Training work?
• When examples are described by
redundantly sufficient features; and
• When the hypothesis spaces corresponding
to the sets of redundantly sufficient features
contain different hypotheses or the learning
algorithms are different.