In this example, we execute a Random Forest Classifier (rfc) model in order to classify plant species based on characteristic measurements of petals/sepals. We will not go into the mathematical details of the model. A few resources are listed below if you are interested in a deeper dive.
Briefly, a Random Forest method is a meta classifier or an exmaple of an ensemble method. It takes decision trees built on various samples of the training dataset with possibly different parameters, and sort of averages them to yield the final model. The benefit of using this method is that it can be more accurate while at the same time being less prone to overfitting than a decision tree classifier.
This script assumes that you have reviewed the following (or already have this know-how):
First we import a the iris dataset, and print a description of it so we can examine what is in the data. Remember in order to execute a 'cell' like the one below, you can 1) click on it and run it using the run button above or 2) click in the cell and hit shift+enter.
import pandas as pd
from sklearn.datasets import load_iris
iris = load_iris()
print(iris.data.shape) #get (numer of rows, number of columns or 'features')
print(iris.DESCR) #get a description of the dataset
(150, 4)
.. _iris_dataset:
Iris plants dataset
--------------------
**Data Set Characteristics:**
:Number of Instances: 150 (50 in each of three classes)
:Number of Attributes: 4 numeric, predictive attributes and the class
:Attribute Information:
- sepal length in cm
- sepal width in cm
- petal length in cm
- petal width in cm
- class:
- Iris-Setosa
- Iris-Versicolour
- Iris-Virginica
:Summary Statistics:
============== ==== ==== ======= ===== ====================
Min Max Mean SD Class Correlation
============== ==== ==== ======= ===== ====================
sepal length: 4.3 7.9 5.84 0.83 0.7826
sepal width: 2.0 4.4 3.05 0.43 -0.4194
petal length: 1.0 6.9 3.76 1.76 0.9490 (high!)
petal width: 0.1 2.5 1.20 0.76 0.9565 (high!)
============== ==== ==== ======= ===== ====================
:Missing Attribute Values: None
:Class Distribution: 33.3% for each of 3 classes.
:Creator: R.A. Fisher
:Donor: Michael Marshall (MARSHALL%PLU@io.arc.nasa.gov)
:Date: July, 1988
The famous Iris database, first used by Sir R.A. Fisher. The dataset is taken
from Fisher's paper. Note that it's the same as in R, but not as in the UCI
Machine Learning Repository, which has two wrong data points.
This is perhaps the best known database to be found in the
pattern recognition literature. Fisher's paper is a classic in the field and
is referenced frequently to this day. (See Duda & Hart, for example.) The
data set contains 3 classes of 50 instances each, where each class refers to a
type of iris plant. One class is linearly separable from the other 2; the
latter are NOT linearly separable from each other.
.. topic:: References
- Fisher, R.A. "The use of multiple measurements in taxonomic problems"
Annual Eugenics, 7, Part II, 179-188 (1936); also in "Contributions to
Mathematical Statistics" (John Wiley, NY, 1950).
- Duda, R.O., & Hart, P.E. (1973) Pattern Classification and Scene Analysis.
(Q327.D83) John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-22361-1. See page 218.
- Dasarathy, B.V. (1980) "Nosing Around the Neighborhood: A New System
Structure and Classification Rule for Recognition in Partially Exposed
Environments". IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine
Intelligence, Vol. PAMI-2, No. 1, 67-71.
- Gates, G.W. (1972) "The Reduced Nearest Neighbor Rule". IEEE Transactions
on Information Theory, May 1972, 431-433.
- See also: 1988 MLC Proceedings, 54-64. Cheeseman et al"s AUTOCLASS II
conceptual clustering system finds 3 classes in the data.
- Many, many more ...
data = pd.DataFrame(iris.data, columns=iris.feature_names)
data.head()
| sepal length (cm) | sepal width (cm) | petal length (cm) | petal width (cm) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 5.1 | 3.5 | 1.4 | 0.2 |
| 1 | 4.9 | 3.0 | 1.4 | 0.2 |
| 2 | 4.7 | 3.2 | 1.3 | 0.2 |
| 3 | 4.6 | 3.1 | 1.5 | 0.2 |
| 4 | 5.0 | 3.6 | 1.4 | 0.2 |
data['Class'] = pd.Series(data=iris.target_names[iris.target], index=data.index)
data.describe() #get some basic stats on the dataset
| sepal length (cm) | sepal width (cm) | petal length (cm) | petal width (cm) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| count | 150.000000 | 150.000000 | 150.000000 | 150.000000 |
| mean | 5.843333 | 3.057333 | 3.758000 | 1.199333 |
| std | 0.828066 | 0.435866 | 1.765298 | 0.762238 |
| min | 4.300000 | 2.000000 | 1.000000 | 0.100000 |
| 25% | 5.100000 | 2.800000 | 1.600000 | 0.300000 |
| 50% | 5.800000 | 3.000000 | 4.350000 | 1.300000 |
| 75% | 6.400000 | 3.300000 | 5.100000 | 1.800000 |
| max | 7.900000 | 4.400000 | 6.900000 | 2.500000 |
#Load the independent variables (the x1, x2, etc.) into a dataframe object called 'X'. Similarly for the dependent variable 'Y'
X = data.drop('Class', axis = 1) #define independent predictor set (excluding the dependent variable)
Y = data['Class'] #define the target values (i.e. the dependent variable)
We randomly select a quarter of our data to be the 'test' dataset. This way we can train our model on remaining data, and test it on data not used in training. Once we are confident that our model is generalizing well (i.e. there is not a HUGE different in the training/testing performance, or in other words, not obviously overfitting), then we can use all of our data to train the model.
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
X_train, X_test, Y_train, Y_test = train_test_split(X, Y, test_size = 0.25, random_state = 5)
print(X_train.shape)
print(X_test.shape)
print(Y_train.shape)
print(Y_test.shape)
(112, 4) (38, 4) (112,) (38,)
Briefly, a Random Forest method is a meta classifier or an exmaple of an ensemble method. It takes decision trees built on various samples of the training dataset with possibly different parameters, and sort of averages them to yield the final model. The benefit of using this method is that it can be more accurate while at the same time being less prone to overfitting than a decision tree classifier.
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
clf = RandomForestClassifier(max_depth=2,random_state=0)
clf = clf.fit(X_train, Y_train)
print('Score, Training, dtc: ', clf.score(X_train,Y_train)) #accuracy score on training data
print('Score, Testing, dtc: ', clf.score(X_test,Y_test))
Score, Training, dtc: 0.9642857142857143 Score, Testing, dtc: 0.9210526315789473
Note that while the decision tree classifier had the training score at 1.0 (i.e. it overfit), the random forest performance is more consistent across training and testing datasets. The testing performance is a little better than that for the decision tree classifier.Decision tree classifier:
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