An up-to-date, self-contained introduction to a state-of-the-art machine learning approach, Ensemble Methods: Foundations and Algorithms shows how these accurate methods are used in real-world tasks. It gives you the necessary groundwork to carry out further research in this evolving field. After presenting background and terminology, the book covers the main algorithms and theories, including Boosting, Bagging, Random Forest, averaging and voting schemes, the Stacking method, mixture of experts, and diversity measures. It also discusses multiclass extension, noise tolerance, error-ambiguity and bias-variance decompositions, and recent progress in information theoretic diversity. Moving on to more advanced topics, the author explains how to achieve better performance through ensemble pruning and how to generate better clustering results by combining multiple clusterings. In addition, he describes developments of ensemble methods in semi-supervised learning, active learning, cost-sensitive learning, class-imbalance learning, and comprehensibility enhancement.

Ensemble machine learning combines the power of multiple machine learning approaches, working together to deliver models that are highly performant and highly accurate. Inside Ensemble Methods for Machine Learning you will find: Methods for classification, regression, and recommendations Sophisticated off-the-shelf ensemble implementations Random forests, boosting, and gradient boosting Feature engineering and ensemble diversity Interpretability and explainability for ensemble methods Ensemble machine learning trains a diverse group of machine learning models to work together, aggregating their output to deliver richer results than a single model. Now in Ensemble Methods for Machine Learning you’ll discover core ensemble methods that have proven records in both data science competitions and real-world applications. Hands-on case studies show you how each algorithm works in production. By the time you're done, you'll know the benefits, limitations, and practical methods of applying ensemble machine learning to real-world data, and be ready to build more explainable ML systems. About the Technology Automatically compare, contrast, and blend the output from multiple models to squeeze the best results from your data. Ensemble machine learning applies a “wisdom of crowds” method that dodges the inaccuracies and limitations of a single model. By basing responses on multiple perspectives, this innovative approach can deliver robust predictions even without massive datasets. About the Book Ensemble Methods for Machine Learning teaches you practical techniques for applying multiple ML approaches simultaneously. Each chapter contains a unique case study that demonstrates a fully functional ensemble method, with examples including medical diagnosis, sentiment analysis, handwriting classification, and more. There’s no complex math or theory—you’ll learn in a visuals-first manner, with ample code for easy experimentation! What’s Inside Bagging, boosting, and gradient boosting Methods for classification, regression, and retrieval Interpretability and explainability for ensemble methods Feature engineering and ensemble diversity About the Reader For Python programmers with machine learning experience. About the Author Gautam Kunapuli has over 15 years of experience in academia and the machine learning industry. Table of Contents PART 1 - THE BASICS OF ENSEMBLES 1 Ensemble methods: Hype or hallelujah? PART 2 - ESSENTIAL ENSEMBLE METHODS 2 Homogeneous parallel ensembles: Bagging and random forests 3 Heterogeneous parallel ensembles: Combining strong learners 4 Sequential ensembles: Adaptive boosting 5 Sequential ensembles: Gradient boosting 6 Sequential ensembles: Newton boosting PART 3 - ENSEMBLES IN THE WILD: ADAPTING ENSEMBLE METHODS TO YOUR DATA 7 Learning with continuous and count labels 8 Learning with categorical features 9 Explaining your ensembles

It is common wisdom that gathering a variety of views and inputs improves the process of decision making, and, indeed, underpins a democratic society. Dubbed “ensemble learning” by researchers in computational intelligence and machine learning, it is known to improve a decision system’s robustness and accuracy. Now, fresh developments are allowing researchers to unleash the power of ensemble learning in an increasing range of real-world applications. Ensemble learning algorithms such as “boosting” and “random forest” facilitate solutions to key computational issues such as face recognition and are now being applied in areas as diverse as object tracking and bioinformatics. Responding to a shortage of literature dedicated to the topic, this volume offers comprehensive coverage of state-of-the-art ensemble learning techniques, including the random forest skeleton tracking algorithm in the Xbox Kinect sensor, which bypasses the need for game controllers. At once a solid theoretical study and a practical guide, the volume is a windfall for researchers and practitioners alike.

"Ensemble methods have been called the most influential development in Data Mining and Machine Learning in the past decade. They combine multiple models into one usually more accurate than the best of its components. Ensembles can provide a critical boost to industrial challenges -- from investment timing to drug discovery, and fraud detection to recommendation systems -- where predictive accuracy is more vital than model interpretability. Ensembles are useful with all modeling algorithms, but this book focuses on decision trees to explain them most clearly. After describing trees and their strengths and weaknesses, the authors provide an overview of regularization -- today understood to be a key reason for the superior performance of modern ensembling algorithms. The book continues with a clear description of two recent developments: Importance Sampling (IS) and Rule Ensembles (RE). IS reveals classic ensemble methods -- bagging, random forests, and boosting -- to be special cases of a single algorithm, thereby showing how to improve their accuracy and speed. REs are linear rule models derived from decision tree ensembles. They are the most interpretable version of ensembles, which is essential to applications such as credit scoring and fault diagnosis. Lastly, the authors explain the paradox of how ensembles achieve greater accuracy on new data despite their (apparently much greater) complexity."--Publisher's website.

1. Introduction to pattern classification. 1.1. Pattern classification. 1.2. Induction algorithms. 1.3. Rule induction. 1.4. Decision trees. 1.5. Bayesian methods. 1.6. Other induction methods -- 2. Introduction to ensemble learning. 2.1. Back to the roots. 2.2. The wisdom of crowds. 2.3. The bagging algorithm. 2.4. The boosting algorithm. 2.5. The AdaBoost algorithm. 2.6. No free lunch theorem and ensemble learning. 2.7. Bias-variance decomposition and ensemble learning. 2.8. Occam's razor and ensemble learning. 2.9. Classifier dependency. 2.10. Ensemble methods for advanced classification tasks -- 3. Ensemble classification. 3.1. Fusions methods. 3.2. Selecting classification. 3.3. Mixture of experts and meta learning -- 4. Ensemble diversity. 4.1. Overview. 4.2. Manipulating the inducer. 4.3. Manipulating the training samples. 4.4. Manipulating the target attribute representation. 4.5. Partitioning the search space. 4.6. Multi-inducers. 4.7. Measuring the diversity -- 5. Ensemble selection. 5.1. Ensemble selection. 5.2. Pre selection of the ensemble size. 5.3. Selection of the ensemble size while training. 5.4. Pruning - post selection of the ensemble size -- 6. Error correcting output codes. 6.1. Code-matrix decomposition of multiclass problems. 6.2. Type I - training an ensemble given a code-matrix. 6.3. Type II - adapting code-matrices to the multiclass problems -- 7. Evaluating ensembles of classifiers. 7.1. Generalization error. 7.2. Computational complexity. 7.3. Interpretability of the resulting ensemble. 7.4. Scalability to large datasets. 7.5. Robustness. 7.6. Stability. 7.7. Flexibility. 7.8. Usability. 7.9. Software availability. 7.10. Which ensemble method should be used?

Implement machine learning algorithms to build ensemble models using Keras, H2O, Scikit-Learn, Pandas and more Key FeaturesApply popular machine learning algorithms using a recipe-based approachImplement boosting, bagging, and stacking ensemble methods to improve machine learning modelsDiscover real-world ensemble applications and encounter complex challenges in Kaggle competitionsBook Description Ensemble modeling is an approach used to improve the performance of machine learning models. It combines two or more similar or dissimilar machine learning algorithms to deliver superior intellectual powers. This book will help you to implement popular machine learning algorithms to cover different paradigms of ensemble machine learning such as boosting, bagging, and stacking. The Ensemble Machine Learning Cookbook will start by getting you acquainted with the basics of ensemble techniques and exploratory data analysis. You'll then learn to implement tasks related to statistical and machine learning algorithms to understand the ensemble of multiple heterogeneous algorithms. It will also ensure that you don't miss out on key topics, such as like resampling methods. As you progress, you’ll get a better understanding of bagging, boosting, stacking, and working with the Random Forest algorithm using real-world examples. The book will highlight how these ensemble methods use multiple models to improve machine learning results, as compared to a single model. In the concluding chapters, you'll delve into advanced ensemble models using neural networks, natural language processing, and more. You’ll also be able to implement models such as fraud detection, text categorization, and sentiment analysis. By the end of this book, you'll be able to harness ensemble techniques and the working mechanisms of machine learning algorithms to build intelligent models using individual recipes. What you will learnUnderstand how to use machine learning algorithms for regression and classification problemsImplement ensemble techniques such as averaging, weighted averaging, and max-votingGet to grips with advanced ensemble methods, such as bootstrapping, bagging, and stackingUse Random Forest for tasks such as classification and regressionImplement an ensemble of homogeneous and heterogeneous machine learning algorithmsLearn and implement various boosting techniques, such as AdaBoost, Gradient Boosting Machine, and XGBoostWho this book is for This book is designed for data scientists, machine learning developers, and deep learning enthusiasts who want to delve into machine learning algorithms to build powerful ensemble models. Working knowledge of Python programming and basic statistics is a must to help you grasp the concepts in the book.

Explore powerful R packages to create predictive models using ensemble methods Key Features Implement machine learning algorithms to build ensemble-efficient models Explore powerful R packages to create predictive models using ensemble methods Learn to build ensemble models on large datasets using a practical approach Book Description Ensemble techniques are used for combining two or more similar or dissimilar machine learning algorithms to create a stronger model. Such a model delivers superior prediction power and can give your datasets a boost in accuracy. Hands-On Ensemble Learning with R begins with the important statistical resampling methods. You will then walk through the central trilogy of ensemble techniques – bagging, random forest, and boosting – then you'll learn how they can be used to provide greater accuracy on large datasets using popular R packages. You will learn how to combine model predictions using different machine learning algorithms to build ensemble models. In addition to this, you will explore how to improve the performance of your ensemble models. By the end of this book, you will have learned how machine learning algorithms can be combined to reduce common problems and build simple efficient ensemble models with the help of real-world examples. What you will learn Carry out an essential review of re-sampling methods, bootstrap, and jackknife Explore the key ensemble methods: bagging, random forests, and boosting Use multiple algorithms to make strong predictive models Enjoy a comprehensive treatment of boosting methods Supplement methods with statistical tests, such as ROC Walk through data structures in classification, regression, survival, and time series data Use the supplied R code to implement ensemble methods Learn stacking method to combine heterogeneous machine learning models Who this book is for This book is for you if you are a data scientist or machine learning developer who wants to implement machine learning techniques by building ensemble models with the power of R. You will learn how to combine different machine learning algorithms to perform efficient data processing. Basic knowledge of machine learning techniques and programming knowledge of R would be an added advantage.