How can I handle overfitting of a model? - python

I'm using XGBoost model to predict attacks, But I get 100% accuracy, I tried Random Forest as well, and same, I get 100%. How can I handle this ovrefitting problem ?
The steps I followed are:
Data cleaning
Data splitting
Feature scaling
Feature selection
I even tried to change this order, but still get the same thing.
Do you have any idea how to handle this? Thanks

Overfitting occurs when your model becomes too complex for its task. Simply said instead of learning patterns in your data, the model will be able to learn every case it is presented in the training set by heart.
To avoid this, you will have to choose a model that is less complex, in your case reduce the depth of your trees. Split your data in separate train, validation and test sets, then train different models of different complexities. When you evaluate these models, you will notice that its predictive capabilities on the training set will increase with complexity. Initially its capabilities on the validation set will follow until a point is reached where no more increase on the validation set can be achieved. On the contrary, it will likely decrease beyond this point, because you are starting to overfit.
Use this data to find a suitable model, then finally evaluate the model you decided to use by using the test set you have kept aside until now.

Thank you for your clarification, I solved the problem by tuning the hyperparameters eta and max_depth.
param = {
'eta': 0.1,
'max_depth': 1,
'objective': 'multi:softprob',
'num_class': 3}
steps = 20 # The number of training iterations
model = xgb.train(param, D_train, steps)
preds = model.predict(D_test)

Related

how to implement machine learning model (SVC) using training,validation and testing set?

I've divided the data into three sets.
After this, I'm trying to implement this in SVM like this:
I am not sure if it is the correct way of doing it or not, as the difference between the scores I am getting and the ones mentioned in the papers is huge.
The end goal I want to achieve is to get accuracy, precision, and recall for all three sets.
If you are getting huge score that you aren't expecting, it maybe due to an unknown data leak. It all depends on how your data is. e.g., by default train_test_split has shuffle as True. if the data is time sensitive, that means the model has already peaked into future - and therefore this high accuracy.
Try with:
train_test_split(..., shuffle=False)

Is there any rules of thumb for the relation of number of iterations and training size for lightgbm?

When I train a classification model using lightgbm, I usually use validation set and early stopping to determine the number of iterations.
Now I want to combine training and validation set to train a model (so I have more training examples), and use the model to predict the test data, should I change the number of iterations derived from the validation process?
Thanks!
As you said in your comment, this is not comparable to the Deep Learning number of epochs because deep learning is usually stochastic.
With LGBM, all parameters and features being equals, by adding 10% up to 15% more training points, we can expect the trees to look alike: as you have more information your split values will be better, but it is unlikely to drastically change your model (this is less true if you use parameters such as bagging_fraction or if the added points are from a different distribution).
I saw people multiplying the number of iterations by 1.1 (can't find my sources sorry). Intuitively this makes sense to add some trees as you potentially add information. Experimentally this value worked well but the optimal value will be dependent of your model and data.
In a similar problem in deep learning with Keras: I do it by using an early stopper and cross validation with train and validation data, and let the model optimize itself using validation data during trainings.
After each training, I test the model with test data and examine the mean accuracies. In the mean time after each training I save the stopped_epoch from EarlyStopper. If CV scores are satisfying, I take the mean of stopped epochs and do a full training (including all data I have) with the number of mean stopped epochs, and save the model.
I'm not aware of a well-established rule of thumb to do such estimate. As Florian has pointed out, sometimes people rescale the number of iterations obtained from early stopping by a factor. If i remember correctly, typically the factor assumes a linear dependence of the data size and the optimal number of trees. I.e. in the 10-fold cv this would be a rescaling 1.1 factor. But there is no solid justification for this. As Florian also pointed out, the dependence around the optimum is typically reasonably flat, so +- a bit of trees will not have a dramatic effect.
Two suggestions:
do k-fold validation instead of a single train-validation split. This will allow to evaluate how stable the estimate of the optimal number of trees is. If this fluctuates a lot between folds- do not rely on such estimate :)
fix the size of the validation sample and re-train your model with early stopping using gradually increasing training set. This will allow to evaluae the dependence of the number of trees on the sample size and approximate it to the full sample size.

Knowing best model in Neural Network

I trained a model using CNN,
The results are,
Accuracy
Loss
I read from fast.ai, the experts say, a good model has the val_loss is slightly greater than the loss.
My model is different in points, So, Can I take this model as good or I need to train again...
Thank you
it seems that maybe your validation set is "too easy" for the CNN you trained or doesn't represent your problem enough. it's difficult to say witch the amount of information you provided.
I would say, your validation set is not properly chosen. or you could try using crossvalidation to get more insights.
First of all as already pointed out I'd check your data setup: How many data points do the training and the test (validation) data sets contain? And have they been properly chosen?
Additionally, this is an indicator that your model might be underfitting the training data. Generally, you are looking for the "sweet spot" regarding the trade off between predicting your training data well and not overfitting (i.e. doing bad on the test data):
If accuracy on the training data is not high then you might be underfitting (left hand side of the green dashed line). And doing worse on the training data than on the test data is an indication for that (although this case is not being shown in the plot). Therefore, I'd check what happens to your accuracy if you increase the model complexity and fit it better to the training data (moving towards the 'sweet spot' in the illustrative graph).
In contrast if your test data accuracy was low you might be in an overfitting situation (right hand side the green dashed line).

Why does more epochs make my model worse?

Most of my code is based on this article and the issue I'm asking about is evident there, but also in my own testing. It is a sequential model with LSTM layers.
Here is a plotted prediction over real data from a model that was trained with around 20 small data sets for one epoch.
Here is another plot but this time with a model trained on more data for 10 epochs.
What causes this and how can I fix it? Also that first link I sent shows the same result at the bottom - 1 epoch does great and 3500 epochs is terrible.
Furthermore, when I run a training session for the higher data count but with only 1 epoch, I get identical results to the second plot.
What could be causing this issue?
A few questions:
Is this graph for training data or validation data?
Do you consider it better because:
The graph seems cool?
You actually have a better "loss" value?
If so, was it training loss?
Or validation loss?
Cool graph
The early graph seems interesting, indeed, but take a close look at it:
I clearly see huge predicted valleys where the expected data should be a peak
Is this really better? It sounds like a random wave that is completely out of phase, meaning that a straight line would indeed represent a better loss than this.
Take a look a the "training loss", this is what can surely tell you if your model is better or not.
If this is the case and your model isn't reaching the desired output, then you should probably make a more capable model (more layers, more units, a different method, etc.). But be aware that many datasets are simply too random to be learned, no matter how good the model.
Overfitting - Training loss gets better, but validation loss gets worse
In case you actually have a better training loss. Ok, so your model is indeed getting better.
Are you plotting training data? - Then this straight line is actually better than a wave out of phase
Are you plotting validation data?
What is happening with the validation loss? Better or worse?
If your "validation" loss is getting worse, your model is overfitting. It's memorizing the training data instead of learning generally. You need a less capable model, or a lot of "dropout".
Often, there is an optimal point where the validation loss stops going down, while the training loss keeps going down. This is the point to stop training if you're overfitting. Read about the EarlyStopping callback in keras documentation.
Bad learning rate - Training loss is going up indefinitely
If your training loss is going up, then you've got a real problem there, either a bug, a badly prepared calculation somewhere if you're using custom layers, or simply a learning rate that is too big.
Reduce the learning rate (divide it by 10, or 100), create and compile a "new" model and restart training.
Another problem?
Then you need to detail your question properly.

training loss decreases while dev loss increases

I'm observing the following patterns in a one-layer CNN, binary classification model:
Training loss decreases while dev loss increased with number of steps
Training accuracy increases while dev accuracy decreases with number of steps
Based on past SO questions and literature review, it seems that these patterns are indicative of over-fitting (the model performs well in training, but cannot generalize to new examples).
The graphs below illustrate the loss and accuracy with respect to the number of steps in training.
In both,
The orange line represents the summary of the dev set performance.
The blue line represents the summary of the training set performance.
Loss:
Accuracy:
Traditional remedies I've considered, and my observations about them:
Adding L2 Regularization : I've tried many coefficients of L2 regularization -- from 0.0 to 4.5; all of these tests yield a similar pattern by the 5,000th step in both loss and accuracy.
Cross validation : It seems that the role of cross-validation is widely mis-understood online. As this answer states, cross-validation is for model checking, not model building. Indeed, cross-validation would be a way to check if the model generalizes well. And actually, the graphs I show are from one fold of a 4-fold cross-validation. If I observe a similar pattern in the loss/accuracy in all the folds, what other insight does cross-validation offer other than the confirmation that the model does not generalize well?
Early stopping : This would seem the most intuitive, but the loss graph seems to indicate that the loss levels out only after a divergence in the dev set loss is observed; the starting point of this early stop, then, doesn't seem easy to decide.
Data : The amount of labeled data I have available is limited, so training on more data is not an option right now.
All this said, what I am asking is:
If the patterns observed in the loss and accuracy are indeed indicative of over-fitting, are there any other methods to counteract over-fitting that I haven't considered?
If these patterns are not indicative of over-fitting, what else could they mean?
Thanks -- any insight would be much appreciated.
I think that you are totally on the right track. Looks like classic over-fitting.
One option is adding dropout if you don't already have it. It falls into the category of regularization, but it is more commonly used now then L1 and L2 regularization.
Changing the model architcture could get better results but it's hard to say what specifically would be best. It could help to make it deeper with more layers and possibly some pooling layers. It will likely still overfit but you might get a higher accuracy on the dev set before that happens.
Getting more data may be one of the best things you could do. If you can't get more data you can try to augment the data. You can also try cleaning the data to remove noise which can help prevent the model from fitting to noise.
You may ultimately want to try setting up a hyperparameter optimization search. This, however, can take a while on neural nets which take a while to train. Make sure you remove a test set before hyper parameter tuning.

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