templateGAM

Generalized additive model (GAM) learner template

Since R2023b

Syntax

t = templateGAM

t = templateGAM(Name=Value)

Description

t = templateGAM returns a generalized additive learner template suitable for training a classification or regression model.

t = templateGAM(Name=Value) returns a template with additional options specified by one or more name-value arguments. For example, you can specify the number of trees per linear term or the number of trees per interaction term.

If you specify the type of model by using the Type name-value argument, then the display of t in the Command Window shows all options as empty ([]), except those that you specify using name-value arguments. If you do not specify the type of model, then the display suppresses the empty options. During training, the software uses default values for empty options.

Examples

Create GAM Template for Classification

Create a template for a GAM classifier.

t = templateGAM(Type="classification")

t = 
Fit template for classification GAM.

                           NumPrint: []
                          MaxPValue: []
      InitialLearnRateForPredictors: []
    InitialLearnRateForInteractions: []
               NumTreesPerPredictor: []
             NumTreesPerInteraction: []
           MaxNumSplitsPerPredictor: []
         MaxNumSplitsPerInteraction: []
                     VerbosityLevel: []
                       Interactions: []
                            Version: 1
                             Method: 'GAM'
                               Type: 'classification'

t is a template object for a GAM learner. All properties of the template object are empty except Method and Type. When you pass t to a training function, the software sets the empty properties to their respective default values.

Name-Value Arguments

Specify optional pairs of arguments as Name1=Value1,...,NameN=ValueN, where Name is the argument name and Value is the corresponding value. Name-value arguments must appear after other arguments, but the order of the pairs does not matter.

Example: t=templateGAM(Type="regression") creates a GAM learner template for regression.

GAM Classification and Regression Options

InitialLearnRateForInteractions — Initial learning rate of gradient boosting for interaction terms

1 (default) | numeric scalar in (0,1]

Initial learning rate of gradient boosting for interaction terms, specified as a numeric scalar in the interval (0,1].

For each boosting iteration for interaction trees, the software starts fitting with the initial learning rate. The function halves the learning rate until it finds a rate that improves the model fit.

Training a model using a small learning rate requires more learning iterations, but often achieves better accuracy.

For more details about gradient boosting, see Gradient Boosting Algorithm.

Example: InitialLearnRateForInteractions=0.1

Data Types: single | double

InitialLearnRateForPredictors — Initial learning rate of gradient boosting for linear terms

1 (default) | numeric scalar in (0,1]

Initial learning rate of gradient boosting for linear terms, specified as a numeric scalar in the interval (0,1].

For each boosting iteration for predictor trees, the software starts fitting with the initial learning rate. The function halves the learning rate until it finds a rate that improves the model fit.

Training a model using a small learning rate requires more learning iterations, but often achieves better accuracy.

For more details about gradient boosting, see Gradient Boosting Algorithm.

Example: InitialLearnRateForPredictors=0.1

Data Types: single | double

Interactions — Number or list of the interaction terms

0 (default) | nonnegative integer scalar | logical matrix | "all"

Number or list of interaction terms to include in the candidate set S, specified as a nonnegative integer scalar, a logical matrix, or "all".

• Number of interaction terms, specified as a nonnegative integer — S includes the specified number of important interaction terms, selected based on the p-values of the terms.

• List of interaction terms, specified as a logical matrix — S includes the terms specified by a t-by-p logical matrix, where t is the number of interaction terms, and p is the number of predictors used to train the model. For example, logical([1 1 0; 0 1 1]) represents two pairs of interaction terms: a pair of the first and second predictors, and a pair of the second and third predictors.

  If the software uses a subset of input variables as predictors, then the function indexes the predictors using only the subset. That is, the column indexes of the logical matrix do not count the response and observation weight variables. The indexes also do not count any variables not used by the function.

• "all" — S includes all possible pairs of interaction terms, which is p*(p – 1)/2 number of terms in total.

Among the interaction terms in S, the software identifies those whose p-values are not greater than the MaxPValue value and uses them to build a set of interaction trees. Use the default value (MaxPValue=1) to build interaction trees using all terms in S.

Example: Interactions="all"

Data Types: single | double | logical | char | string

MaxNumSplitsPerInteraction — Maximum number of decision splits per interaction tree

4 (default) | positive integer scalar

Maximum number of decision splits (or branch nodes) per interaction tree (boosted tree for an interaction term), specified as a positive integer scalar.

Example: MaxNumSplitsPerInteraction=5

Data Types: single | double

MaxNumSplitsPerPredictor — Maximum number of decision splits per predictor tree

1 (default) | positive integer scalar

Maximum number of decision splits (or branch nodes) per predictor tree (boosted tree for a linear term), specified as a positive integer scalar. By default, the software uses a tree stump for a predictor tree.

Example: MaxNumSplitsPerPredictor=5

Data Types: single | double

MaxPValue — Maximum p-value for detecting interaction terms

1 (default) | numeric scalar in [0,1]

Maximum p-value for detecting interaction terms, specified as a numeric scalar in the interval [0,1].

The software first finds the candidate set S of interaction terms from Interactions. Then the function identifies the interaction terms whose p-values are not greater than the MaxPValue value and uses them to build a set of interaction trees.

The default value (MaxPValue=1) builds interaction trees for all interaction terms in the candidate set S.

For more details about detecting interaction terms, see Interaction Term Detection.

Example: MaxPValue=0.05

Data Types: single | double

NumTreesPerInteraction — Number of trees per interaction term

100 (default) | positive integer scalar

Number of trees per interaction term, specified as a positive integer scalar.

The NumTreesPerInteraction value is equivalent to the number of gradient boosting iterations for the interaction terms for predictors. For each iteration, the software adds a set of interaction trees to the model, one tree for each interaction term. To learn about the gradient boosting algorithm, see Gradient Boosting Algorithm.

Example: NumTreesPerInteraction=500

Data Types: single | double

NumTreesPerPredictor — Number of trees per linear term

300 (default) | positive integer scalar

Number of trees per linear term, specified as a positive integer scalar.

The NumTreesPerPredictor value is equivalent to the number of gradient boosting iterations for the linear terms for predictors. For each iteration, the software adds a set of predictor trees to the model, one tree for each predictor. To learn about the gradient boosting algorithm, see Gradient Boosting Algorithm.

Example: NumTreesPerPredictor=500

Data Types: single | double

Type — GAM model type

"classification" | "regression"

GAM model type, specified as "classification" or "regression".

Value	Description
"classification"	Create a classification GAM learner template. If you do not specify Type as "classification", the fitting function testckfold sets this value when you pass t to the function.
"regression"	Create a regression GAM learner template. If you do not specify Type as "regression", the fitting function directforecaster sets this value when you pass t to the function.

Example: Type="classification"

Data Types: char | string

Other Classification and Regression Options

NumPrint — Number of iterations between diagnostic message printouts

10 (default) | nonnegative integer scalar

Number of iterations between diagnostic message printouts, specified as a nonnegative integer scalar. This argument is valid only when you specify Verbose as 1.

If you specify Verbose=1 and NumPrint=numPrint, then the software displays diagnostic messages every numPrint iterations in the Command Window.

Example: NumPrint=500

Data Types: single | double

Verbose — Verbosity level

0 (default) | 1 | 2

Verbosity level, specified as 0, 1, or 2. The Verbose value controls the amount of diagnostic information that the software displays in the Command Window.

Value	Description
0	The software displays no information.
1	The software displays diagnostic messages every numPrint iterations, where numPrint is the NumPrint value.
2	The software displays diagnostic messages at every iteration.

Each line of the diagnostic messages shows the information about each boosting iteration and includes the following columns:

• Type — Type of trained trees, 1D (predictor trees, or boosted trees for linear terms for predictors) or 2D (interaction trees, or boosted trees for interaction terms for predictors)

• NumTrees — Number of trees per linear term or interaction term added by templateGAM to the model so far

• Deviance — Deviance of the model

• RelTol — Relative change of model predictions: $${\left({\widehat{y}}_k-{\widehat{y}}_{k-1}\right)}^{\prime }\left({\widehat{y}}_k-{\widehat{y}}_{k-1}\right)/{\widehat{y}}_k{}^{\prime }{\widehat{y}}_k$$, where $${\widehat{y}}_k$$ is a column vector of model predictions at iteration k

• LearnRate — Learning rate used for the current iteration

Example: Verbose=1

Data Types: single | double

Output Arguments

t — GAM learner template

template object

GAM learner template suitable for training GAM classification or regression models, returned as a template object. During training, the software uses default values for empty options.

More About

Deviance

Deviance is a generalization of the residual sum of squares. It measures the goodness of fit compared to the saturated model.

The deviance of a fitted model is twice the difference between the loglikelihoods of the model and the saturated model

-2(logL - logL_s),

where L and L_s are the likelihoods of the fitted model and the saturated model, respectively. The saturated model is the model with the maximum number of parameters that you can estimate.

The software uses the deviance to measure the goodness of fit for the model, and finds a learning rate that reduces the deviance at each iteration. Specify Verbose as 1 or 2 to display the deviance and learning rate in the Command Window.

Algorithms

Gradient Boosting Algorithm

The software fits a generalized additive model (GAM) using a gradient boosting algorithm (Adaptive Logistic Regression).

The software first builds sets of predictor trees (boosted trees for linear terms for predictors) and then builds sets of interaction trees (boosted trees for interaction terms for predictors). The boosting algorithm iterates for at most NumTreesPerPredictor times for predictor trees, and then iterates for at most NumTreesPerInteraction times for interaction trees.

For each boosting iteration, the software builds a set of predictor trees with the initial learning rate InitialLearnRateForPredictors, or builds a set of interaction trees with the initial learning rate InitialLearnRateForInteractions.

• When building a set of trees, the function trains one tree at a time. The function fits a tree to the residual that is the difference between the response and the aggregated prediction from all trees grown previously. To control the boosting learning speed, the function shrinks the tree by the learning rate, and then adds the tree to the model and updates the residual.

  • Updated model = current model + (learning rate)·(new tree)

  • Updated residual = current residual – (learning rate)·(response explained by new tree)

• If adding the set of trees improves the model fit (that is, reduces the deviance of the fit by a value larger than a tolerance), then the software moves to the next iteration.

• Otherwise, the software halves the learning rate and uses it to update the model and residual. The function continues to halve the learning rate until it finds a rate that improves the model fit.

  • If the function cannot find such a learning rate when training predictor trees, then it stops boosting iterations for linear terms and starts boosting iterations for interaction terms.

  • If the function cannot find such a learning rate when training interaction trees, then it terminates the model fitting.

  You can determine why training stopped by checking the ReasonForTermination property of the trained model.

Interaction Term Detection

For each pairwise interaction term x_ix_j (specified by the Interactions name-value argument), the software performs an F-test to examine whether the term is statistically significant.

To speed up the process, the software bins numeric predictors into at most 8 equiprobable bins. The number of bins can be less than 8 if a predictor has fewer than 8 unique values. The F-test examines the null hypothesis that the bins created by x_i and x_j have equal responses versus the alternative that at least one bin has a different response value from the others. A small p-value indicates that differences are significant, which implies that the corresponding interaction term is significant and, therefore, including the term can improve the model fit.

The software builds a set of interaction trees using the terms whose p-values are not greater than the MaxPValue value. You can use the default MaxPValue value 1 to build interaction trees using all terms specified by Interactions.

The software adds interaction terms to the model in the order of importance based on the p-values. Use the Interactions property of the returned model to check the order of the interaction terms added to the model.

Version History

Introduced in R2023b