Posit AI Weblog: TensorFlow function columns: Remodeling your information recipes-style

It’s 2019; nobody doubts the effectiveness of deep studying in laptop imaginative and prescient. Or pure language processing. With “regular,” Excel-style, a.ok.a. tabular information nevertheless, the state of affairs is totally different.

Principally there are two circumstances: One, you’ve numeric information solely. Then, creating the community is easy, and all can be about optimization and hyperparameter search. Two, you’ve a mixture of numeric and categorical information, the place categorical might be something from ordered-numeric to symbolic (e.g., textual content). On this latter case, with categorical information getting into the image, there’s an especially good concept you can also make use of: embed what are equidistant symbols right into a high-dimensional, numeric illustration. In that new illustration, we will outline a distance metric that permits us to make statements like “biking is nearer to operating than to baseball,” or “😃 is nearer to 😂 than to 😠.” When not coping with language information, this system is known as entity embeddings.

Good as this sounds, why don’t we see entity embeddings used on a regular basis? Nicely, making a Keras community that processes a mixture of numeric and categorical information used to require a little bit of an effort. With TensorFlow’s new function columns, usable from R by means of a mixture of tfdatasets and keras, there’s a a lot simpler strategy to obtain this. What’s extra, tfdatasets follows the favored recipes idiom to initialize, refine, and apply a function specification %>%-style. And at last, there are ready-made steps for bucketizing a numeric column, or hashing it, or creating crossed columns to seize interactions.

This put up introduces function specs ranging from a situation the place they don’t exist: principally, the established order till very just lately. Think about you’ve a dataset like that from the Porto Seguro automobile insurance coverage competitors the place a number of the columns are numeric, and a few are categorical. You wish to prepare a totally related community on it, with all categorical columns fed into embedding layers. How are you going to do this? We then distinction this with the function spec manner, which makes issues lots simpler – particularly when there’s a variety of categorical columns.
In a second utilized instance, we reveal the usage of crossed columns on the rugged dataset from Richard McElreath’s rethinking bundle. Right here, we additionally direct consideration to a couple technical particulars which are price realizing about.

Mixing numeric information and embeddings, the pre-feature-spec manner

Our first instance dataset is taken from Kaggle. Two years in the past, Brazilian automobile insurance coverage firm Porto Seguro requested contributors to foretell how possible it’s a automobile proprietor will file a declare primarily based on a mixture of traits collected throughout the earlier 12 months. The dataset is relatively giant – there are ~ 600,000 rows within the coaching set, with 57 predictors. Amongst others, options are named in order to point the kind of the info – binary, categorical, or steady/ordinal.
Whereas it’s frequent in competitions to attempt to reverse-engineer column meanings, right here we simply make use of the kind of the info, and see how far that will get us.

Concretely, this implies we wish to

  • use binary options simply the best way they’re, as zeroes and ones,
  • scale the remaining numeric options to imply 0 and variance 1, and
  • embed the explicit variables (every one by itself).

We’ll then outline a dense community to foretell goal, the binary consequence. So first, let’s see how we may get our information into form, in addition to construct up the community, in a “guide,” pre-feature-columns manner.

When loading libraries, we already use the variations we’ll want very quickly: Tensorflow 2 (>= beta 1), and the event (= Github) variations of tfdatasets and keras:

On this first model of getting ready the info, we make our lives simpler by assigning totally different R sorts, primarily based on what the options signify (categorical, binary, or numeric qualities):

# downloaded from https://www.kaggle.com/c/porto-seguro-safe-driver-prediction/information
path <- "prepare.csv"

porto <- read_csv(path) %>%
  choose(-id) %>%
  # to acquire variety of distinctive ranges, later
  mutate_at(vars(ends_with("cat")), issue) %>%
  # to simply maintain them aside from the non-binary numeric information
  mutate_at(vars(ends_with("bin")), as.integer)

porto %>% glimpse()
Observations: 595,212
Variables: 58
$ goal         <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_01      <dbl> 2, 1, 5, 0, 0, 5, 2, 5, 5, 1, 5, 2, 2, 1, 5, 5,…
$ ps_ind_02_cat  <fct> 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_ind_03      <dbl> 5, 7, 9, 2, 0, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 1, 3, 11, 3…
$ ps_ind_04_cat  <fct> 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1,…
$ ps_ind_05_cat  <fct> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_06_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_07_bin  <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1,…
$ ps_ind_08_bin  <int> 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_09_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0,…
$ ps_ind_10_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_11_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_12_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_13_bin  <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_14      <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_15      <dbl> 11, 3, 12, 8, 9, 6, 8, 13, 6, 4, 3, 9, 10, 12, …
$ ps_ind_16_bin  <int> 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_17_bin  <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_ind_18_bin  <int> 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1,…
$ ps_reg_01      <dbl> 0.7, 0.8, 0.0, 0.9, 0.7, 0.9, 0.6, 0.7, 0.9, 0.…
$ ps_reg_02      <dbl> 0.2, 0.4, 0.0, 0.2, 0.6, 1.8, 0.1, 0.4, 0.7, 1.…
$ ps_reg_03      <dbl> 0.7180703, 0.7660777, -1.0000000, 0.5809475, 0.…
$ ps_car_01_cat  <fct> 10, 11, 7, 7, 11, 10, 6, 11, 10, 11, 11, 11, 6,…
$ ps_car_02_cat  <fct> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_car_03_cat  <fct> -1, -1, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1…
$ ps_car_04_cat  <fct> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9,…
$ ps_car_05_cat  <fct> 1, -1, -1, 1, -1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 1,…
$ ps_car_06_cat  <fct> 4, 11, 14, 11, 14, 14, 11, 11, 14, 14, 13, 11, …
$ ps_car_07_cat  <fct> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_car_08_cat  <fct> 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0,…
$ ps_car_09_cat  <fct> 0, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 2, 0, 2, 2, 2, 0,…
$ ps_car_10_cat  <fct> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_car_11_cat  <fct> 12, 19, 60, 104, 82, 104, 99, 30, 68, 104, 20, …
$ ps_car_11      <dbl> 2, 3, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 1, 2,…
$ ps_car_12      <dbl> 0.4000000, 0.3162278, 0.3162278, 0.3741657, 0.3…
$ ps_car_13      <dbl> 0.8836789, 0.6188165, 0.6415857, 0.5429488, 0.5…
$ ps_car_14      <dbl> 0.3708099, 0.3887158, 0.3472751, 0.2949576, 0.3…
$ ps_car_15      <dbl> 3.605551, 2.449490, 3.316625, 2.000000, 2.00000…
$ ps_calc_01     <dbl> 0.6, 0.3, 0.5, 0.6, 0.4, 0.7, 0.2, 0.1, 0.9, 0.…
$ ps_calc_02     <dbl> 0.5, 0.1, 0.7, 0.9, 0.6, 0.8, 0.6, 0.5, 0.8, 0.…
$ ps_calc_03     <dbl> 0.2, 0.3, 0.1, 0.1, 0.0, 0.4, 0.5, 0.1, 0.6, 0.…
$ ps_calc_04     <dbl> 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2,…
$ ps_calc_05     <dbl> 1, 1, 2, 4, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_calc_06     <dbl> 10, 9, 9, 7, 6, 8, 8, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10, 8, …
$ ps_calc_07     <dbl> 1, 5, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 5,…
$ ps_calc_08     <dbl> 10, 8, 8, 8, 10, 11, 8, 6, 9, 9, 9, 10, 11, 8, …
$ ps_calc_09     <dbl> 1, 1, 2, 4, 2, 3, 3, 1, 4, 1, 4, 1, 1, 3, 3, 2,…
$ ps_calc_10     <dbl> 5, 7, 7, 2, 12, 8, 10, 13, 11, 11, 7, 8, 9, 8, …
$ ps_calc_11     <dbl> 9, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 3, 7, 4, 3, 6, 9, 6, 2, 4, 5,…
$ ps_calc_12     <dbl> 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 5, 3, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2,…
$ ps_calc_13     <dbl> 5, 1, 7, 4, 1, 0, 0, 3, 1, 0, 3, 1, 3, 4, 3, 6,…
$ ps_calc_14     <dbl> 8, 9, 7, 9, 3, 9, 10, 6, 5, 6, 6, 10, 8, 3, 9, …
$ ps_calc_15_bin <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_calc_16_bin <int> 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1,…
$ ps_calc_17_bin <int> 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1,…
$ ps_calc_18_bin <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0,…
$ ps_calc_19_bin <int> 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1,…
$ ps_calc_20_bin <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0,…

We break up off 25% for validation.

# train-test break up
id_training <- pattern.int(nrow(porto), measurement = 0.75*nrow(porto))

x_train <- porto[id_training,] %>% choose(-goal)
x_test <- porto[-id_training,] %>% choose(-goal)
y_train <- porto[id_training, "target"]
y_test <- porto[-id_training, "target"] 

The one factor we wish to do to the information earlier than defining the community is scaling the numeric options. Binary and categorical options can keep as is, with the minor correction that for the explicit ones, we’ll truly go the community the numeric illustration of the issue information.

Right here is the scaling.

train_means <- colMeans(x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)]) %>% unname()
train_sds <- apply(x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)], 2, sd)  %>% unname()
train_sds[train_sds == 0] <- 0.000001

x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)] <- sweep(
  x_train[sapply(x_train, is.double)],
  2,
  train_means
  ) %>%
  sweep(2, train_sds, "/")
x_test[sapply(x_test, is.double)] <- sweep(
  x_test[sapply(x_test, is.double)],
  2,
  train_means
  ) %>%
  sweep(2, train_sds, "/")

When constructing the community, we have to specify the enter and output dimensionalities for the embedding layers. Enter dimensionality refers back to the variety of totally different symbols that “are available”; in NLP duties this may be the vocabulary measurement whereas right here, it’s merely the variety of values a variable can take.
Output dimensionality, the capability of the inner illustration, can then be calculated primarily based on some heuristic. Beneath, we’ll observe a preferred rule of thumb that takes the sq. root of the dimensionality of the enter.

In order half one of many community, right here we construct up the embedding layers in a loop, every wired to the enter layer that feeds it:

# variety of ranges per issue, required to specify enter dimensionality for
# the embedding layers
n_levels_in <- map(x_train %>% select_if(is.issue), compose(size, ranges)) %>%
  unlist() 

# output dimensionality for the embedding layers, want +1 as a result of Python is 0-based
n_levels_out <- n_levels_in %>% sqrt() %>% trunc() %>% `+`(1)

# every embedding layer will get its personal enter layer
cat_inputs <- map(n_levels_in, operate(l) layer_input(form = 1)) %>%
  unname()

# assemble the embedding layers, connecting every to its enter
embedding_layers <- vector(mode = "listing", size = size(cat_inputs))
for (i in 1:size(cat_inputs)) {
  embedding_layer <-  cat_inputs[[i]] %>% 
    layer_embedding(input_dim = n_levels_in[[i]] + 1, output_dim = n_levels_out[[i]]) %>%
    layer_flatten()
  embedding_layers[[i]] <- embedding_layer
}

In case you had been questioning concerning the flatten layer following every embedding: We have to squeeze out the third dimension (launched by the embedding layers) from the tensors, successfully rendering them rank-2.
That’s as a result of we wish to mix them with the rank-2 tensor popping out of the dense layer processing the numeric options.

So as to have the ability to mix it with something, now we have to truly assemble that dense layer first. It is going to be related to a single enter layer, of form 43, that takes within the numeric options we scaled in addition to the binary options we left untouched:

# create a single enter and a dense layer for the numeric information
quant_input <- layer_input(form = 43)
  
quant_dense <- quant_input %>% layer_dense(models = 64)

Are components assembled, we wire them collectively utilizing layer_concatenate, and we’re good to name keras_model to create the ultimate graph.

intermediate_layers <- listing(embedding_layers, listing(quant_dense)) %>% flatten()
inputs <- listing(cat_inputs, listing(quant_input)) %>% flatten()

l <- 0.25

output <- layer_concatenate(intermediate_layers) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 30, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(price = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 10, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(price = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 5, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(price = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 1, activation = "sigmoid", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l))

mannequin <- keras_model(inputs, output)

Now, when you’ve truly learn by means of the entire of this half, chances are you’ll want for a better strategy to get up to now. So let’s swap to function specs for the remainder of this put up.

Function specs to the rescue

In spirit, the best way function specs are outlined follows the instance of the recipes bundle. (It received’t make you hungry, although.) You initialize a function spec with the prediction goal – feature_spec(goal ~ .), after which use the %>% to inform it what to do with particular person columns. “What to do” right here signifies two issues:

  • First, how you can “learn in” the info. Are they numeric or categorical, and if categorical, what am I alleged to do with them? For instance, ought to I deal with all distinct symbols as distinct, leading to, probably, an infinite depend of classes – or ought to I constrain myself to a set variety of entities? Or hash them, even?
  • Second, non-obligatory subsequent transformations. Numeric columns could also be bucketized; categorical columns could also be embedded. Or options might be mixed to seize interplay.

On this put up, we reveal the usage of a subset of step_ features. The vignettes on Function columns and Function specs illustrate extra features and their software.

Ranging from the start once more, right here is the entire code for information read-in and train-test break up within the function spec model.

Knowledge-prep-wise, recall what our objectives are: depart alone if binary; scale if numeric; embed if categorical.
Specifying all of this doesn’t want quite a lot of strains of code:

Observe how right here we’re passing within the coaching set, and identical to with recipes, we received’t have to repeat any of the steps for the validation set. Scaling is taken care of by scaler_standard(), an non-obligatory transformation operate handed in to step_numeric_column.
Categorical columns are supposed to make use of the entire vocabulary and pipe their outputs into embedding layers.

Now, what truly occurred once we referred to as match()? Loads – for us, as we removed a ton of guide preparation. For TensorFlow, nothing actually – it simply got here to learn about a number of items within the graph we’ll ask it to assemble.

However wait, – don’t we nonetheless should construct up that graph ourselves, connecting and concatenating layers?
Concretely, above, we needed to:

  • create the proper variety of enter layers, of right form; and
  • wire them to their matching embedding layers, of right dimensionality.

So right here comes the true magic, and it has two steps.

First, we simply create the enter layers by calling layer_input_from_dataset:

`

inputs <- layer_input_from_dataset(porto %>% choose(-goal))

And second, we will extract the options from the function spec and have layer_dense_features create the mandatory layers primarily based on that data:

layer_dense_features(ft_spec$dense_features())

With out additional ado, we add a number of dense layers, and there’s our mannequin. Magic!

output <- inputs %>%
  layer_dense_features(ft_spec$dense_features()) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 30, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(price = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 10, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(price = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 5, activation = "relu", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l)) %>%
  layer_dropout(price = 0.25) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 1, activation = "sigmoid", kernel_regularizer = regularizer_l2(l))

mannequin <- keras_model(inputs, output)

How will we feed this mannequin? Within the non-feature-columns instance, we’d have needed to feed every enter individually, passing an inventory of tensors. Now we will simply go it the entire coaching set :

mannequin %>% match(x = coaching, y = coaching$goal)

Within the Kaggle competitors, submissions are evaluated utilizing the normalized Gini coefficient, which we will calculate with the assistance of a brand new metric obtainable in Keras, tf$keras$metrics$AUC(). For coaching, we will use an approximation to the AUC resulting from Yan et al. (2003) (Yan et al. 2003). Then coaching is as simple as:

auc <- tf$keras$metrics$AUC()

gini <- custom_metric(identify = "gini", operate(y_true, y_pred) {
  2*auc(y_true, y_pred) - 1
})

# Yan, L., Dodier, R., Mozer, M. C., & Wolniewicz, R. (2003). 
# Optimizing Classifier Efficiency through an Approximation to the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Statistic.
roc_auc_score <- operate(y_true, y_pred) {

  pos = tf$boolean_mask(y_pred, tf$forged(y_true, tf$bool))
  neg = tf$boolean_mask(y_pred, !tf$forged(y_true, tf$bool))

  pos = tf$expand_dims(pos, 0L)
  neg = tf$expand_dims(neg, 1L)

  # unique paper suggests efficiency is powerful to precise parameter selection
  gamma = 0.2
  p     = 3

  distinction = tf$zeros_like(pos * neg) + pos - neg - gamma

  masked = tf$boolean_mask(distinction, distinction < 0.0)

  tf$reduce_sum(tf$pow(-masked, p))
}

mannequin %>%
  compile(
    loss = roc_auc_score,
    optimizer = optimizer_adam(),
    metrics = listing(auc, gini)
  )

mannequin %>%
  match(
    x = coaching,
    y = coaching$goal,
    epochs = 50,
    validation_data = listing(testing, testing$goal),
    batch_size = 512
  )

predictions <- predict(mannequin, testing)
Metrics::auc(testing$goal, predictions)

After 50 epochs, we obtain an AUC of 0.64 on the validation set, or equivalently, a Gini coefficient of 0.27. Not a nasty consequence for a easy absolutely related community!

We’ve seen how utilizing function columns automates away numerous steps in establishing the community, so we will spend extra time on truly tuning it. That is most impressively demonstrated on a dataset like this, with greater than a handful categorical columns. Nevertheless, to clarify a bit extra what to concentrate to when utilizing function columns, it’s higher to decide on a smaller instance the place we will simply do some peeking round.

Let’s transfer on to the second software.

Interactions, and what to look out for

To reveal the usage of step_crossed_column to seize interactions, we make use of the rugged dataset from Richard McElreath’s rethinking bundle.

We wish to predict log GDP primarily based on terrain ruggedness, for numerous international locations (170, to be exact). Nevertheless, the impact of ruggedness is totally different in Africa versus different continents. Citing from Statistical Rethinking

It is sensible that ruggedness is related to poorer international locations, in many of the world. Rugged terrain means transport is tough. Which implies market entry is hampered. Which implies decreased gross home product. So the reversed relationship inside Africa is puzzling. Why ought to tough terrain be related to greater GDP per capita?

If this relationship is in any respect causal, it might be as a result of rugged areas of Africa had been protected towards the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. Slavers most well-liked to raid simply accessed settlements, with simple routes to the ocean. These areas that suffered beneath the slave commerce understandably proceed to endure economically, lengthy after the decline of slave-trading markets. Nevertheless, an consequence like GDP has many influences, and is moreover an odd measure of financial exercise. So it’s laborious to make certain what’s happening right here.

Whereas the causal state of affairs is tough, the purely technical one is definitely described: We wish to study an interplay. We may depend on the community discovering out by itself (on this case it in all probability will, if we simply give it sufficient parameters). However it’s a wonderful event to showcase the brand new step_crossed_column.

Loading the dataset, zooming in on the variables of curiosity, and normalizing them the best way it’s performed in Rethinking, now we have:

Observations: 170
Variables: 3
$ log_gdp <dbl> 0.8797119, 0.9647547, 1.1662705, 1.1044854, 0.9149038,…
$ rugged  <dbl> 0.1383424702, 0.5525636891, 0.1239922606, 0.1249596904…
$ africa  <int> 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, …

Now, let’s first overlook concerning the interplay and do the very minimal factor required to work with this information.
rugged ought to be a numeric column, whereas africa is categorical in nature, which suggests we use one of many step_categorical_[...] features on it. (On this case we occur to know there are simply two classes, Africa and not-Africa, so we may as effectively deal with the column as numeric like within the earlier instance; however in different functions that received’t be the case, so right here we present a technique that generalizes to categorical options usually.)

So we begin out making a function spec and including the 2 predictor columns. We examine the consequence utilizing feature_spec’s dense_features() technique:

ft_spec <- coaching %>%
  feature_spec(log_gdp ~ .) %>%
  step_numeric_column(rugged) %>%
  step_categorical_column_with_identity(africa, num_buckets = 2) 
  match()

ft_spec$dense_features()
$rugged
NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None)

Hm, that doesn’t look too good. The place’d africa go? The truth is, there’s another factor we should always have performed: convert the explicit column to an indicator column. Why?

The rule of thumb is, at any time when you’ve one thing categorical, together with crossed, you must then rework it into one thing numeric, which incorporates indicator and embedding.

Being a heuristic, this rule works general, and it matches our instinct. There’s one exception although, step_bucketized_column, which though it “feels” categorical truly doesn’t want that conversion.

Subsequently, it’s best to complement that instinct with a easy lookup diagram, which can be a part of the function columns vignette.

With this diagram, the straightforward rule is: We at all times want to finish up with one thing that inherits from DenseColumn. So:

  • step_numeric_column, step_indicator_column, and step_embedding_column are standalone;
  • step_bucketized_column is, too, nevertheless categorical it “feels”; and
  • all step_categorical_column_[...], in addition to step_crossed_column, must be reworked utilizing one the dense column sorts.

For use with Keras, all features need to end up inheriting from DenseColumn somehow.

Determine 1: To be used with Keras, all options want to finish up inheriting from DenseColumn someway.

Thus, we will repair the state of affairs like so:

ft_spec <- coaching %>%
  feature_spec(log_gdp ~ .) %>%
  step_numeric_column(rugged) %>%
  step_categorical_column_with_identity(africa, num_buckets = 2) %>%
  step_indicator_column(africa) %>%
  match()

and now ft_spec$dense_features() will present us

$rugged
NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None)

$indicator_africa
IndicatorColumn(categorical_column=IdentityCategoricalColumn(key='africa', number_buckets=2.0, default_value=None))

What we actually needed to do is seize the interplay between ruggedness and continent. To this finish, we first bucketize rugged, after which cross it with – already binary – africa. As per the principles, we lastly rework into an indicator column:

ft_spec <- coaching %>%
  feature_spec(log_gdp ~ .) %>%
  step_numeric_column(rugged) %>%
  step_categorical_column_with_identity(africa, num_buckets = 2) %>%
  step_indicator_column(africa) %>%
  step_bucketized_column(rugged,
                         boundaries = c(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8)) %>%
  step_crossed_column(africa_rugged_interact = c(africa, bucketized_rugged),
                      hash_bucket_size = 16) %>%
  step_indicator_column(africa_rugged_interact) %>%
  match()

Taking a look at this code chances are you’ll be asking your self, now what number of options do I’ve within the mannequin?
Let’s examine.

$rugged
NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None)

$indicator_africa
IndicatorColumn(categorical_column=IdentityCategoricalColumn(key='africa', number_buckets=2.0, default_value=None))

$bucketized_rugged
BucketizedColumn(source_column=NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None), boundaries=(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8))

$indicator_africa_rugged_interact
IndicatorColumn(categorical_column=CrossedColumn(keys=(IdentityCategoricalColumn(key='africa', number_buckets=2.0, default_value=None), BucketizedColumn(source_column=NumericColumn(key='rugged', form=(1,), default_value=None, dtype=tf.float32, normalizer_fn=None), boundaries=(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8))), hash_bucket_size=16.0, hash_key=None))

We see that each one options, unique or reworked, are stored, so long as they inherit from DenseColumn.
Which means, for instance, the non-bucketized, steady values of rugged are used as effectively.

Now establishing the coaching goes as anticipated.

inputs <- layer_input_from_dataset(df %>% choose(-log_gdp))

output <- inputs %>%
  layer_dense_features(ft_spec$dense_features()) %>%
  layer_dense(models = 8, activation = "relu") %>%
  layer_dense(models = 8, activation = "relu") %>%
  layer_dense(models = 1)

mannequin <- keras_model(inputs, output)

mannequin %>% compile(loss = "mse", optimizer = "adam", metrics = "mse")

historical past <- mannequin %>% match(
  x = coaching,
  y = coaching$log_gdp,
  validation_data = listing(testing, testing$log_gdp),
  epochs = 100)

Simply as a sanity examine, the ultimate loss on the validation set for this code was ~ 0.014. However actually this instance did serve totally different functions.

In a nutshell

Function specs are a handy, elegant manner of constructing categorical information obtainable to Keras, in addition to to chain helpful transformations like bucketizing and creating crossed columns. The time you save information wrangling might go into tuning and experimentation. Get pleasure from, and thanks for studying!

Yan, Lian, Robert H Dodier, Michael Mozer, and Richard H Wolniewicz. 2003. “Optimizing Classifier Efficiency through an Approximation to the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Statistic.” In Proceedings of the twentieth Worldwide Convention on Machine Studying (ICML-03), 848–55.