[HN Gopher] PiML: Python Interpretable Machine Learning Toolbox
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       PiML: Python Interpretable Machine Learning Toolbox
        
       Author : skadamat
       Score  : 70 points
       Date   : 2024-11-05 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | setopt wrote:
       | PiML is also a common abbreviation for Physics-informed Machine
       | Learning.
        
         | jszymborski wrote:
         | TIL. I've only ever heard the term PINN (physics-informed
         | neural networks) before.
        
       | pragma_x wrote:
       | I misread that as "impenetrable" machine learning and thought:
       | "Well, it's about time someone admitted it."
       | 
       | Ironically, the low-code examples do a good job of making this
       | space a little more approachable.
        
       | frakt0x90 wrote:
       | Very Happy to see FIGS on the list. I almost got a chance to use
       | it on a recent project but the csutomer in the end decided they
       | valued accuracy over interpretability. I wonder if the recent
       | KANs fit into this? They're more interpretable than other NN
       | architectures. Also, Berkeley has had a few articles on
       | interpretable methods (including FIGS) over the years but idk how
       | they compare to what you've already implemented:
       | 
       | https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2022/02/02/imodels/
       | 
       | https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2020/04/23/decisions/
        
         | 3abiton wrote:
         | QRD on FIGS for the curious ones?
        
           | frakt0x90 wrote:
           | This explains it better than I could:
           | 
           | https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2022/06/30/figs/
        
             | bravura wrote:
             | Pretty cool. So it greedily constructs an ensemble of trees
             | from scratch. At each step, it takes the one decision that
             | reduces the loss the most. That's a nice approximation for
             | the most compact tree ensemble.
        
         | abhgh wrote:
         | I have used a successor [1] of FIGS and my experience was that
         | although the theory is elegant, their benchmarking was
         | incomplete.This is something I would look out for if you are
         | planning to use it on a real-world problem. Again, this is not
         | to be negative about the paper, but there _is_ a gap between
         | the theory and practice.
         | 
         | I had raised this as an issue [2] on their repo, but after a
         | few exchanges didn't receive any response. If you look at the
         | last comment on that issue thread, you will see that Random
         | Forest with proper hyperparam. search produces competitive
         | results.
         | 
         | [1] https://proceedings.mlr.press/v162/agarwal22b.html
         | 
         | [2] https://github.com/csinva/imodels/issues/129
        
       | melenaboija wrote:
       | Is the source code available?
        
       | zwaps wrote:
       | Am i blind? Where is the code?
        
         | dagw wrote:
         | Looks like they haven't actually published the source code,
         | despite both GitHub and PyPI claiming the project is apache
         | licensed. If you install the package all you get in the wheel
         | is precompiled cython libraries and the absolute minimum python
         | code needed to import them.
        
           | mrks_hy wrote:
           | Given the broader state of the Python ecosystem, that is a
           | red flag for me. Why would you add an OSS license but
           | withhold the sourcecode?
           | 
           | The only reason I can think of is to "trick" people into
           | downloading and betting that no-one actually checks the
           | source, then hiding something in the .so files that are
           | shipped as wheels. Tread carefully.
        
             | Labo333 wrote:
             | Indeed, this is a major blocker. I am very wary of
             | installing it and would never ship this to production.
        
       | maaaaattttt wrote:
       | That's a name that won't go unnoticed by the german speaking
       | colleagues.
        
         | haustlauf wrote:
         | As well as the Dutch ones.
        
         | j7c6 wrote:
         | I just pitched "Product Information Management Machine
         | Learning" to my team lead ;) Which, in my opinion, is largely
         | underestimated in that field of software... Maybe we should
         | consider a different name though
        
         | starbugs wrote:
         | Please explain for international audiences :)
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-11-05 23:00 UTC)