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Machine Learning Basics for a Newbie
6 Steps of Machine learning Lifecycle Introduction to Predictive Modeling
Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis & Data Insights Descriptive Statistics Inferential Statistics How to Understand Population Distributions?
Reading Data Files into Python Different Variable Datatypes
Probability for Data Science Basic Concepts of Probability Axioms of Probability Conditional Probability
Central Tendencies for Continuous Variables Spread of Data KDE plots for Continuous Variable Overview of Distribution for Continuous variables Normal Distribution Skewed Distribution Skeweness and Kurtosis Distribution for Continuous Variable
Central Tendencies for Categorical Variables Understanding Discrete Distributions Performing EDA on Categorical Variables
Dealing with Missing Values Understanding Outliers Identifying Outliers in Data Outlier Detection in Python Outliers Detection Using IQR, Z-score, LOF and DBSCAN
Sample and Population Central Limit Theorem Confidence Interval and Margin of Error
Bivariate Analysis Introduction
Covariance Pearson Correlation Spearman's Correlation & Kendall's Tau Correlation versus Causation Tabular and Graphical methods for Bivariate Analysis Performing Bivariate Analysis on Continuous-Continuous Variables
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Introduction to Naive Bayes Conditional Probability and Bayes Theorem Introduction to Bayesian Adjustment Rating: The Incredible Concept Behind Online Ratings! Working of Naive Bayes Math behind Naive Bayes Types of Naive Bayes Implementation of Naive Bayes
Understanding how to solve Multiclass and Multilabled Classification Problem Evaluation Metrics: Multi Class Classification
Introduction to Ensemble Techniques Basic Ensemble Techniques Implementing Basic Ensemble Techniques Finding Optimal Weights of Ensemble Learner using Neural Network Why Ensemble Models Work well?
Introduction to Stacking Implementing Stacking Variants of Stacking Implementing Variants of Stacking Introduction to Blending Bootstrap Sampling Introduction to Random Sampling Hyper-parameters of Random Forest Implementing Random Forest Out-of-Bag (OOB) Score in the Random Forest IPL Team Win Prediction Project Using Machine Learning Introduction to Boosting Gradient Boosting Algorithm Math behind GBM Implementing GBM in python Regularized Greedy Forests Extreme Gradient Boosting Implementing XGBM in python Tuning Hyperparameters of XGBoost in Python Implement XGBM in R/H2O Adaptive Boosting Implementing Adaptive Boosing LightGBM Implementing LightGBM in Python Catboost Implementing Catboost in Python
Different Hyperparameter Tuning methods Implementing Different Hyperparameter Tuning methods GridsearchCV RandomizedsearchCV Bayesian Optimization for Hyperparameter Tuning Hyperopt
Understanding SVM Algorithm SVM Kernels In-depth Intuition and Practical Implementation SVM Kernel Tricks Kernels and Hyperparameters in SVM Implementing SVM from Scratch in Python and R
Introduction to Principal Component Analysis Steps to Perform Principal Compound Analysis Computation of Covariance Matrix Finding Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues Implementing PCA in python Visualizing PCA A Brief Introduction to Linear Discriminant Analysis Introduction to Factor Analysis
Introduction to Clustering Applications of Clustering Evaluation Metrics for Clustering Understanding K-Means Implementation of K-Means in Python Implementation of K-Means in R Choosing Right Value for K Profiling Market Segments using K-Means Clustering Hierarchical Clustering Implementation of Hierarchial Clustering DBSCAN Defining Similarity between clusters Build Better and Accurate Clusters with Gaussian Mixture Models
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8 Ways to Improve Accuracy of Machine Learning Models
Introduction to Dask Working with CuML
Introduction to Machine Learning Interpretability Framework and Interpretable Models model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Implementing Interpretable Model Understanding SHAP Out-of-Core ML Introduction to Interpretable Machine Learning Models Model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Game Theory & Shapley Values
Introduction to Machine Learning Interpretability Framework and Interpretable Models model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Implementing Interpretable Model Understanding SHAP Out-of-Core ML Introduction to Interpretable Machine Learning Models Model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Game Theory & Shapley Values
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Model Deployment in Android Model Deployment in Iphone

How the Gradient Boosting Algorithm Works?

N
Nitesh Last Updated : 16 Oct, 2024
7 min read

Introduction

Gradient boosting algorithm is one of the most powerful algorithms in the field of machine learning. As we know that the errors in machine learning algorithms are broadly classified into two categories i.e. Bias Error and Variance Error. As gradient boosting is one of the boosting algorithms it is used to minimize bias error of the model.

Unlike, Adaboosting algorithm, the base estimator in the gradient boosting algorithm cannot be mentioned by us. The base estimator for the Gradient Boost algorithm is fixed and i.e. Decision Stump. Like, AdaBoost, we can tune the n_estimator of the gradient boosting algorithm. However, if we do not mention the value of n_estimator, the default value of n_estimator for this algorithm is 100.

Gradient boosting algorithm can be used for predicting not only continuous target variable (as a Regressor) but also categorical target variable (as a Classifier). When it is used as a regressor, the cost function is Mean Square Error (MSE) and when it is used as a classifier then the cost function is Log loss.

This article is going to cover the following topics related to Gradient Boosting Algorithm.

This article was published as a part of the Data Science Blogathon.

Table of contents

Manual Example for understanding the algorithm:

Let us now understand the working of the Gradient Boosting Algorithm with the help of one example. In the following example, Age is the Target variable whereas LikesExercising, GotoGym, DrivesCar are independent variables. As in this example, the target variable is continuous, GradientBoostingRegressor is used here.

Gradient Boosting data

1st-Estimator

For estimator-1, the root level (level 0) will consist of all the records. The predicted age at this level is equal to the mean of the entire Age column i.e. 41.33(addition of all values in Age column divided by a number of records i.e. 9). Let us find out what is the MSE for this level. MSE is calculated as the mean of the square of errors. Here error is equal to actual age-predicted age. The predicted age for the particular node is always equal to the mean of age records of that node. So, the MSE of the root node of the 1st estimator is calculated as given below.

MSE=(∑(Agei –mu)2 )/9=577.11

The cost function hers is MSE and the objective of the algorithm here is to minimize the MSE.

Now, one of the independent variables will be used by the Gradient boosting to create the Decision Stump. Let us suppose that the LikesExercising
is used here for prediction. So, the records with False LikesExercising will go in one child node, and records with True LikesExercising will go in another child node as shown below.

Gradient Boosting likesexercising

Let us find the means and MSEs of both the nodes of level 1. For the left node, the mean is equal to 20.25 and MSE is equal to 83.19. Whereas, for the right node, the mean is equal to 58.2 and MSE is equal to 332.16. Total MSE for level 1 will be equal to the addition of all nodes of level 1 i.e. 83.19+332.16=415.35. We can see here, the cost function i.e. MSE of level 1 is better than level 0.

2nd-Estimator

Let us now find out the estimator-2. Unlike AdaBoost, in the Gradient boosting algorithm, residues (agei – mu)of the first estimator are taken as root nodes as shown below. Let us suppose for this estimator another dependent variable is used for prediction. So, the records with False GotoGym
will go in one child node, and records with True GotoGym will go in another child node as shown below.

2nd estimator

 

The prediction of age here is slightly tricky. First, the age will be predicted from estimator 1 as per the value of LikeExercising, and then the mean from the estimator is found out with the help of the value of GotoGym and then that means is added to age-predicted from the first estimator and that is the final prediction of Gradient boosting with two estimators.

Let us consider if we want to predict the age for the following records:

records

Here, LikesExercising is equal to False. So, the predicted age from the first estimator will be 20.25 (i.e. mean of the left node of the first estimator). Now we need to check what is the value of GotoGym for the second predictor and its value is True. So, the mean of True GotoGym in the 2nd estimator is -3.56. This will be added to the prediction of the first estimator i.e. 20.25. So final prediction of this model will be 20.25+(-3.56) = 16.69.

Let us predict of ages of all records we have in the example:

example

Let us now find out the Final MSE for above all 9 records.

MSE = ((-2.69)2 +(-1.69)2 + (-0.69)2 +(-28.64)2 +(19.31)2 +(-15.33)2 + (14.36)2 +(6.67)2 +(7.67)2 )/9

= 194.2478

So, we can see that the final MSE is much better than the MSE of the root node of the 1st Estimator. This is only for 2 estimators. There can be n number of estimators in gradient boosting algorithm.

Python Code for the Same

Let us now write a python code for the same. 

# Importing required modules
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
from sklearn.ensemble import GradientBoostingRegressor
from sklearn.preprocessing import LabelEncoder 
# Let us create the Data-Frame for above 
X=pd.DataFrame({'LikesExercising':[False,False,False,True,False,True,True,True,True],
                'GotoGym':[True,True,True,True,True,False,True,False,False],
                 'DrivesCar':[True,False,False,True,True,False,True,False,True]})
Y=pd.Series(name='Age',data=[14,15,16,26,36,50,69,72,74])
# Let us encode true and false to number value 0 and 1
LE=LabelEncoder()
X['LikesExercising']=LE.fit_transform(X['LikesExercising'])
X['GotoGym']=LE.fit_transform(X['GotoGym'])
X['DrivesCar']=LE.fit_transform(X['DrivesCar'])

#We will now see the effect of different numbers of estimators on MSE.
# 1) Let us now use  GradientBoostingRegressor with 2 estimators to train the model and to predict the age for the same inputs. 
GB=GradientBoostingRegressor(n_estimators=2)
GB.fit(X,Y)
Y_predict=GB.predict(X) #ages predicted by model with 2 estimators 
Y_predict
# Output
#Y_predict=[38.23 , 36.425, 36.425, 42.505, 38.23 , 45.07 , 42.505, 45.07 ,47.54]
#Following code is used to find out MSE of prediction with Gradient boosting algorithm having estimator 2.
MSE_2=(sum((Y-Y_predict)**2))/len(Y)
print('MSE for two estimators :',MSE_2)
#Output: MSE for two estimators : 432.482055555546
# 2) Let us now use GradientBoostingRegressor with 3 estimators to train the model and to predict the age for the same inputs. 
GB=GradientBoostingRegressor(n_estimators=3)
GB.fit(X,Y)
Y_predict=GB.predict(X) #ages predicted by model with 3 estimators
Y_predict
# Output
#Y_predict=[36.907, 34.3325, 34.3325, 43.0045, 36.907 , 46.663 , 43.0045, 46.663 , 50.186]
#Following code is used to find out MSE of prediction with Gradient boosting algorithm having estimator 3.
MSE_3=(sum((Y-Y_predict)**2))/len(Y)
print('MSE for three estimators :',MSE_3)
#Output: MSE for three estimators : 380.05602055555556
# 3) Let us now use GradientBoostingRegressor with 50 estimators to train the model and to predict the age for the same inputs.
GB=GradientBoostingRegressor(n_estimators=50)
GB.fit(X,Y)
Y_predict=GB.predict(X) #ages predicted by model with 50 estimators
Y_predict
# Output
#Y_predict=[25.08417833, 15.63313919, 15.63313919, 47.46821839, 25.08417833,       60.89864242, 47.46821839, 60.89864242, 73.83164334]
#Following code is used to find out MSE of prediction with Gradient boosting algorithm having estimator 50.
MSE_50=(sum((Y-Y_predict)**2))/len(Y)
print('MSE for fifty estimators :',MSE_50)
#Output: MSE for fifty estimators: 156.5667260994211

Observation

As we can see here, MSE reduces as we increase the estimator value. The situation comes where MSE becomes saturated which means even if we increase the estimator value there will be no significant decrease in MSE.

Finding the best estimator with GridSearchCV

Let us now see, how GridSearchCV can be used to find the best estimator for the above example.

from sklearn.model_selection import GridSearchCV
model=GradientBoostingRegressor()
params={'n_estimators':range(1,200)}
grid=GridSearchCV(estimator=model,cv=2,param_grid=params,scoring='neg_mean_squared_error')
grid.fit(X,Y)
print("The best estimator returned by GridSearch CV is:",grid.best_estimator_)
#Output
#The best estimator returned by GridSearch CV is:  GradientBoostingRegressor(n_estimators=19)
GB=grid.best_estimator_
GB.fit(X,Y)
Y_predict=GB.predict(X)
Y_predict
#output:
#Y_predict=[27.20639114, 18.98970027, 18.98970027, 46.66697477, 27.20639114,58.34332496, 46.66697477, 58.34332496, 69.58721772]
MSE_best=(sum((Y-Y_predict)**2))/len(Y)
print('MSE for best estimators :',MSE_best)
#Following code is used to find out MSE of prediction for Gradient boosting algorithm with best estimator value given by GridSearchCV
#Output: MSE for best estimators : 164.2298548605391

Observation

You may think that MSE for n_estimator=50 is better than MSE for n_estimator=19. Still GridSearchCV returns 19 not 50. Actually, we can observe here is until 19 with each increment in estimator value the reduction in MSE was significant, but after 19 there is no significant decrease in MSE with increment in estimators. So, n_estimator=19 was returned by GridSearchSV.

Applications

  • Gradient Boosting Algorithm is generally used when we want to decrease the Bias error.
  • It can be used in regression as well as classification problems. In regression problems, the cost function is MSE whereas, in classification problems, the cost function is Log-Loss.

Conclusion

In this article, I have tried to explain how Gradient Boosting Actually works with the help of a simple example.

Gradient Boosting Algorithm is generally used when we want to decrease the Bias error.

Here, the example of GradientBoostingRegressor is shown. GradientBoostingClassfier is also there which is used for Classification problems. Here, in Regressor MSE is used as cost function there in classification Log-Loss is used as cost function.

The most important thing in this algorithm is to find the best value of n_estimators. In this article, we have seen how GridSearchCV can be used to achieve that.

After reading this article, you should first try to use this algorithm for practice problems and after that, you must learn how to tune the hyper-parameters for this algorithm.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is gradient boosting and how it works?

A. Gradient boosting, an ensemble machine learning technique, constructs a robust predictive model by sequentially combining multiple weak models. It minimizes errors using a gradient descent-like approach during training.

Q2. How does gradient boost do regression?

A. In regression, gradient boosting fits a series of weak learners, typically decision trees, to residuals, gradually reducing prediction errors through model updates.

Q3. How does light gradient boosting work?

A. Light Gradient Boosting, or LightGBM, employs a tree-based learning algorithm, utilizing a histogram-based method for faster training and reduced memory usage.

Q4. How does gradient boosting reduce bias?

A. Gradient boosting reduces bias by iteratively adding weak models, focusing on remaining errors and emphasizing previously mispredicted instances. This sequential process refines predictions, ultimately minimizing bias in the final model

The media shown in this article are not owned by Analytics Vidhya and is used at the Author’s discretion. 

blogathonGradient BoostingGradient Boosting Machine
N
Nitesh

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Bindeshwar S. Kushwaha
Bindeshwar S. Kushwaha

Very informative article, please also write a detailed article for classification using log-loss.

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Gradient Boosting Algorithm: A Complete Guide for Beginners
Gradient Boosting Algorithm: A Complete Guide for Beginners
Top 10 Interview Questions on Gradient Boosting Algorithms
Top 10 Interview Questions on Gradient Boosting Algorithms

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