StackingCVClassifier: Stacking with cross-validation

An ensemble-learning meta-classifier for stacking using cross-validation to prepare the inputs for the level-2 classifier to prevent overfitting.

from mlxtend.classifier import StackingCVClassifier

Overview

Stacking is an ensemble learning technique to combine multiple classification models via a meta-classifier. The StackingCVClassifier extends the standard stacking algorithm (implemented as StackingClassifier) using cross-validation to prepare the input data for the level-2 classifier.

In the standard stacking procedure, the first-level classifiers are fit to the same training set that is used prepare the inputs for the second-level classifier, which may lead to overfitting. The StackingCVClassifier, however, uses the concept of cross-validation: the dataset is split into k folds, and in k successive rounds, k-1 folds are used to fit the first level classifier; in each round, the first-level classifiers are then applied to the remaining 1 subset that was not used for model fitting in each iteration. The resulting predictions are then stacked and provided -- as input data -- to the second-level classifier. After the training of the StackingCVClassifier, the first-level classifiers are fit to the entire dataset as illustrated in the figure below.

More formally, the Stacking Cross-Validation algorithm can be summarized as follows (source: [1]):

References

Example 1 - Simple Stacking CV Classification

from sklearn import datasets

iris = datasets.load_iris()
X, y = iris.data[:, 1:3], iris.target

from sklearn import model_selection
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.neighbors import KNeighborsClassifier
from sklearn.naive_bayes import GaussianNB 
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
from mlxtend.classifier import StackingCVClassifier
import numpy as np
import warnings

warnings.simplefilter('ignore')

RANDOM_SEED = 42

clf1 = KNeighborsClassifier(n_neighbors=1)
clf2 = RandomForestClassifier(random_state=RANDOM_SEED)
clf3 = GaussianNB()
lr = LogisticRegression()

# Starting from v0.16.0, StackingCVRegressor supports
# `random_state` to get deterministic result.
sclf = StackingCVClassifier(classifiers=[clf1, clf2, clf3],
                            meta_classifier=lr,
                            random_state=RANDOM_SEED)

print('3-fold cross validation:\n')

for clf, label in zip([clf1, clf2, clf3, sclf], 
                      ['KNN', 
                       'Random Forest', 
                       'Naive Bayes',
                       'StackingClassifier']):

    scores = model_selection.cross_val_score(clf, X, y, 
                                              cv=3, scoring='accuracy')
    print("Accuracy: %0.2f (+/- %0.2f) [%s]" 
          % (scores.mean(), scores.std(), label))

3-fold cross validation:

Accuracy: 0.91 (+/- 0.01) [KNN]
Accuracy: 0.95 (+/- 0.01) [Random Forest]
Accuracy: 0.91 (+/- 0.02) [Naive Bayes]
Accuracy: 0.93 (+/- 0.02) [StackingClassifier]

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mlxtend.plotting import plot_decision_regions
import matplotlib.gridspec as gridspec
import itertools

gs = gridspec.GridSpec(2, 2)

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,8))

for clf, lab, grd in zip([clf1, clf2, clf3, sclf], 
                         ['KNN', 
                          'Random Forest', 
                          'Naive Bayes',
                          'StackingCVClassifier'],
                          itertools.product([0, 1], repeat=2)):

    clf.fit(X, y)
    ax = plt.subplot(gs[grd[0], grd[1]])
    fig = plot_decision_regions(X=X, y=y, clf=clf)
    plt.title(lab)
plt.show()

png

Example 2 - Using Probabilities as Meta-Features

Alternatively, the class-probabilities of the first-level classifiers can be used to train the meta-classifier (2nd-level classifier) by setting use_probas=True. For example, in a 3-class setting with 2 level-1 classifiers, these classifiers may make the following "probability" predictions for 1 training sample:

This results in k features, where k = [n_classes * n_classifiers], by stacking these level-1 probabilities:

clf1 = KNeighborsClassifier(n_neighbors=1)
clf2 = RandomForestClassifier(random_state=1)
clf3 = GaussianNB()
lr = LogisticRegression()

sclf = StackingCVClassifier(classifiers=[clf1, clf2, clf3],
                            use_probas=True,
                            meta_classifier=lr,
                            random_state=42)

print('3-fold cross validation:\n')

for clf, label in zip([clf1, clf2, clf3, sclf], 
                      ['KNN', 
                       'Random Forest', 
                       'Naive Bayes',
                       'StackingClassifier']):

    scores = model_selection.cross_val_score(clf, X, y, 
                                              cv=3, scoring='accuracy')
    print("Accuracy: %0.2f (+/- %0.2f) [%s]" 
          % (scores.mean(), scores.std(), label))

3-fold cross validation:

Accuracy: 0.91 (+/- 0.01) [KNN]
Accuracy: 0.95 (+/- 0.01) [Random Forest]
Accuracy: 0.91 (+/- 0.02) [Naive Bayes]
Accuracy: 0.95 (+/- 0.02) [StackingClassifier]

Example 3 - Stacked CV Classification and GridSearch

The stack allows tuning hyper parameters of the base and meta models! A full list of tunable parameters can be obtained via estimator.get_params().keys().

from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.neighbors import KNeighborsClassifier
from sklearn.naive_bayes import GaussianNB 
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
from sklearn.model_selection import GridSearchCV
from mlxtend.classifier import StackingCVClassifier

# Initializing models

clf1 = KNeighborsClassifier(n_neighbors=1)
clf2 = RandomForestClassifier(random_state=RANDOM_SEED)
clf3 = GaussianNB()
lr = LogisticRegression()

sclf = StackingCVClassifier(classifiers=[clf1, clf2, clf3], 
                            meta_classifier=lr,
                            random_state=42)

params = {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': [1, 5],
          'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': [10, 50],
          'meta_classifier__C': [0.1, 10.0]}

grid = GridSearchCV(estimator=sclf, 
                    param_grid=params, 
                    cv=5,
                    refit=True)
grid.fit(X, y)

cv_keys = ('mean_test_score', 'std_test_score', 'params')

for r, _ in enumerate(grid.cv_results_['mean_test_score']):
    print("%0.3f +/- %0.2f %r"
          % (grid.cv_results_[cv_keys[0]][r],
             grid.cv_results_[cv_keys[1]][r] / 2.0,
             grid.cv_results_[cv_keys[2]][r]))

print('Best parameters: %s' % grid.best_params_)
print('Accuracy: %.2f' % grid.best_score_)

0.947 +/- 0.03 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.933 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.940 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.940 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
Best parameters: {'kneighborsclassifier__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
Accuracy: 0.95

In case we are planning to use a regression algorithm multiple times, all we need to do is to add an additional number suffix in the parameter grid as shown below:

from sklearn.model_selection import GridSearchCV

# Initializing models

clf1 = KNeighborsClassifier(n_neighbors=1)
clf2 = RandomForestClassifier(random_state=RANDOM_SEED)
clf3 = GaussianNB()
lr = LogisticRegression()

sclf = StackingCVClassifier(classifiers=[clf1, clf1, clf2, clf3], 
                            meta_classifier=lr,
                            random_state=RANDOM_SEED)

params = {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': [1, 5],
          'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': [1, 5],
          'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': [10, 50],
          'meta_classifier__C': [0.1, 10.0]}

grid = GridSearchCV(estimator=sclf, 
                    param_grid=params, 
                    cv=5,
                    refit=True)
grid.fit(X, y)

cv_keys = ('mean_test_score', 'std_test_score', 'params')

for r, _ in enumerate(grid.cv_results_['mean_test_score']):
    print("%0.3f +/- %0.2f %r"
          % (grid.cv_results_[cv_keys[0]][r],
             grid.cv_results_[cv_keys[1]][r] / 2.0,
             grid.cv_results_[cv_keys[2]][r]))

print('Best parameters: %s' % grid.best_params_)
print('Accuracy: %.2f' % grid.best_score_)

0.940 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.940 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.940 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.940 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.960 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.960 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 1, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
0.953 +/- 0.02 {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 5, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 10.0, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 50}
Best parameters: {'kneighborsclassifier-1__n_neighbors': 1, 'kneighborsclassifier-2__n_neighbors': 5, 'meta_classifier__C': 0.1, 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': 10}
Accuracy: 0.96

Note

The StackingClassifier also enables grid search over the classifiers argument. When there are level-mixed hyperparameters, GridSearchCV will try to replace hyperparameters in a top-down order, i.e., classifers -> single base classifier -> classifier hyperparameter. For instance, given a hyperparameter grid such as

params = {'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': [1, 100],
'classifiers': [(clf1, clf1, clf1), (clf2, clf3)]}

it will first use the instance settings of either (clf1, clf1, clf1) or (clf2, clf3). Then it will replace the 'n_estimators' settings for a matching classifier based on 'randomforestclassifier__n_estimators': [1, 100].

Example 4 - Stacking of Classifiers that Operate on Different Feature Subsets

The different level-1 classifiers can be fit to different subsets of features in the training dataset. The following example illustrates how this can be done on a technical level using scikit-learn pipelines and the ColumnSelector:

from sklearn.datasets import load_iris
from mlxtend.classifier import StackingCVClassifier
from mlxtend.feature_selection import ColumnSelector
from sklearn.pipeline import make_pipeline
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression

iris = load_iris()
X = iris.data
y = iris.target

pipe1 = make_pipeline(ColumnSelector(cols=(0, 2)),
                      LogisticRegression())
pipe2 = make_pipeline(ColumnSelector(cols=(1, 2, 3)),
                      LogisticRegression())

sclf = StackingCVClassifier(classifiers=[pipe1, pipe2], 
                            meta_classifier=LogisticRegression(),
                            random_state=42)

sclf.fit(X, y)

StackingCVClassifier(classifiers=[Pipeline(memory=None,
                                           steps=[('columnselector',
                                                   ColumnSelector(cols=(0, 2),
                                                                  drop_axis=False)),
                                                  ('logisticregression',
                                                   LogisticRegression(C=1.0,
                                                                      class_weight=None,
                                                                      dual=False,
                                                                      fit_intercept=True,
                                                                      intercept_scaling=1,
                                                                      l1_ratio=None,
                                                                      max_iter=100,
                                                                      multi_class='auto',
                                                                      n_jobs=None,
                                                                      penalty='l2',
                                                                      random_state=None,
                                                                      solver='lbfgs',
                                                                      tol=0.0...
                                                        fit_intercept=True,
                                                        intercept_scaling=1,
                                                        l1_ratio=None,
                                                        max_iter=100,
                                                        multi_class='auto',
                                                        n_jobs=None,
                                                        penalty='l2',
                                                        random_state=None,
                                                        solver='lbfgs',
                                                        tol=0.0001, verbose=0,
                                                        warm_start=False),
                     n_jobs=None, pre_dispatch='2*n_jobs', random_state=42,
                     shuffle=True, store_train_meta_features=False,
                     stratify=True, use_clones=True,
                     use_features_in_secondary=False, use_probas=False,
                     verbose=0)

Example 5 -- ROC Curve with decision_function

Like other scikit-learn classifiers, the StackingCVClassifier has an decision_function method that can be used for plotting ROC curves. Note that the decision_function expects and requires the meta-classifier to implement a decision_function.

from sklearn import model_selection
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.neighbors import KNeighborsClassifier
from sklearn.svm import SVC
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
from mlxtend.classifier import StackingCVClassifier
from sklearn.metrics import roc_curve, auc
import numpy as np
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn import datasets
from sklearn.preprocessing import label_binarize
from sklearn.multiclass import OneVsRestClassifier


iris = datasets.load_iris()
X, y = iris.data[:, [0, 1]], iris.target


# Binarize the output
y = label_binarize(y, classes=[0, 1, 2])
n_classes = y.shape[1]



RANDOM_SEED = 42


X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(
    X, y, test_size=0.33, random_state=RANDOM_SEED)

clf1 =  LogisticRegression()
clf2 = RandomForestClassifier(random_state=RANDOM_SEED)
clf3 = SVC(random_state=RANDOM_SEED)
lr = LogisticRegression()


sclf = StackingCVClassifier(classifiers=[clf1, clf2, clf3],
                            meta_classifier=lr)


# Learn to predict each class against the other
classifier = OneVsRestClassifier(sclf)

Using predict_proba()

y_score = classifier.fit(X_train, y_train).predict_proba(X_test)

# Compute ROC curve and ROC area for each class
fpr = dict()
tpr = dict()
roc_auc = dict()
for i in range(n_classes):
    fpr[i], tpr[i], _ = roc_curve(y_test[:, i], y_score[:, i])
    roc_auc[i] = auc(fpr[i], tpr[i])

# Compute micro-average ROC curve and ROC area
fpr["micro"], tpr["micro"], _ = roc_curve(y_test.ravel(), y_score.ravel())
roc_auc["micro"] = auc(fpr["micro"], tpr["micro"])

plt.figure()
lw = 2
plt.plot(fpr[2], tpr[2], color='darkorange',
         lw=lw, label='ROC curve (area = %0.2f)' % roc_auc[2])
plt.plot([0, 1], [0, 1], color='navy', lw=lw, linestyle='--')
plt.xlim([0.0, 1.0])
plt.ylim([0.0, 1.05])
plt.xlabel('False Positive Rate')
plt.ylabel('True Positive Rate')
plt.title('Receiver operating characteristic example')
plt.legend(loc="lower right")
plt.show()

png

Using decision_function()

y_score = classifier.fit(X_train, y_train).decision_function(X_test)

# Compute ROC curve and ROC area for each class
fpr = dict()
tpr = dict()
roc_auc = dict()
for i in range(n_classes):
    fpr[i], tpr[i], _ = roc_curve(y_test[:, i], y_score[:, i])
    roc_auc[i] = auc(fpr[i], tpr[i])

# Compute micro-average ROC curve and ROC area
fpr["micro"], tpr["micro"], _ = roc_curve(y_test.ravel(), y_score.ravel())
roc_auc["micro"] = auc(fpr["micro"], tpr["micro"])

plt.figure()
lw = 2
plt.plot(fpr[2], tpr[2], color='darkorange',
         lw=lw, label='ROC curve (area = %0.2f)' % roc_auc[2])
plt.plot([0, 1], [0, 1], color='navy', lw=lw, linestyle='--')
plt.xlim([0.0, 1.0])
plt.ylim([0.0, 1.05])
plt.xlabel('False Positive Rate')
plt.ylabel('True Positive Rate')
plt.title('Receiver operating characteristic example')
plt.legend(loc="lower right")
plt.show()

png

API

StackingCVClassifier(classifiers, meta_classifier, use_probas=False, drop_proba_col=None, cv=2, shuffle=True, random_state=None, stratify=True, verbose=0, use_features_in_secondary=False, store_train_meta_features=False, use_clones=True, n_jobs=None, pre_dispatch='2n_jobs')*

A 'Stacking Cross-Validation' classifier for scikit-learn estimators.

New in mlxtend v0.4.3

Parameters

Attributes

Examples

For usage examples, please see http://rasbt.github.io/mlxtend/user_guide/classifier/StackingCVClassifier/

Methods

decision_function(X)

Predict class confidence scores for X.

Parameters

Returns

fit(X, y, groups=None, sample_weight=None)

Fit ensemble classifers and the meta-classifier.

Parameters

Returns

fit_transform(X, y=None, fit_params)

Fit to data, then transform it.

Fits transformer to X and y with optional parameters fit_params and returns a transformed version of X.

Parameters

Returns

get_params(deep=True)

Return estimator parameter names for GridSearch support.

predict(X)

Predict target values for X.

Parameters

Returns

predict_meta_features(X)

Get meta-features of test-data.

Parameters

Returns

predict_proba(X)

Predict class probabilities for X.

Parameters

Returns

score(X, y, sample_weight=None)

Return the mean accuracy on the given test data and labels.

In multi-label classification, this is the subset accuracy which is a harsh metric since you require for each sample that each label set be correctly predicted.

Parameters

Returns

set_params(params)

Set the parameters of this estimator.

Valid parameter keys can be listed with get_params().

Returns

self

Properties

named_classifiers

None