Machine Learning with Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. Model Evaluation

11.0 Introduction

In this chapter we will examine strategies for evaluating the quality of models created through our learning algorithms. It might appear strange to discuss model evaluation before discussing how to create them, but there is a method to our madness. Models are only as useful as the quality of their predictions, and thus, fundamentally, our goal is not to create models (which is easy) but to create high-quality models (which is hard). Therefore, before we explore the myriad learning algorithms, let’s first learn how we can evaluate the models they produce.

11.1 Cross-Validating Models

Problem

You want to evaluate how well your classification model generalizes to unforeseen data.

Solution

Create a pipeline that preprocesses the data, trains the model, and then evaluates it using cross-validation:

# Load libraries
from sklearn import datasets
from sklearn import metrics
from sklearn.model_selection import KFold, cross_val_score
from sklearn.pipeline import make_pipeline
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler

# Load digits dataset
digits = datasets.load_digits()

# Create features matrix
features = digits.data

# Create target vector
target = digits.target

# Create standardizer
standardizer = StandardScaler()

# Create logistic regression object
logit = LogisticRegression()

# Create a pipeline that standardizes, then runs logistic regression
pipeline = make_pipeline(standardizer ...