📃 Solution for Exercise M6.02

The aim of this exercise it to explore some attributes available in scikit-learn’s random forest.

First, we will fit the penguins regression dataset.

import pandas as pd
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

penguins = pd.read_csv("../datasets/penguins_regression.csv")
feature_name = "Flipper Length (mm)"
target_name = "Body Mass (g)"
data, target = penguins[[feature_name]], penguins[target_name]
data_train, data_test, target_train, target_test = train_test_split(
    data, target, random_state=0
)

Note

If you want a deeper overview regarding this dataset, you can refer to the Appendix - Datasets description section at the end of this MOOC.

Create a random forest containing three trees. Train the forest and check the generalization performance on the testing set in terms of mean absolute error.

# solution
from sklearn.metrics import mean_absolute_error
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestRegressor

forest = RandomForestRegressor(n_estimators=3)
forest.fit(data_train, target_train)
target_predicted = forest.predict(data_test)
print(
    "Mean absolute error: "
    f"{mean_absolute_error(target_test, target_predicted):.3f} grams"
)

Mean absolute error: 350.641 grams

We now aim to plot the predictions from the individual trees in the forest. For that purpose you have to create first a new dataset containing evenly spaced values for the flipper length over the interval between 170 mm and 230 mm.

# solution
import numpy as np

data_range = pd.DataFrame(np.linspace(170, 235, num=300), columns=data.columns)

The trees contained in the forest that you created can be accessed with the attribute estimators_. Use them to predict the body mass corresponding to the values in this newly created dataset. Similarly find the predictions of the random forest in this dataset.

# solution
tree_predictions = []

for tree in forest.estimators_:
    # we convert `data_range` into a NumPy array to avoid a warning raised in scikit-learn
    tree_predictions.append(tree.predict(data_range.to_numpy()))

forest_predictions = forest.predict(data_range)

Now make a plot that displays:

• the whole data using a scatter plot;

• the decision of each individual tree;

• the decision of the random forest.

# solution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

sns.scatterplot(
    data=penguins, x=feature_name, y=target_name, color="black", alpha=0.5
)

# plot tree predictions
for tree_idx, predictions in enumerate(tree_predictions):
    plt.plot(
        data_range[feature_name],
        predictions,
        label=f"Tree #{tree_idx}",
        linestyle="--",
        alpha=0.8,
    )

plt.plot(data_range[feature_name], forest_predictions, label="Random forest")
_ = plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1.05, 0.8), loc="upper left")