论文标题
在解决决策树中的解释冗余时
On Tackling Explanation Redundancy in Decision Trees
论文作者
论文摘要
决策树(DTS)代表了机器学习(ML)模型的理想。决策树的可解释性通过所谓的内在解释性激发了解释性方法,并且它是在高风险应用中应用可解释的ML模型的最新建议的核心。人们对DT可解释性的信念是合理的,即DT预测的解释通常被期望是简洁的。实际上,在DTS的情况下,解释对应于DT路径。由于决策树是理想情况下的浅层,因此路径所包含的特征要比特征总数少得多,因此DTS中的解释预计将是简洁的,因此可以解释。本文提供了理论和实验论点,表明,只要决策树的解释性等同于解释的简洁性,就不应认为决策树。本文介绍了逻辑上严格的路径解释和路径解释冗余,并证明了决策树必须表现出具有任意解释冗余的路径的功能。该论文还证明,只能用表现出没有解释冗余的DT来代表一个非常有限的功能类别。此外,本文还包括实验结果证实,在决策树中观察到路径解释的冗余,包括使用不同的树学习算法获得的,以及在广泛可公开的决策树中。本文还提出了用于消除路径解释冗余的多项式时间算法,实际上,该算法需要可忽略的计算时间。因此,这些算法可间接获得对决策树的不可约和简洁的解释。
Decision trees (DTs) epitomize the ideal of interpretability of machine learning (ML) models. The interpretability of decision trees motivates explainability approaches by so-called intrinsic interpretability, and it is at the core of recent proposals for applying interpretable ML models in high-risk applications. The belief in DT interpretability is justified by the fact that explanations for DT predictions are generally expected to be succinct. Indeed, in the case of DTs, explanations correspond to DT paths. Since decision trees are ideally shallow, and so paths contain far fewer features than the total number of features, explanations in DTs are expected to be succinct, and hence interpretable. This paper offers both theoretical and experimental arguments demonstrating that, as long as interpretability of decision trees equates with succinctness of explanations, then decision trees ought not be deemed interpretable. The paper introduces logically rigorous path explanations and path explanation redundancy, and proves that there exist functions for which decision trees must exhibit paths with arbitrarily large explanation redundancy. The paper also proves that only a very restricted class of functions can be represented with DTs that exhibit no explanation redundancy. In addition, the paper includes experimental results substantiating that path explanation redundancy is observed ubiquitously in decision trees, including those obtained using different tree learning algorithms, but also in a wide range of publicly available decision trees. The paper also proposes polynomial-time algorithms for eliminating path explanation redundancy, which in practice require negligible time to compute. Thus, these algorithms serve to indirectly attain irreducible, and so succinct, explanations for decision trees.