Learning replacement variables in interpretable rule-based models

Published: 20 Jun 2023, Last Modified: 19 Jul 2023IMLH 2023 PosterShortPaperEveryoneRevisionsBibTeX
Keywords: Machine Learning, Health care, Missing Values
TL;DR: We aim to learn replacement variables for missing values at test time using a rule-base interpretable model. The new methodology, MINTY which utilizes replacement variables, defined by disjunctions of literals, in generalized linear rule models.
Abstract: Rule models are favored in many prediction tasks due to their interpretation using natural language and their simple presentation. When learned from data, they can provide high predictive performance, on par with more complex models. However, in the presence of incomplete input data during test time, standard rule models’ predictions are undefined or ambiguous. In this work, we consider learning compact yet accurate rule models with missing values at both training and test time, based on the notion of replacement variables. We propose a method called MINTY which learns rules in the form of disjunctions between variables that act as replacements for each other when one or more is missing. This results in a sparse linear rule model that naturally allows a trade-off between interpretability and goodness of fit while being sensitive to missing values at test time. We demonstrate the concept of MINTY in preliminary experiments and compare the predictive performance to baselines with potential applications in clinical scoring systems.
Submission Number: 52
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