Víctor Blanco

Víctor Blanco, Alberto Japón, Justo Puerto et al.

This paper introduces Weighted Optimal Classification Forests (WOCFs), a new family of classifiers that takes advantage of an optimal ensemble of decision trees to derive accurate and interpretable classifiers. We propose a novel mathematical optimization-based methodology which simultaneously constructs a given number of trees, each of them providing a predicted class for the observations in the feature space. The classification rule is derived by assigning to each observation its most frequently predicted class among the trees. We provide a mixed integer linear programming formulation (MIP) for the problem and several novel MIP strengthening / scaling techniques. We report the results of our computational experiments, from which we conclude that our method has equal or superior performance compared with state-of-the-art tree-based classification methods for small to medium-sized instances. We also present three real-world case studies showing that our methodology has very interesting implications in terms of interpretability. Overall, WOCFs complement existing methods such as CART, Optimal Classification Trees, Random Forests and XGBoost. In addition to its Pareto improvement on accuracy and interpretability, we also see unique properties emerging in terms of different trees focusing on different feature variables. This provides nontrivial improvement in interpretability and usability of the trained model in terms of counterfactual explanation. Thus, despite the apparent computational challenge of WOCFs that limit the size of the problems that can be efficiently solved with current MIP, this is an important research direction that can lead to qualitatively different insights for researchers and complement the toolbox of practitioners for high stakes problems.

Víctor Blanco, Harshit Kothari, James Luedtke

In this paper, we propose a new mathematical optimization model for multiclass classification based on arrangements of hyperplanes. Our approach preserves the core support vector machine (SVM) paradigm of maximizing class separation while minimizing misclassification errors, and it is computationally more efficient than a previous formulation. We present a kernel-based extension that allows it to construct nonlinear decision boundaries. Furthermore, we show how the framework can naturally incorporate alternative geometric structures, including classification trees, $\ell_p$-SVMs, and models with discrete feature selection. To address large-scale instances, we develop a dynamic clustering matheuristic that leverages the proposed MIP formulation. Extensive computational experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed model and dynamic clustering heuristic, and we report competitive classification performance on both synthetic datasets and real-world benchmarks from the UCI Machine Learning Repository, comparing our method with state-of-the-art implementations available in scikit-learn.

Víctor Blanco, Inmaculada Espejo, Raúl Páez et al.

We present a novel mathematical optimization framework for outlier detection in multimodal datasets, extending Support Vector Data Description approaches. We provide a primal formulation, in the shape of a Mixed Integer Second Order Cone model, that constructs Euclidean hyperspheres to identify anomalous observations. Building on this, we develop a dual model that enables the application of the kernel trick, thus allowing for the detection of outliers within complex, non-linear data structures. An extensive computational study demonstrates the effectiveness of our exact method, showing clear advantages over existing heuristic techniques in terms of accuracy and robustness.

Víctor Blanco, Alberto Japón, Justo Puerto et al.

In this paper we provide a novel mathematical optimization based methodology to perturb the features of a given observation to be re-classified, by a tree ensemble classification rule, to a certain desired class. The method is based on these facts: the most viable changes for an observation to reach the desired class do not always coincide with the closest distance point (in the feature space) of the target class; individuals put effort on a few number of features to reach the desired class; and each individual is endowed with a probability to change each of its features to a given value, which determines the overall probability of changing to the target class. Putting all together, we provide different methods to find the features where the individuals must exert effort to maximize the probability to reach the target class. Our method also allows us to rank the most important features in the tree-ensemble. The proposed methodology is tested on a real dataset, validating the proposal.

Víctor Blanco, Alberto Japón, Justo Puerto

In this paper we present a novel mathematical optimization-based methodology to construct tree-shaped classification rules for multiclass instances. Our approach consists of building Classification Trees in which, except for the leaf nodes, the labels are temporarily left out and grouped into two classes by means of a SVM separating hyperplane. We provide a Mixed Integer Non Linear Programming formulation for the problem and report the results of an extended battery of computational experiments to assess the performance of our proposal with respect to other benchmarking classification methods.

Víctor Blanco, Alberto Japón, Justo Puerto

In this paper we propose a novel methodology to construct Optimal Classification Trees that takes into account that noisy labels may occur in the training sample. Our approach rests on two main elements: (1) the splitting rules for the classification trees are designed to maximize the separation margin between classes applying the paradigm of SVM; and (2) some of the labels of the training sample are allowed to be changed during the construction of the tree trying to detect the label noise. Both features are considered and integrated together to design the resulting Optimal Classification Tree. We present a Mixed Integer Non Linear Programming formulation for the problem, suitable to be solved using any of the available off-the-shelf solvers. The model is analyzed and tested on a battery of standard datasets taken from UCI Machine Learning repository, showing the effectiveness of our approach.

Víctor Blanco, Alberto Japón, Justo Puerto

In this paper we propose novel methodologies to construct Support Vector Machine -based classifiers that takes into account that label noises occur in the training sample. We propose different alternatives based on solving Mixed Integer Linear and Non Linear models by incorporating decisions on relabeling some of the observations in the training dataset. The first method incorporates relabeling directly in the SVM model while a second family of methods combines clustering with classification at the same time, giving rise to a model that applies simultaneously similarity measures and SVM. Extensive computational experiments are reported based on a battery of standard datasets taken from UCI Machine Learning repository, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.

Víctor Blanco, Alberto Japón, Justo Puerto

In this paper, we present a novel approach to construct multiclass classifiers by means of arrangements of hyperplanes. We propose different mixed integer (linear and non linear) programming formulations for the problem using extensions of widely used measures for misclassifying observations where the \textit{kernel trick} can be adapted to be applicable. Some dimensionality reductions and variable fixing strategies are also developed for these models. An extensive battery of experiments has been run which reveal the powerfulness of our proposal as compared with other previously proposed methodologies.