NLS: an accurate and yet easy-to-interpret regression method
This addresses the problem of interpretability in machine learning for practitioners needing both accuracy and transparency, though it is incremental as it builds on existing neural network and interpretability methods.
The authors tackled the trade-off between predictive accuracy and interpretability in regression models by developing NLS, a neural local smoother that imposes local linearity to enable easy interpretation without separate interpreters, achieving predictive power comparable to state-of-the-art models.
An important feature of successful supervised machine learning applications is to be able to explain the predictions given by the regression or classification model being used. However, most state-of-the-art models that have good predictive power lead to predictions that are hard to interpret. Thus, several model-agnostic interpreters have been developed recently as a way of explaining black-box classifiers. In practice, using these methods is a slow process because a novel fitting is required for each new testing instance, and several non-trivial choices must be made. We develop NLS (neural local smoother), a method that is complex enough to give good predictions, and yet gives solutions that are easy to be interpreted without the need of using a separate interpreter. The key idea is to use a neural network that imposes a local linear shape to the output layer. We show that NLS leads to predictive power that is comparable to state-of-the-art machine learning models, and yet is easier to interpret.