Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification
Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification

Author: Timothy Masters

Publisher: Apress

Published: 2017-12-19

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 1484233360

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Assess the quality of your prediction and classification models in ways that accurately reflect their real-world performance, and then improve this performance using state-of-the-art algorithms such as committee-based decision making, resampling the dataset, and boosting. This book presents many important techniques for building powerful, robust models and quantifying their expected behavior when put to work in your application. Considerable attention is given to information theory, especially as it relates to discovering and exploiting relationships between variables employed by your models. This presentation of an often confusing subject avoids advanced mathematics, focusing instead on concepts easily understood by those with modest background in mathematics. All algorithms include an intuitive explanation of operation, essential equations, references to more rigorous theory, and commented C++ source code. Many of these techniques are recent developments, still not in widespread use. Others are standard algorithms given a fresh look. In every case, the emphasis is on practical applicability, with all code written in such a way that it can easily be included in any program. What You'll Learn Compute entropy to detect problematic predictors Improve numeric predictions using constrained and unconstrained combinations, variance-weighted interpolation, and kernel-regression smoothing Carry out classification decisions using Borda counts, MinMax and MaxMin rules, union and intersection rules, logistic regression, selection by local accuracy, maximization of the fuzzy integral, and pairwise coupling Harness information-theoretic techniques to rapidly screen large numbers of candidate predictors, identifying those that are especially promising Use Monte-Carlo permutation methods to assess the role of good luck in performance results Compute confidence and tolerance intervals for predictions, as well as confidence levels for classification decisions Who This Book is For Anyone who creates prediction or classification models will find a wealth of useful algorithms in this book. Although all code examples are written in C++, the algorithms are described in sufficient detail that they can easily be programmed in any language.

Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification
Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification

Author: Timothy Masters

Publisher: Apress

Published: 2017-12-20

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 9781484233351

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Assess the quality of your prediction and classification models in ways that accurately reflect their real-world performance, and then improve this performance using state-of-the-art algorithms such as committee-based decision making, resampling the dataset, and boosting. This book presents many important techniques for building powerful, robust models and quantifying their expected behavior when put to work in your application. Considerable attention is given to information theory, especially as it relates to discovering and exploiting relationships between variables employed by your models. This presentation of an often confusing subject avoids advanced mathematics, focusing instead on concepts easily understood by those with modest background in mathematics. All algorithms include an intuitive explanation of operation, essential equations, references to more rigorous theory, and commented C++ source code. Many of these techniques are recent developments, still not in widespread use. Others are standard algorithms given a fresh look. In every case, the emphasis is on practical applicability, with all code written in such a way that it can easily be included in any program. What You'll Learn Compute entropy to detect problematic predictors Improve numeric predictions using constrained and unconstrained combinations, variance-weighted interpolation, and kernel-regression smoothing Carry out classification decisions using Borda counts, MinMax and MaxMin rules, union and intersection rules, logistic regression, selection by local accuracy, maximization of the fuzzy integral, and pairwise coupling Harness information-theoretic techniques to rapidly screen large numbers of candidate predictors, identifying those that are especially promising Use Monte-Carlo permutation methods to assess the role of good luck in performance results Compute confidence and tolerance intervals for predictions, as well as confidence levels for classification decisions Who This Book is For Anyone who creates prediction or classification models will find a wealth of useful algorithms in this book. Although all code examples are written in C++, the algorithms are described in sufficient detail that they can easily be programmed in any language.

Testing and Tuning Market Trading Systems
Testing and Tuning Market Trading Systems

Author: Timothy Masters

Publisher: Apress

Published: 2018-10-26

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1484241738

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Build, test, and tune financial, insurance or other market trading systems using C++ algorithms and statistics. You’ve had an idea and have done some preliminary experiments, and it looks promising. Where do you go from here? Well, this book discusses and dissects this case study approach. Seemingly good backtest performance isn't enough to justify trading real money. You need to perform rigorous statistical tests of the system's validity. Then, if basic tests confirm the quality of your idea, you need to tune your system, not just for best performance, but also for robust behavior in the face of inevitable market changes. Next, you need to quantify its expected future behavior, assessing how bad its real-life performance might actually be, and whether you can live with that. Finally, you need to find its theoretical performance limits so you know if its actual trades conform to this theoretical expectation, enabling you to dump the system if it does not live up to expectations. This book does not contain any sure-fire, guaranteed-riches trading systems. Those are a dime a dozen... But if you have a trading system, this book will provide you with a set of tools that will help you evaluate the potential value of your system, tweak it to improve its profitability, and monitor its on-going performance to detect deterioration before it fails catastrophically. Any serious market trader would do well to employ the methods described in this book. What You Will Learn See how the 'spaghetti-on-the-wall' approach to trading system development can be done legitimatelyDetect overfitting early in developmentEstimate the probability that your system's backtest results could have been due to just good luckRegularize a predictive model so it automatically selects an optimal subset of indicator candidatesRapidly find the global optimum for any type of parameterized trading systemAssess the ruggedness of your trading system against market changesEnhance the stationarity and information content of your proprietary indicatorsNest one layer of walkforward analysis inside another layer to account for selection bias in complex trading systemsCompute a lower bound on your system's mean future performanceBound expected periodic returns to detect on-going system deterioration before it becomes severeEstimate the probability of catastrophic drawdown Who This Book Is For Experienced C++ programmers, developers, and software engineers. Prior experience with rigorous statistical procedures to evaluate and maximize the quality of systems is recommended as well.

Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification
Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification

Author: Timothy Masters

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2013-04-21

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 9781484137451

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This book begins by presenting methods for performing practical, real-life assessment of the performance of prediction and classification models. It then goes on to discuss techniques for improving the performance of such models by intelligent resampling of training/testing data, combining multiple models into sophisticated committees, and making use of exogenous information to dynamically choose modeling methodologies. Rigorous statistical techniques for computing confidence in predictions and decisions receive extensive treatment. Finally, a hundred pages are devoted to the use of information theory in evaluating and selecting useful predictors. Special attention is paid to Schreiber's Information Transfer, a recent generalization of Grainger Causality. Well commented C++ code is given for every algorithm and technique. The ultimate purpose of this text is three-fold. The first goal is to open the eyes of serious developers to some of the hidden pitfalls that lurk in the model development process. The second is to provide broad exposure for some of the most powerful model enhancement algorithms that have emerged from academia in the last two decades, while not bogging down readers in cryptic mathematical theory. Finally, this text should provide the reader with a toolbox of ready-to-use C++ code that can be easily incorporated into his or her existing programs.

Evaluating Learning Algorithms
Evaluating Learning Algorithms

Author: Nathalie Japkowicz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-01-17

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 1139494147

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The field of machine learning has matured to the point where many sophisticated learning approaches can be applied to practical applications. Thus it is of critical importance that researchers have the proper tools to evaluate learning approaches and understand the underlying issues. This book examines various aspects of the evaluation process with an emphasis on classification algorithms. The authors describe several techniques for classifier performance assessment, error estimation and resampling, obtaining statistical significance as well as selecting appropriate domains for evaluation. They also present a unified evaluation framework and highlight how different components of evaluation are both significantly interrelated and interdependent. The techniques presented in the book are illustrated using R and WEKA, facilitating better practical insight as well as implementation. Aimed at researchers in the theory and applications of machine learning, this book offers a solid basis for conducting performance evaluations of algorithms in practical settings.

Understanding Evidence-Based Rheumatology
Understanding Evidence-Based Rheumatology

Author: Hasan Yazici

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-10-29

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 3319083740

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It is imperative that health professionals caring for patients with rheumatic diseases understand how to correctly interpret evidence in their field, taking into account the merits and shortcomings of available data. Understanding Evidence-Based Rheumatology offers a practical assessment of criteria, drugs, trials, and registries and provides useful tools for successfully interpreting this data. The book introduces readers to basic analysis of trial design, statistics and application of data through no-nonsense, easy-to-follow insights. Using numerous examples, chapters outline the difficulties physicians encounter when measuring disease activity in rheumatology and offer strategies for systematically approaching these situations. Ethical issues in study design and reporting are examined and the book closes with a summary of future directions for scientific and clinical studies in rheumatology. Understanding Evidence-Based Rheumatology is an invaluable resource for trainees, clinicians and scientists, preparing them with the necessary tools to correctly gather evidence and shed light on the difficult practice of rheumatology.

The Elements of Statistical Learning
The Elements of Statistical Learning

Author: Trevor Hastie

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 0387216065

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During the past decade there has been an explosion in computation and information technology. With it have come vast amounts of data in a variety of fields such as medicine, biology, finance, and marketing. The challenge of understanding these data has led to the development of new tools in the field of statistics, and spawned new areas such as data mining, machine learning, and bioinformatics. Many of these tools have common underpinnings but are often expressed with different terminology. This book describes the important ideas in these areas in a common conceptual framework. While the approach is statistical, the emphasis is on concepts rather than mathematics. Many examples are given, with a liberal use of color graphics. It should be a valuable resource for statisticians and anyone interested in data mining in science or industry. The book’s coverage is broad, from supervised learning (prediction) to unsupervised learning. The many topics include neural networks, support vector machines, classification trees and boosting---the first comprehensive treatment of this topic in any book. This major new edition features many topics not covered in the original, including graphical models, random forests, ensemble methods, least angle regression & path algorithms for the lasso, non-negative matrix factorization, and spectral clustering. There is also a chapter on methods for “wide” data (p bigger than n), including multiple testing and false discovery rates. Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman are professors of statistics at Stanford University. They are prominent researchers in this area: Hastie and Tibshirani developed generalized additive models and wrote a popular book of that title. Hastie co-developed much of the statistical modeling software and environment in R/S-PLUS and invented principal curves and surfaces. Tibshirani proposed the lasso and is co-author of the very successful An Introduction to the Bootstrap. Friedman is the co-inventor of many data-mining tools including CART, MARS, projection pursuit and gradient boosting.

Handbook on Risk and Need Assessment
Handbook on Risk and Need Assessment

Author: Faye Taxman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 493

ISBN-13: 1317402839

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The Handbook on Risk and Need Assessment: Theory and Practice covers risk assessments for individuals being considered for parole or probation. Evidence-based approaches to such decisions help take the emotion and politics out of community corrections. As the United States begins to back away from ineffective, expensive policies of mass incarceration, this handbook will provide the resources needed to help ensure both public safety and the effective rehabilitation of offenders. The ASC Division on Corrections & Sentencing Handbook Series will publish volumes on topics ranging from violence risk assessment to specialty courts for drug users, veterans, or the mentally ill. Each thematic volume focuses on a single topical issue that intersects with corrections and sentencing research.

The Wiley Handbook on What Works with Girls and Women in Conflict with the Law
The Wiley Handbook on What Works with Girls and Women in Conflict with the Law

Author: Shelley L. Brown

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-03-14

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 1119886414

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The Wiley Handbook on What Works with Girls and Women in Conflict with the Law The most practical discussion of the rehabilitation of girls and women in conflict with the law in the correctional arena What Works with Girls and Women in Conflict with the Law is the leading examination of evidence-based practice in the field of gender-responsive corrections. Adopting an international and intersectional approach, the distinguished authors seek to collect the best available data and thinking on what works with girls and women and apply it to the real-world problems facing correctional systems today. As part of its contextual and rich approach to the subject, What Works with girls and women in conflict with the law, covers a broad variety of topics, ranging from theories of female involvement in crime, security classification and risk assessment, evidence-based treatment and supervision approaches, special populations (such as Indigenous women), to legal/policy developments in the field of gender-responsive corrections. Perfect for students and practitioners in the field of psychology, criminology, social work, criminal justice, and corrections, this is the only reference of its kind to focus on the practical applications of the latest theory.

QSAR in Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment
QSAR in Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment

Author: Huixiao Hong

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2023-08-12

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 044315340X

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QSAR in Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment provides comprehensive coverage on QSAR methods, tools, data sources, and models focusing on applications in products safety evaluation and chemicals risk assessment. Organized into five parts, the book covers almost all aspects of QSAR modeling and application. Topics in the book include methods of QSAR, from both scientific and regulatory viewpoints; data sources available for facilitating QSAR models development; software tools for QSAR development; and QSAR models developed for assisting safety evaluation and risk assessment. Chapter contributors are authored by a lineup of active scientists in this field. The chapters not only provide professional level technical summarizations but also cover introductory descriptions for all aspects of QSAR for safety evaluation and risk assessment. - Provides comprehensive content about the QSAR techniques and models in facilitating the safety evaluation of drugs and consumer products and risk assesment of environmental chemicals - Includes some of the most cutting-edge methodologies such as deep learning and machine learning for QSAR - Offers detailed procedures of modeling and provides examples of each model's application in real practice