SUBPLEX: Towards a Better Understanding of Black Box Model Explanations at the Subpopulation Level

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yuan, Jun, Chan, Gromit Yeuk-Yin, Barr, Brian, Overton, Kyle, Rees, Kim, Nonato, Luis Gustavo, Bertini, Enrico, Silva, Claudio T.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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_version_ 1866929334892101632
author Yuan, Jun
Chan, Gromit Yeuk-Yin
Barr, Brian
Overton, Kyle
Rees, Kim
Nonato, Luis Gustavo
Bertini, Enrico
Silva, Claudio T.
author_facet Yuan, Jun
Chan, Gromit Yeuk-Yin
Barr, Brian
Overton, Kyle
Rees, Kim
Nonato, Luis Gustavo
Bertini, Enrico
Silva, Claudio T.
contents Understanding the interpretation of machine learning (ML) models has been of paramount importance when making decisions with societal impacts such as transport control, financial activities, and medical diagnosis. While current model interpretation methodologies focus on using locally linear functions to approximate the models or creating self-explanatory models that give explanations to each input instance, they do not focus on model interpretation at the subpopulation level, which is the understanding of model interpretations across different subset aggregations in a dataset. To address the challenges of providing explanations of an ML model across the whole dataset, we propose SUBPLEX, a visual analytics system to help users understand black-box model explanations with subpopulation visual analysis. SUBPLEX is designed through an iterative design process with machine learning researchers to address three usage scenarios of real-life machine learning tasks: model debugging, feature selection, and bias detection. The system applies novel subpopulation analysis on ML model explanations and interactive visualization to explore the explanations on a dataset with different levels of granularity. Based on the system, we conduct user evaluation to assess how understanding the interpretation at a subpopulation level influences the sense-making process of interpreting ML models from a user's perspective. Our results suggest that by providing model explanations for different groups of data, SUBPLEX encourages users to generate more ingenious ideas to enrich the interpretations. It also helps users to acquire a tight integration between programming workflow and visual analytics workflow. Last but not least, we summarize the considerations observed in applying visualization to machine learning interpretations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2007_10609
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SUBPLEX: Towards a Better Understanding of Black Box Model Explanations at the Subpopulation Level
Yuan, Jun
Chan, Gromit Yeuk-Yin
Barr, Brian
Overton, Kyle
Rees, Kim
Nonato, Luis Gustavo
Bertini, Enrico
Silva, Claudio T.
Human-Computer Interaction
Understanding the interpretation of machine learning (ML) models has been of paramount importance when making decisions with societal impacts such as transport control, financial activities, and medical diagnosis. While current model interpretation methodologies focus on using locally linear functions to approximate the models or creating self-explanatory models that give explanations to each input instance, they do not focus on model interpretation at the subpopulation level, which is the understanding of model interpretations across different subset aggregations in a dataset. To address the challenges of providing explanations of an ML model across the whole dataset, we propose SUBPLEX, a visual analytics system to help users understand black-box model explanations with subpopulation visual analysis. SUBPLEX is designed through an iterative design process with machine learning researchers to address three usage scenarios of real-life machine learning tasks: model debugging, feature selection, and bias detection. The system applies novel subpopulation analysis on ML model explanations and interactive visualization to explore the explanations on a dataset with different levels of granularity. Based on the system, we conduct user evaluation to assess how understanding the interpretation at a subpopulation level influences the sense-making process of interpreting ML models from a user's perspective. Our results suggest that by providing model explanations for different groups of data, SUBPLEX encourages users to generate more ingenious ideas to enrich the interpretations. It also helps users to acquire a tight integration between programming workflow and visual analytics workflow. Last but not least, we summarize the considerations observed in applying visualization to machine learning interpretations.
title SUBPLEX: Towards a Better Understanding of Black Box Model Explanations at the Subpopulation Level
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.10609