Robust Loss Functions for Training Decision Trees with Noisy Labels

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wilton, Jonathan, Ye, Nan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917572547444736
author Wilton, Jonathan
Ye, Nan
author_facet Wilton, Jonathan
Ye, Nan
contents We consider training decision trees using noisily labeled data, focusing on loss functions that can lead to robust learning algorithms. Our contributions are threefold. First, we offer novel theoretical insights on the robustness of many existing loss functions in the context of decision tree learning. We show that some of the losses belong to a class of what we call conservative losses, and the conservative losses lead to an early stopping behavior during training and noise-tolerant predictions during testing. Second, we introduce a framework for constructing robust loss functions, called distribution losses. These losses apply percentile-based penalties based on an assumed margin distribution, and they naturally allow adapting to different noise rates via a robustness parameter. In particular, we introduce a new loss called the negative exponential loss, which leads to an efficient greedy impurity-reduction learning algorithm. Lastly, our experiments on multiple datasets and noise settings validate our theoretical insight and the effectiveness of our adaptive negative exponential loss.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_12937
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robust Loss Functions for Training Decision Trees with Noisy Labels
Wilton, Jonathan
Ye, Nan
Machine Learning
We consider training decision trees using noisily labeled data, focusing on loss functions that can lead to robust learning algorithms. Our contributions are threefold. First, we offer novel theoretical insights on the robustness of many existing loss functions in the context of decision tree learning. We show that some of the losses belong to a class of what we call conservative losses, and the conservative losses lead to an early stopping behavior during training and noise-tolerant predictions during testing. Second, we introduce a framework for constructing robust loss functions, called distribution losses. These losses apply percentile-based penalties based on an assumed margin distribution, and they naturally allow adapting to different noise rates via a robustness parameter. In particular, we introduce a new loss called the negative exponential loss, which leads to an efficient greedy impurity-reduction learning algorithm. Lastly, our experiments on multiple datasets and noise settings validate our theoretical insight and the effectiveness of our adaptive negative exponential loss.
title Robust Loss Functions for Training Decision Trees with Noisy Labels
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12937