Conditional Feature Importance with Generative Modeling Using Adversarial Random Forests

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Blesch, Kristin, Koenen, Niklas, Kapar, Jan, Golchian, Pegah, Burk, Lukas, Loecher, Markus, Wright, Marvin N.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Blesch, Kristin
Koenen, Niklas
Kapar, Jan
Golchian, Pegah
Burk, Lukas
Loecher, Markus
Wright, Marvin N.
author_facet Blesch, Kristin
Koenen, Niklas
Kapar, Jan
Golchian, Pegah
Burk, Lukas
Loecher, Markus
Wright, Marvin N.
contents This paper proposes a method for measuring conditional feature importance via generative modeling. In explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), conditional feature importance assesses the impact of a feature on a prediction model's performance given the information of other features. Model-agnostic post hoc methods to do so typically evaluate changes in the predictive performance under on-manifold feature value manipulations. Such procedures require creating feature values that respect conditional feature distributions, which can be challenging in practice. Recent advancements in generative modeling can facilitate this. For tabular data, which may consist of both categorical and continuous features, the adversarial random forest (ARF) stands out as a generative model that can generate on-manifold data points without requiring intensive tuning efforts or computational resources, making it a promising candidate model for subroutines in XAI methods. This paper proposes cARFi (conditional ARF feature importance), a method for measuring conditional feature importance through feature values sampled from ARF-estimated conditional distributions. cARFi requires only little tuning to yield robust importance scores that can flexibly adapt for conditional or marginal notions of feature importance, including straightforward extensions to condition on feature subsets and allows for inferring the significance of feature importances through statistical tests.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_11178
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Conditional Feature Importance with Generative Modeling Using Adversarial Random Forests
Blesch, Kristin
Koenen, Niklas
Kapar, Jan
Golchian, Pegah
Burk, Lukas
Loecher, Markus
Wright, Marvin N.
Machine Learning
This paper proposes a method for measuring conditional feature importance via generative modeling. In explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), conditional feature importance assesses the impact of a feature on a prediction model's performance given the information of other features. Model-agnostic post hoc methods to do so typically evaluate changes in the predictive performance under on-manifold feature value manipulations. Such procedures require creating feature values that respect conditional feature distributions, which can be challenging in practice. Recent advancements in generative modeling can facilitate this. For tabular data, which may consist of both categorical and continuous features, the adversarial random forest (ARF) stands out as a generative model that can generate on-manifold data points without requiring intensive tuning efforts or computational resources, making it a promising candidate model for subroutines in XAI methods. This paper proposes cARFi (conditional ARF feature importance), a method for measuring conditional feature importance through feature values sampled from ARF-estimated conditional distributions. cARFi requires only little tuning to yield robust importance scores that can flexibly adapt for conditional or marginal notions of feature importance, including straightforward extensions to condition on feature subsets and allows for inferring the significance of feature importances through statistical tests.
title Conditional Feature Importance with Generative Modeling Using Adversarial Random Forests
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.11178