arXiv:2505.06753cs.LGphysics.comp-ph2025-05

用物理热力学思想做分类,输出可解释的概率。

Boltzmann Classifier: A Thermodynamic-Inspired Approach to Supervised Learning

  • 基于类内最近邻平均距离计算概率,思路来自玻尔兹曼分布。
  • 分子活性预测准确率最高,概率与实验pIC50值高度相关。
  • 适合需要可解释性的科学领域,如化学、医学诊断。

我们提出玻尔兹曼分类器,一种受玻尔兹曼分布启发的距离驱动概率分类算法。与传统分类器仅输出硬决策或未经校准的概率不同,该方法根据每个类别内最近邻的平均距离分配类别概率,输出具有物理意义且可解释。我们在三个应用领域评估:分子活性预测、过渡金属配合物氧化态分类、乳腺癌诊断。在分子活性任务中,分类器对两个蛋白靶点的活性化合物预测准确率最高,预测概率与实验pIC50值高度相关。在金属配合物任务中,仅基于晶体学数据提取的金属-配体键长,即可准确区分Fe、Mn、Co的氧化态II和III,且结果符合已知化学趋势。在乳腺癌数据集上达到97%准确率,低置信度预测集中于本就模糊的样本。在所有任务中,其性能均优于或相当主流模型(逻辑回归、支持向量机、随机森林、k近邻)。其概率输出与连续物理或生物属性相关,显示其在分类与回归中的潜力。结果表明,该分类器是传统机器学习的稳健且可解释替代方案,尤其适用于重视结构-性质关系的科学领域。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

We present the Boltzmann classifier, a novel distance based probabilistic classification algorithm inspired by the Boltzmann distribution. Unlike traditional classifiers that produce hard decisions or uncalibrated probabilities, the Boltzmann classifier assigns class probabilities based on the average distance to the nearest neighbors within each class, providing interpretable, physically meaningful outputs. We evaluate the performance of the method across three application domains: molecular activity prediction, oxidation state classification of transition metal complexes, and breast cancer diagnosis. In the molecular activity task, the classifier achieved the highest accuracy in predicting active compounds against two protein targets, with strong correlations observed between the predicted probabilities and experimental pIC50 values. For metal complexes, the classifier accurately distinguished between oxidation states II and III for Fe, Mn, and Co, using only metal-ligand bond lengths extracted from crystallographic data, and demonstrated high consistency with known chemical trends. In the breast cancer dataset, the classifier achieved 97% accuracy, with low confidence predictions concentrated in inherently ambiguous cases. Across all tasks, the Boltzmann classifier performed competitively or better than standard models such as logistic regression, support vector machines, random forests, and k-nearest neighbors. Its probabilistic outputs were found to correlate with continuous physical or biological properties, highlighting its potential utility in both classification and regression contexts. The results suggest that the Boltzmann classifier is a robust and interpretable alternative to conventional machine learning approaches, particularly in scientific domains where underlying structure property relationships are important.

分类器可解释性物理启发分子预测

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