arXiv:2510.24815stat.MLcs.LG2025-10NeurIPS被引 6

提出TreeHFD算法,可解释树模型的预测结果。

Tree Ensemble Explainability through the Hoeffding Functional Decomposition and TreeHFD Algorithm

  • 基于霍夫丁分解,通过正交约束实现树模型的可解释性
  • 算法收敛,能准确识别主效应与交互作用,支持因果变量选择
  • 性能优于现有方法,适合高风险决策场景的模型分析

树集成在处理表格数据的各类问题中表现出色,但其黑箱特性限制了在关键决策场景中的应用。霍夫丁或方差分解是一种强大的可解释性方法,能将黑箱模型分解为低维函数之和,前提是输入变量相互独立。在实际学习中,变量常存在依赖关系,因此通过层次正交性约束对霍夫丁分解进行推广,得到唯一且稀疏的分解形式,明确刻画主效应与交互作用。然而,从数据样本中实际估计该分解仍是开放问题。为此,本文提出TreeHFD算法,用于从数据中估计树集成的霍夫丁分解。我们证明了TreeHFD的收敛性及其正交性、稀疏性和因果变量选择等核心性质。实验表明,TreeHFD在模拟与真实数据上均表现优异,代码已开源(https://github.com/ThalesGroup/treehfd)。此外,我们实证发现广泛使用的TreeSHAP方法(基于谢泼德值)与霍夫丁分解密切相关。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Tree ensembles have demonstrated state-of-the-art predictive performance across a wide range of problems involving tabular data. Nevertheless, the black-box nature of tree ensembles is a strong limitation, especially for applications with critical decisions at stake. The Hoeffding or ANOVA functional decomposition is a powerful explainability method, as it breaks down black-box models into a unique sum of lower-dimensional functions, provided that input variables are independent. In standard learning settings, input variables are often dependent, and the Hoeffding decomposition is generalized through hierarchical orthogonality constraints. Such generalization leads to unique and sparse decompositions with well-defined main effects and interactions. However, the practical estimation of this decomposition from a data sample is still an open problem. Therefore, we introduce the TreeHFD algorithm to estimate the Hoeffding decomposition of a tree ensemble from a data sample. We show the convergence of TreeHFD, along with the main properties of orthogonality, sparsity, and causal variable selection. The high performance of TreeHFD is demonstrated through experiments on both simulated and real data, using our treehfd Python package (https://github.com/ThalesGroup/treehfd). Besides, we empirically show that the widely used TreeSHAP method, based on Shapley values, is strongly connected to the Hoeffding decomposition.

可解释性树模型霍夫丁分解因果分析

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