JuliaAI / JuliaAI/MLJScikitLearnInterface.jl

Missing Categorical feature supports for HistgradientBoost

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enhancement
Dominant language
Julia
Stars
14
Forks
8
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

HistgradientBoost methods from Scikit-learn support native categorical features, meaning no preprocessing is needed, as shown here:
https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/ensemble.html#categorical-support-gbdt

However, the MLJ interface seems to enforce the input to be continuous tables, as seen in the source code:

meta(HistGradientBoostingClassifier,
    input   = Table(Continuous),
    target  = AbstractVector{<:Finite},
    weights = false
    )

Since MLJ enforces the scitype schema, the categorical feature columns should be auto-inferred. I hope this can be addressed, thanks.

On second thoughts, since scikit-learn will auto-infer categorical features based on dtype, maybe relaxing the Table type to some union type would suffice.

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the HistGradientBoostingClassifier meta declaration shown in the issue and compare it with Scikit-learn's categorical-support documentation. Determine which MLJ table scitypes allow categorical columns while preserving the existing target and weights constraints, then verify that categorical features can be passed without preprocessing.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia, scikit-learn
Domain
machine-learning
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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