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Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

Supervised machine learning problems can be broadly divided into 2: Regression problems and classification problems. 

In the previous tutorials, we have examined how to build a linear regression model with Tensorflow and Keras. In this tutorial, we shall be turning our attention to classification problems. Classification problems take a large chunk of machine learning problems. Thus, It is critically important to understand how to build classifiers using machine learning algorithms or deep learning techniques. 

Later in this tutorial, we will build a linear classifier using Tensorflow Keras. We’d begin by brushing up on all the theoretical concepts of linear classifiers before going ahead to build one. 

By the end of the tutorial, you’d discover:

  • What is a Linear Classifier? 
  • Types of Classification Problems 
  • The Workings of a Binary Classifier
  • How the Performance of a Binary Classifier is Measured 
  • Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
  • Checking for imbalanced dataset
  • Checking for Correlation 
  • Data Preprocessing
  • Building a Single Layer Perceptron for binary  classification
  • Building a Multilayer Perceptronfor binary classification

What is a Linear Classifier?

To answer this, we need to first understand what a classifier is. A classifier is a model that predicts the class of an object, given its properties. For instance, if my model determines whether an object is a cat or a dog, that is a classifier. In classification problems, the labels, which are called classes, are discrete rather than continuous numbers in regression problems. 

Basically, a classifier splits the observations into its class. But while this splitting can be done using a straight hyperplane, some datasets may contain class boundaries that cannot be split by a straight hyperplane. A model in which the classification cannot be done with a hyperplane is called a nonlinear classifier. A linear classifier on the other hand is a model that can capture the class boundaries using straight lines or hyperplanes. 

Types of Classification Problems 

Classification problems can also be divided into three based on the label classes – binary classification, multiclass classification, and multilabel classification

  • Binary classification problem: This is a classification problem where the label contains only two classes. For instance, a model that predicts whether an individual has COVID-19 or not. Or a model that determines whether mail is spam or not. 
  • Multiclass classification problem: In this type of classification problem, the label contains more than 2 classes. For example, the popular iris dataset contains 3 classes (iris setosa, iris virginica, and iris Versicolor). Such a classification problem is called a multiclass classification problem. 
  • Multilabel classification problems: For this kind of classification problem, each label class would have more than a class. In photo recognition problems, there may be more than one object in the picture, maybe a dog, and a house. Therefore, the model would predict more than one class for this photo. This is a typical multilabel classification problem. 

In this tutorial, we shall build a binary classifier. Let’s understand how it works 

The Workings of a Binary Classifier

In supervised learning, the dataset comprises independent variables (called features) and dependent features (called labels). For linear regression problems which we treated in the last tutorial, the variables are continuous numbers (any real number). In such cases, the model attempts to predict the exact number and checks its success by determining how close it is to the correct number. Metrics such as root mean square error, r-squared error, or mean absolute error are common metrics to check how well the model has performed. 

For binary classification problems, the labels are two discrete numbers, 1(yes) or 0 (no). The classifier predicts the probability of the occurrence of each class. It then returns the class with the highest probability. Logistic regression is typically used to compute the probability of each class in a binary classification problem. But how does the logistic regression work? 

A Logistic Function

Logistic regression makes use of the logistic function (called a sigmoid function) to return a class output. The function is an S-curve that receives any continuous number and maps it within the range of 0 to 1 (although not exactly equal to 0 or 1). 

The function is given as

A Logistic Function

Where x is the continuous number that would be transformed into a number between 0 and 1. The graph is typically in this form

Where x is the continuous number that would be transformed into a number between 0 and 1. The graph is typically in this form 

A Logistic Function

Source: TowardsDataScience

The Logistic Regression Equation

In logistic regression, the independent variables (x) alongside some assigned weights (b) are used to predict the binary outputs (y). The linear regression equation is given below.

 Logistic Regression Equation

Where b0 is the bias, b1 is the weight of each independent variable (x). The weight shows how the independent variables (x) are correlated with the dependent variable (y). Hence, a positive correlation causes an increase in the probability of the positive while a negative correlation does otherwise. 

Once the output of the equation is found, the logistic function converts them into probabilities. 

How the Performance of a Binary Classifier is Measured 

You’d need to check how well your binary classifier is performing having built it. There are a couple of metrics to check your classifier performance. Let’s talk about the most popular ones. 

  • Accuracy

Accuracy is perhaps the simplest and commonest metrics. It is simply the ratio of the total number of correct predictions to the total number of predictions made. For example, in a dataset of 1000 samples with labels indicating whether a mail is a spam or ham. If the model makes 850 correct predictions, the accuracy is simply 850 / 1000 which is 85%.

Making use of accuracy has some shortcomings, however. In an unbalanced dataset using accuracy can be misleading. An unbalanced dataset is one where the occurrence of one class far outweighs the occurrence of the other. In the earlier instance I gave, imagine the labels have 850 labels that belong to ham and 150 that belong to spam. This is an example of an imbalanced dataset since 850 outweighs 150 by a large margin.

If we build a dummy model that predicts that all observations are a ham without checking the independent features. The model would still have an accuracy of 85%. This is intrinsically not a good

metric to use for such data. Furthermore, accuracy does not take into account the probability of each class. This may also be a bottleneck when you wish to finetune the outputs of the model for better results. 

  • Confusion Matrix 

The confusion matrix is another popular metric for binary classification problems. The matrix is divided into four quadrants: true positive (TP), false positive (FP), true negative (TN), false negative (FN). Let’s see what the confusion matrix looks like then explain what these terms mean. 

Linear Classifier

Source: Packt

As seen above, the row indicates the actual value and the column indicates the predicted values. The 4 quadrants are the interception of the actual and predicted values. 

TN: This is when the model predicts that observation is NOT a class and is actually correct. Say, the model predicts that observation is not spam, and is correctly so. 

FN: This is when the model predicts that observation is NOT a class but is incorrect. Say, the model predicts that observation is not spam, but it is actually spam. 

FP: This is when the model predicts that an observation is a class but is incorrect. Say, the model predicts that observation is spam, but it is actually not spam. 

TP: This is when the model predicts that an observation is a class and it actually is correct. Say, the model predicts that observation is spam and is correctly so. 

The confusion matrix adds a lot of flexibility to the performance measure and birth concepts such as precision and recall. 

  • Precision: The precision indicates how accurate the positive class is. Mathematically, the precision is given by
Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

If the model correctly predicts all positive classes, the precision will be equal to 1. This is not a very good metric, especially for an unbalanced dataset with a high positive class, since the precision neglects the negative classes. It can however be useful when we place grave importance on the positive class. An example would be the ham(P)/spam(N) classifier. In this problem, the major concern is to correctly predict that spam is spam (TP) while not predicting a ham as spam. Predicting a ham when it is actually spam (FN) may not have serious consequences but predicting a ham as spam (FP) can be very expensive. You have a high precision when the TP is high and the FP is low.

Precision is typically combined with another metric called the recall. 

  • Recall: Recall is basically concerned about the rate of positive classes that was predicted corrected. It is also called the sensitivity of true positive rate. Mathematically, the recall is given by
Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

The recall is particularly important in situations where the true positive is critically important such as a cancer classifier. In such a situation, predicting that a patient has cancer when he does not have cancer may not be severe. However, predicting that a patient does not have cancer when they actually do (FN), can be very grave. In situations such as this, it is critically important to check the recall of your model. This is because to get a high recall, the FN must be, low. 

  • F1 score

F1 score takes both the recall and precision into cognizance. Mathematically, the f1 score is given by

Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

If you are looking for a balance between recall and precision, you should go for the F1 score. 

Building a Binary Classifier with Keras on Tensorflow

IN this section, we will go-ahead to build a binary classifier using Keras. The dataset used is the dataset from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The dataset shows whether or not a patient has diabetes based on some diagnostic measurements such as age, glucose level, blood pressure, insulin level, and so on. We will begin by importing the data using the pandas read_csv() method. We will then check out how the data frame looks like by printing the first five rows.

#import necessary libraries
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
import tensorflow as tf
from tensorflow.keras.models import Sequential
from tensorflow.keras.layers import Dense, Dropout

#read the dataset file
df = pd.read_csv('diabetes.csv')
#print the first five rows of the dataframe
print(df.head())

Output:

   Pregnancies  Glucose  BloodPressure  SkinThickness  Insulin   BMI  \
0            6      148             72             35        0  33.6   
1            1       85             66             29        0  26.6   
2            8      183             64              0        0  23.3   
3            1       89             66             23       94  28.1   
4            0      137             40             35      168  43.1   

   DiabetesPedigreeFunction  Age  Outcome  
0                     0.627   50        1  
1                     0.351   31        0  
2                     0.672   32        1  
3                     0.167   21        0  
4                     2.288   33        1

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

It is important to know the numbers of rows in your dataset. That way, you’d be able to determine how large or small your data is. 

df.shape

Output:

(768, 9)

So as shown above, the dataset has 768 rows with 9 columns (including the target column). This is thus a fairly small dataset. Let’s get some more information about each column.

#check the datatype of each column
df.info()

Output:

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 768 entries, 0 to 767
Data columns (total 9 columns):
Pregnancies                 768 non-null int64
Glucose                     768 non-null int64
BloodPressure               768 non-null int64
SkinThickness               768 non-null int64
Insulin                     768 non-null int64
BMI                         768 non-null float64
DiabetesPedigreeFunction    768 non-null float64
Age                         768 non-null int64
Outcome                     768 non-null int64
dtypes: float64(2), int64(7)
memory usage: 54.1 KB

All columns are of int data type except for BMI and Diabetes Pedigree Function that are of data type float64. The info() method also revealed that all columns contain non-null values. We can however confirm this by using the isnull() method. 

#check for null values 
df.isnull().sum()

Output:

Pregnancies                 0
Glucose                     0
BloodPressure               0
SkinThickness               0
Insulin                     0
BMI                         0
DiabetesPedigreeFunction    0
Age                         0
Outcome                     0
dtype: int64

Next, we would use the describe method to get the statistical details for each column.

#print the statistical summary for each column
df.describe()

Output:

      Pregnancies     Glucose  BloodPressure  SkinThickness     Insulin  \
count   768.000000  768.000000     768.000000     768.000000  768.000000   
mean      3.845052  120.894531      69.105469      20.536458   79.799479   
std       3.369578   31.972618      19.355807      15.952218  115.244002   
min       0.000000    0.000000       0.000000       0.000000    0.000000   
25%       1.000000   99.000000      62.000000       0.000000    0.000000   
50%       3.000000  117.000000      72.000000      23.000000   30.500000   
75%       6.000000  140.250000      80.000000      32.000000  127.250000   
max      17.000000  199.000000     122.000000      99.000000  846.000000   

              BMI  DiabetesPedigreeFunction         Age     Outcome  
count  768.000000                768.000000  768.000000  768.000000  
mean    31.992578                  0.471876   33.240885    0.348958  
std      7.884160                  0.331329   11.760232    0.476951  
min      0.000000                  0.078000   21.000000    0.000000  
25%     27.300000                  0.243750   24.000000    0.000000  
50%     32.000000                  0.372500   29.000000    0.000000  
75%     36.600000                  0.626250   41.000000    1.000000  
max     67.100000                  2.420000   81.000000    1.000000 

Checking if the data is imbalanced

When dealing with binary classification problems, this is an important step. If an imbalanced dataset is fed into a machine learning model, the model tends to perform lowers. Let’s see whether our data is imbalanced. We use seaborn’s countplot() method. This method counts the occurrence of each class in a column and plots a simple bar graph.

#plot a bar plot that shows the number of each class labels
sns.countplot(df['Outcome'])

Output:

Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

You get insight by plotting a bivariate graph for the columns using the Pairplot method of seaborn.

#make a plot of the columns against one another
sns.pairplot(df, hue='Outcome')

Output:

Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

From the plot, you’d notice that classes are separable by using a hyperplane (or line) to split the data

Checking for Correlation 

 As a way of exploring your data, you should check for data correlation. This gives you insight as to what attribute after the other and the way they are connected. Harmed with this knowledge, you could drop or merge columns to reduce the dimensionality of the data. A strong correlation can also give you an idea of what to replace missing values with. Let’s check if some columns are strongly correlated. We use the corr() method and then draw a heat map.

#check the correlation of each column
plt.figure(figsize=(10, 6))
sns.heatmap(df.corr(), cmap='Blues', annot=True)

Output:

Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

Split the Data into Train and Test Data

As we gear up to build the deep learning model, we need to split the data into train and test data. Before that, the data needs to be split into its independent variable(X) and dependent variable (y).  The independent variables are simply the data without the label column. Hence, we drop that column. The dependent variable on the other hand is the label column alone. 

Afterward, the X and y data and split into train and test datasets. Given that the test data is 20% of the entire data. If you do not understand why the data is split into train and test. See the test data has a portion of the data that is hidden from the model during training. It is then used to measure how well the model will predict unseen data.

#split the data into features and labels
X = df.drop(['Outcome'], axis=1)
y = df['Outcome']

#further split the labels and features into train and test data
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2, random_state=1)

Checking for Outliers

As explained in the previous tutorial, outliers can affect how the models perform. Thus, it is pivotal to check for them and deal with them. Here, we will graph the boxplot for each column to detect the presence of outliers.

#create a copy of the dataset
df1 = df.copy()
# # Create a figure with 10 subplots with a width spacing of 1.5    
fig, ax = plt.subplots(2,3)
fig.subplots_adjust(wspace=1.5)

# Create a boxplot for the continuous features      
box_plot1 = sns.boxplot(y=np.log(df1[df1.columns[0]]), ax=ax[0][0])
box_plot2 = sns.boxplot(y=np.log(df1[df1.columns[1]]), ax=ax[0][1])
box_plot3 = sns.boxplot(y=np.log(df1[df1.columns[2]]), ax=ax[0][2])
box_plot6 = sns.boxplot(y=np.log(df1[df1.columns[5]]), ax=ax[1][0])
box_plot7 = sns.boxplot(y=np.log(df1[df1.columns[6]]), ax=ax[1][1])
box_plot8 = sns.boxplot(y=np.log(df1[df1.columns[7]]), ax=ax[1][2])
;

Output:

Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

You’d notice that Glucose, BloodPressure, and BMI have sprinkles of outliers. The effect of these data points can be softened by standardizing the data. 

Building the Neural Network (a Single Layer Perceptron)

We will begin by building a simple neural network – one fully connected hidden layer with the same number of nodes, as the independent variables (8). This is a neutral way to begin building neural networks. The ReLu activation function is used for the input layer. The outer layer is a single node that spits out the probability of the output class. Hence, a sigmoid activation function is used. This probability can be easily converted into class values. 

Furthermore, the common binary_crossentropy is used as the loss function. This the preferable loss function for classification problems. Adam optimizer is used for the gradient descent optimization. Finally, accuracy, precision and recall are set as the model’s metrics.

def create_model():
    '''The function creates a Perceptron using Keras'''
    model = Sequential()
    model.add(Dense(8, input_dim=len(X.columns), activation='relu'))
    model.add(Dense(1, activation='sigmoid'))
    
    return model
estimator = create_model()
estimator.compile(optimizer='adam', metrics=['accuracy', tf.keras.metrics.Precision(), tf.keras.metrics.Recall()], loss='binary_crossentropy')

The model is then trained on the train dataset, specifying the test datasets as the validation data.

#train the model
history = estimator.fit(X_train, y_train, epochs=300, validation_data=(X_test, y_test))

Output:

Train on 614 samples, validate on 154 samples
Epoch 1/300
614/614 [==============================] - 3s 5ms/sample - loss: 0.6690 - acc: 0.6531 - precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - recall_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_loss: 0.6787 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 2/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 168us/sample - loss: 0.6657 - acc: 0.6531 - precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - recall_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_loss: 0.6754 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 3/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 173us/sample - loss: 0.6622 - acc: 0.6531 - precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - recall_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_loss: 0.6729 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 4/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 163us/sample - loss: 0.6600 - acc: 0.6531 - precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - recall_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_loss: 0.6713 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 5/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 166us/sample - loss: 0.6572 - acc: 0.6531 - precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - recall_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_loss: 0.6689 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 6/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 164us/sample - loss: 0.6547 - acc: 0.6531 - precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - recall_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_loss: 0.6663 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 7/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 229us/sample - loss: 0.6524 - acc: 0.6531 - precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - recall_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_loss: 0.6645 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 8/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 214us/sample - loss: 0.6504 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0047 - val_loss: 0.6626 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 9/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 161us/sample - loss: 0.6483 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0047 - val_loss: 0.6607 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 10/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 171us/sample - loss: 0.6463 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0047 - val_loss: 0.6594 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 11/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 168us/sample - loss: 0.6445 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0047 - val_loss: 0.6575 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 12/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 163us/sample - loss: 0.6422 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0047 - val_loss: 0.6547 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.0000e+00 - val_recall_14: 0.0000e+00
Epoch 13/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 179us/sample - loss: 0.6407 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0047 - val_loss: 0.6524 - val_acc: 0.6494 - val_precision_14: 1.0000 - val_recall_14: 0.0182
Epoch 14/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 197us/sample - loss: 0.6382 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0047 - val_loss: 0.6510 - val_acc: 0.6494 - val_precision_14: 1.0000 - val_recall_14: 0.0182
Epoch 15/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 163us/sample - loss: 0.6362 - acc: 0.6564 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0094 - val_loss: 0.6487 - val_acc: 0.6494 - val_precision_14: 1.0000 - val_recall_14: 0.0182
Epoch 16/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 200us/sample - loss: 0.6340 - acc: 0.6564 - precision_14: 1.0000 - recall_14: 0.0094 - val_loss: 0.6464 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.5000 - val_recall_14: 0.0182
Epoch 17/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 184us/sample - loss: 0.6319 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 0.6667 - recall_14: 0.0094 - val_loss: 0.6443 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.5000 - val_recall_14: 0.0182
Epoch 18/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 168us/sample - loss: 0.6301 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 0.6667 - recall_14: 0.0094 - val_loss: 0.6426 - val_acc: 0.6494 - val_precision_14: 0.6667 - val_recall_14: 0.0364
Epoch 19/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 171us/sample - loss: 0.6278 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 0.6667 - recall_14: 0.0094 - val_loss: 0.6410 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.5000 - val_recall_14: 0.0364
Epoch 20/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 176us/sample - loss: 0.6257 - acc: 0.6547 - precision_14: 0.6667 - recall_14: 0.0094 - val_loss: 0.6390 - val_acc: 0.6429 - val_precision_14: 0.5000 - val_recall_14: 0.0364
…
Epoch 281/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 211us/sample - loss: 0.4527 - acc: 0.7785 - precision_14: 0.7251 - recall_14: 0.5822 - val_loss: 0.4638 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 282/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 166us/sample - loss: 0.4520 - acc: 0.7818 - precision_14: 0.7365 - recall_14: 0.5775 - val_loss: 0.4647 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7907 - val_recall_14: 0.6182
Epoch 283/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 169us/sample - loss: 0.4525 - acc: 0.7850 - precision_14: 0.7580 - recall_14: 0.5587 - val_loss: 0.4653 - val_acc: 0.7922 - val_precision_14: 0.7805 - val_recall_14: 0.5818
Epoch 284/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 197us/sample - loss: 0.4515 - acc: 0.7818 - precision_14: 0.7365 - recall_14: 0.5775 - val_loss: 0.4637 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 285/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 176us/sample - loss: 0.4526 - acc: 0.7818 - precision_14: 0.7158 - recall_14: 0.6150 - val_loss: 0.4633 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_14: 0.7609 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 286/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 210us/sample - loss: 0.4524 - acc: 0.7785 - precision_14: 0.7278 - recall_14: 0.5775 - val_loss: 0.4641 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7907 - val_recall_14: 0.6182
Epoch 287/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 176us/sample - loss: 0.4515 - acc: 0.7834 - precision_14: 0.7381 - recall_14: 0.5822 - val_loss: 0.4634 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 288/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 176us/sample - loss: 0.4516 - acc: 0.7818 - precision_14: 0.7365 - recall_14: 0.5775 - val_loss: 0.4635 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_14: 0.7727 - val_recall_14: 0.6182
Epoch 289/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 178us/sample - loss: 0.4519 - acc: 0.7818 - precision_14: 0.7453 - recall_14: 0.5634 - val_loss: 0.4651 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_14: 0.7857 - val_recall_14: 0.6000
Epoch 290/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 180us/sample - loss: 0.4509 - acc: 0.7834 - precision_14: 0.7381 - recall_14: 0.5822 - val_loss: 0.4630 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 291/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 197us/sample - loss: 0.4514 - acc: 0.7866 - precision_14: 0.7330 - recall_14: 0.6056 - val_loss: 0.4631 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 292/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 124us/sample - loss: 0.4522 - acc: 0.7818 - precision_14: 0.7365 - recall_14: 0.5775 - val_loss: 0.4642 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7907 - val_recall_14: 0.6182
Epoch 293/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 134us/sample - loss: 0.4510 - acc: 0.7834 - precision_14: 0.7326 - recall_14: 0.5915 - val_loss: 0.4629 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 294/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 141us/sample - loss: 0.4512 - acc: 0.7866 - precision_14: 0.7330 - recall_14: 0.6056 - val_loss: 0.4630 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 295/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 176us/sample - loss: 0.4512 - acc: 0.7818 - precision_14: 0.7232 - recall_14: 0.6009 - val_loss: 0.4630 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 296/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 166us/sample - loss: 0.4510 - acc: 0.7834 - precision_14: 0.7326 - recall_14: 0.5915 - val_loss: 0.4637 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_14: 0.7727 - val_recall_14: 0.6182
Epoch 297/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 189us/sample - loss: 0.4509 - acc: 0.7834 - precision_14: 0.7299 - recall_14: 0.5962 - val_loss: 0.4633 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 298/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 139us/sample - loss: 0.4511 - acc: 0.7801 - precision_14: 0.7294 - recall_14: 0.5822 - val_loss: 0.4633 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7778 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 299/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 172us/sample - loss: 0.4533 - acc: 0.7801 - precision_14: 0.7143 - recall_14: 0.6103 - val_loss: 0.4629 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_14: 0.7609 - val_recall_14: 0.6364
Epoch 300/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 181us/sample - loss: 0.4509 - acc: 0.7850 - precision_14: 0.7425 - recall_14: 0.5822 - val_loss: 0.4638 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_14: 0.7907 - val_recall_14: 0.6182

As seen above, at the end of the 300th epoch, the model had a loss of 45.09%, an accuracy of 78.50%, precision of 74.25%, and a recall of 58.22%. This is a pretty decent result with a very simple neural network.

Let’s visualize how the training process went.

#plot the loss and validation loss of the dataset
history_df = pd.DataFrame(history.history)
plt.plot(history_df['loss'], label='loss')
plt.plot(history_df['val_loss'], label='val_loss')

plt.legend()

Output:

Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

Adding Some Hidden Layers (a Multilayer Perceptron)

Let’s tweak the neural network architecture by adding more layers with some dropout and see how the performance will be affected. 

This time, the first hidden layer has 16 nodes with a ReLu activation function. In the next layer, the nodes were reduced to 12, with a 20% dropout to avoid overfitting. The next layer had 3 nodes with a ReLu activation while the final layer was a single-node layer with the sigmoid activation. 

The optimizer, metrics and loss function remains the same as in the last architecture.

def create_model():
    '''The function creates a Perceptron using Keras'''
    model = Sequential()
    model.add(Dense(16, input_dim=len(X.columns), activation='relu'))
    model.add(Dense(12, activation='relu'))
    model.add(Dropout(0.2))
    model.add(Dense(3, activation='relu'))
    model.add(Dense(1, activation='sigmoid'))
    
    return model
import tensorflow as tf
estimator = create_model()
estimator.compile(optimizer='adam', metrics=['accuracy', tf.keras.metrics.Precision(), tf.keras.metrics.Recall()], loss='binary_crossentropy')

Now, we train the model on 300 epochs as well.

#train the model
history = estimator.fit(X_train, y_train, epochs=300, validation_data=(X_test, y_test))

Output:

Train on 614 samples, validate on 154 samples
Epoch 1/300
614/614 [==============================] - 2s 4ms/sample - loss: 0.7018 - acc: 0.4235 - precision_17: 0.3667 - recall_17: 0.9108 - val_loss: 0.6878 - val_acc: 0.7338 - val_precision_17: 0.6591 - val_recall_17: 0.5273
Epoch 2/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 156us/sample - loss: 0.6924 - acc: 0.5749 - precision_17: 0.4172 - recall_17: 0.5681 - val_loss: 0.6855 - val_acc: 0.6883 - val_precision_17: 0.6842 - val_recall_17: 0.2364
Epoch 3/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 175us/sample - loss: 0.6883 - acc: 0.6173 - precision_17: 0.4505 - recall_17: 0.4695 - val_loss: 0.6831 - val_acc: 0.6948 - val_precision_17: 0.7500 - val_recall_17: 0.2182
Epoch 4/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 173us/sample - loss: 0.6842 - acc: 0.6564 - precision_17: 0.5079 - recall_17: 0.3005 - val_loss: 0.6809 - val_acc: 0.6623 - val_precision_17: 0.8000 - val_recall_17: 0.0727
Epoch 5/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 188us/sample - loss: 0.6799 - acc: 0.6775 - precision_17: 0.5882 - recall_17: 0.2347 - val_loss: 0.6784 - val_acc: 0.6558 - val_precision_17: 0.6667 - val_recall_17: 0.0727
Epoch 6/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 191us/sample - loss: 0.6771 - acc: 0.6808 - precision_17: 0.6049 - recall_17: 0.2300 - val_loss: 0.6758 - val_acc: 0.6623 - val_precision_17: 0.7143 - val_recall_17: 0.0909
Epoch 7/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 221us/sample - loss: 0.6752 - acc: 0.6775 - precision_17: 0.6087 - recall_17: 0.1972 - val_loss: 0.6737 - val_acc: 0.6623 - val_precision_17: 0.8000 - val_recall_17: 0.0727
Epoch 8/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 210us/sample - loss: 0.6731 - acc: 0.6759 - precision_17: 0.6522 - recall_17: 0.1408 - val_loss: 0.6715 - val_acc: 0.6558 - val_precision_17: 1.0000 - val_recall_17: 0.0364
Epoch 9/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 170us/sample - loss: 0.6699 - acc: 0.6645 - precision_17: 0.6000 - recall_17: 0.0986 - val_loss: 0.6690 - val_acc: 0.6623 - val_precision_17: 0.8000 - val_recall_17: 0.0727
Epoch 10/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 189us/sample - loss: 0.6675 - acc: 0.6824 - precision_17: 0.6667 - recall_17: 0.1690 - val_loss: 0.6663 - val_acc: 0.6753 - val_precision_17: 0.7778 - val_recall_17: 0.1273
Epoch 11/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 184us/sample - loss: 0.6643 - acc: 0.6889 - precision_17: 0.7115 - recall_17: 0.1737 - val_loss: 0.6643 - val_acc: 0.6623 - val_precision_17: 1.0000 - val_recall_17: 0.0545
Epoch 12/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 170us/sample - loss: 0.6628 - acc: 0.6661 - precision_17: 0.5870 - recall_17: 0.1268 - val_loss: 0.6617 - val_acc: 0.6753 - val_precision_17: 0.8571 - val_recall_17: 0.1091
Epoch 13/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 166us/sample - loss: 0.6595 - acc: 0.7003 - precision_17: 0.7164 - recall_17: 0.2254 - val_loss: 0.6589 - val_acc: 0.6818 - val_precision_17: 0.8750 - val_recall_17: 0.1273
Epoch 14/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 163us/sample - loss: 0.6553 - acc: 0.6938 - precision_17: 0.7451 - recall_17: 0.1784 - val_loss: 0.6562 - val_acc: 0.6818 - val_precision_17: 0.8750 - val_recall_17: 0.1273
Epoch 15/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 164us/sample - loss: 0.6560 - acc: 0.6873 - precision_17: 0.6842 - recall_17: 0.1831 - val_loss: 0.6532 - val_acc: 0.6948 - val_precision_17: 0.9000 - val_recall_17: 0.1636
Epoch 16/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 168us/sample - loss: 0.6521 - acc: 0.7003 - precision_17: 0.7042 - recall_17: 0.2347 - val_loss: 0.6508 - val_acc: 0.6948 - val_precision_17: 0.9000 - val_recall_17: 0.1636
Epoch 17/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 178us/sample - loss: 0.6506 - acc: 0.6840 - precision_17: 0.6727 - recall_17: 0.1737 - val_loss: 0.6478 - val_acc: 0.7013 - val_precision_17: 0.9091 - val_recall_17: 0.1818
Epoch 18/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 163us/sample - loss: 0.6425 - acc: 0.7036 - precision_17: 0.6914 - recall_17: 0.2629 - val_loss: 0.6452 - val_acc: 0.7468 - val_precision_17: 0.7667 - val_recall_17: 0.4182
Epoch 19/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 179us/sample - loss: 0.6465 - acc: 0.7215 - precision_17: 0.6458 - recall_17: 0.4366 - val_loss: 0.6408 - val_acc: 0.7208 - val_precision_17: 0.8333 - val_recall_17: 0.2727
Epoch 20/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 158us/sample - loss: 0.6365 - acc: 0.7264 - precision_17: 0.7528 - recall_17: 0.3146 - val_loss: 0.6375 - val_acc: 0.7468 - val_precision_17: 0.7500 - val_recall_17: 0.4364
…
Epoch 281/300

614/614 [==============================] - 0s 197us/sample - loss: 0.4374 - acc: 0.7883 - precision_17: 0.7862 - recall_17: 0.5352 - val_loss: 0.4249 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7500 - val_recall_17: 0.6000
Epoch 282/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 203us/sample - loss: 0.4210 - acc: 0.8127 - precision_17: 0.7882 - recall_17: 0.6291 - val_loss: 0.4293 - val_acc: 0.7792 - val_precision_17: 0.7442 - val_recall_17: 0.5818
Epoch 283/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 200us/sample - loss: 0.4402 - acc: 0.7850 - precision_17: 0.7718 - recall_17: 0.5399 - val_loss: 0.4301 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_17: 0.7857 - val_recall_17: 0.6000
Epoch 284/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 207us/sample - loss: 0.4354 - acc: 0.8208 - precision_17: 0.8084 - recall_17: 0.6338 - val_loss: 0.4280 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7391 - val_recall_17: 0.6182
Epoch 285/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 200us/sample - loss: 0.4444 - acc: 0.7915 - precision_17: 0.7673 - recall_17: 0.5728 - val_loss: 0.4310 - val_acc: 0.7922 - val_precision_17: 0.7805 - val_recall_17: 0.5818
Epoch 286/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 220us/sample - loss: 0.4380 - acc: 0.8046 - precision_17: 0.7888 - recall_17: 0.5962 - val_loss: 0.4315 - val_acc: 0.7727 - val_precision_17: 0.7381 - val_recall_17: 0.5636
Epoch 287/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 208us/sample - loss: 0.4297 - acc: 0.8013 - precision_17: 0.7725 - recall_17: 0.6056 - val_loss: 0.4278 - val_acc: 0.8052 - val_precision_17: 0.7660 - val_recall_17: 0.6545
Epoch 288/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 192us/sample - loss: 0.4266 - acc: 0.8062 - precision_17: 0.8013 - recall_17: 0.5869 - val_loss: 0.4295 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7500 - val_recall_17: 0.6000
Epoch 289/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 163us/sample - loss: 0.4294 - acc: 0.8078 - precision_17: 0.7987 - recall_17: 0.5962 - val_loss: 0.4298 - val_acc: 0.7922 - val_precision_17: 0.7556 - val_recall_17: 0.6182
Epoch 290/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 192us/sample - loss: 0.4299 - acc: 0.8094 - precision_17: 0.7667 - recall_17: 0.6479 - val_loss: 0.4346 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7750 - val_recall_17: 0.5636
Epoch 291/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 193us/sample - loss: 0.4333 - acc: 0.8094 - precision_17: 0.7824 - recall_17: 0.6244 - val_loss: 0.4301 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_17: 0.7727 - val_recall_17: 0.6182
Epoch 292/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 263us/sample - loss: 0.4380 - acc: 0.8029 - precision_17: 0.7674 - recall_17: 0.6197 - val_loss: 0.4278 - val_acc: 0.7922 - val_precision_17: 0.7556 - val_recall_17: 0.6182
Epoch 293/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 206us/sample - loss: 0.4212 - acc: 0.8127 - precision_17: 0.7816 - recall_17: 0.6385 - val_loss: 0.4263 - val_acc: 0.7987 - val_precision_17: 0.7609 - val_recall_17: 0.6364
Epoch 294/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 185us/sample - loss: 0.4322 - acc: 0.8078 - precision_17: 0.7844 - recall_17: 0.6150 - val_loss: 0.4293 - val_acc: 0.7922 - val_precision_17: 0.7674 - val_recall_17: 0.6000
Epoch 295/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 243us/sample - loss: 0.4377 - acc: 0.8046 - precision_17: 0.7784 - recall_17: 0.6103 - val_loss: 0.4298 - val_acc: 0.7922 - val_precision_17: 0.7556 - val_recall_17: 0.6182
Epoch 296/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 217us/sample - loss: 0.4348 - acc: 0.7866 - precision_17: 0.7563 - recall_17: 0.5681 - val_loss: 0.4308 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7500 - val_recall_17: 0.6000
Epoch 297/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 180us/sample - loss: 0.4295 - acc: 0.7997 - precision_17: 0.7557 - recall_17: 0.6244 - val_loss: 0.4287 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7619 - val_recall_17: 0.5818
Epoch 298/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 200us/sample - loss: 0.4431 - acc: 0.7915 - precision_17: 0.7607 - recall_17: 0.5822 - val_loss: 0.4296 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7500 - val_recall_17: 0.6000
Epoch 299/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 167us/sample - loss: 0.4310 - acc: 0.8046 - precision_17: 0.7853 - recall_17: 0.6009 - val_loss: 0.4296 - val_acc: 0.7792 - val_precision_17: 0.7442 - val_recall_17: 0.5818
Epoch 300/300
614/614 [==============================] - 0s 178us/sample - loss: 0.4190 - acc: 0.8078 - precision_17: 0.7684 - recall_17: 0.6385 - val_loss: 0.4269 - val_acc: 0.7857 - val_precision_17: 0.7500 - val_recall_17: 0.6000

This time, the model has a loss of 41.9%, an accuracy of 80.78%, precision of 76.84%, and a recall of 63.85. These results are slightly better than the previous model but are not convincing. 

It goes to show that for this dataset, increasing the number of layers does not necessarily improve the performance of the model. 

Finally, we can visualize the training process with the code below.

#plot the loss and validation loss of the dataset
history_df = pd.DataFrame(history.history)
plt.plot(history_df['loss'], label='loss')
plt.plot(history_df['val_loss'], label='val_loss')
plt.legend()

Output:

Building a Linear Classifier with Tensorflow Keras

Summary

In conclusion, you have discovered how to build a binary classifier using Keras. We started out by carrying out some EDA after which the data was preprocessed and then fed into the neural network. For this dataset, we found out that increasing the number of hidden layers in the neural network architecture does not have a significant effect on the performance of the model. 

You can conclude that this is because the dataset was a relatively small dataset. It explains why a single perceptron was able to capture the patterns in the data with an accuracy of over 80%.

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