Book Image

Data Science Using Python and R

By : Chantal D. Larose, Daniel T. Larose
Book Image

Data Science Using Python and R

By: Chantal D. Larose, Daniel T. Larose

Overview of this book

Data science is hot. Bloomberg named a data scientist as the ‘hottest job in America’. Python and R are the top two open-source data science tools using which you can produce hands-on solutions to real-world business problems, using state-of-the-art techniques. Each chapter in the book presents step-by-step instructions and walkthroughs for solving data science problems using Python and R. You’ll learn how to prepare data, perform exploratory data analysis, and prepare to model the data. As you progress, you’ll explore what are decision trees and how to use them. You’ll also learn about model evaluation, misclassification costs, naïve Bayes classification, and neural networks. The later chapters provide comprehensive information about clustering, regression modeling, dimension reduction, and association rules mining. The book also throws light on exciting new topics, such as random forests and general linear models. The book emphasizes data-driven error costs to enhance profitability, which avoids the common pitfalls that may cost a company millions of dollars. By the end of this book, you’ll have enough knowledge and confidence to start providing solutions to data science problems using R and Python.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
17
INDEX
18
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

9.7 INTERPRETING THE WEIGHTS IN A NEURAL NETWORK MODEL

The weights in a neural network model represent what the model is trying to tell you, given the data. These weights are analogous to the predictor coefficients in a regression model. Let us glean what information we can from the weights in Figure 9.7.

First, let us ignore the bias (constant term) weights B1 and B2, since they do not affect the relationship between the predictors and the response. Next, recall our exploratory data analysis (EDA), where we found that greater age and being male were both associated with higher probability of death in the Framingham Heart Study. Also, Sex is a binary predictor with 1 = Male and 2 = Female, so that an increase in the value of Sex should be associated with a decrease in probability of death. Let us see how and whether these EDA results are reflected in the neural network weights.

Now, the weight between the hidden layer node H1 and the output node O1 takes a negative value, WH1O1 =  ...