Book Image

Machine Learning for Imbalanced Data

By : Kumar Abhishek, Dr. Mounir Abdelaziz
Book Image

Machine Learning for Imbalanced Data

By: Kumar Abhishek, Dr. Mounir Abdelaziz

Overview of this book

As machine learning practitioners, we often encounter imbalanced datasets in which one class has considerably fewer instances than the other. Many machine learning algorithms assume an equilibrium between majority and minority classes, leading to suboptimal performance on imbalanced data. This comprehensive guide helps you address this class imbalance to significantly improve model performance. Machine Learning for Imbalanced Data begins by introducing you to the challenges posed by imbalanced datasets and the importance of addressing these issues. It then guides you through techniques that enhance the performance of classical machine learning models when using imbalanced data, including various sampling and cost-sensitive learning methods. As you progress, you’ll delve into similar and more advanced techniques for deep learning models, employing PyTorch as the primary framework. Throughout the book, hands-on examples will provide working and reproducible code that’ll demonstrate the practical implementation of each technique. By the end of this book, you’ll be adept at identifying and addressing class imbalances and confidently applying various techniques, including sampling, cost-sensitive techniques, and threshold adjustment, while using traditional machine learning or deep learning models.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

📌 Usage of techniques – In production tips

Throughout this book, you will come across “In production” tip boxes like the following one, highlighting real-world applications of the techniques discussed:

🚀 Class reweighting in production at OpenAI

OpenAI was trying to solve the problem of bias in training data of the image generation model DALL-E 2 [1]. DALL-E 2 is trained on a massive dataset of images from the internet, which can contain biases. For example, the dataset may contain more images of men than women or more images of people from certain racial or ethnic groups than others.

These snippets offer insights into how well-known companies grappled with data imbalance and what strategies they adopted to effectively navigate these challenges. For instance, the tip on OpenAI’s approach with DALL-E 2 sheds light on the intricate balance between filtering training data and inadvertently amplifying biases. Such examples underscore the importance of being both strategic and cautious when dealing with imbalanced data. To delve deeper into the specifics and understand the nitty-gritty of these implementations, you are encouraged to follow the company blog or paper links provided. These insights can provide a clearer understanding of how to adapt and apply techniques in varied real-world scenarios effectively.