Practical Applications of Yellowbrick in Data Science

Harshita Aswani
3 min readAug 31, 2023

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Data visualization plays a crucial role in understanding and interpreting machine learning models. Yellowbrick is a Python library that provides a high-level interface for creating visualizations and diagnostic tools to analyze machine learning algorithms. In this blog post, we will explore the practical applications of Yellowbrick and demonstrate its capabilities through code examples.

Model Evaluation and Selection

Yellowbrick offers a variety of visualizations to evaluate and select the best machine learning model for your task. Let’s take a look at an example:

from sklearn.datasets import load_breast_cancer
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from yellowbrick.classifier import ROCAUC

# Load the breast cancer dataset
data = load_breast_cancer()
X, y = data.data, data.target

# Split the data into training and test sets
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2, random_state=42)

# Create a logistic regression model
model = LogisticRegression()

# Instantiate the visualizer
visualizer = ROCAUC(model)

# Fit and visualize the ROC curve
visualizer.fit(X_train, y_train)
visualizer.score(X_test, y_test)
visualizer.show()

In this example, we load the breast cancer dataset and split it into training and test sets. We create a logistic regression model and instantiate the ROCAUC visualizer from Yellowbrick. We then fit the visualizer on the training data, score it on the test data, and display the ROC curve. This visualization helps assess the model's performance in terms of the trade-off between true positive rate and false positive rate.

Feature Analysis and Selection

Understanding the importance of features in machine learning models is crucial for model interpretability and feature selection. Yellowbrick provides visualizations to analyze feature importance and select relevant features. Let’s see an example:

from sklearn.datasets import load_boston
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestRegressor
from yellowbrick.model_selection import FeatureImportances

# Load the Boston housing dataset
data = load_boston()
X, y = data.data, data.target

# Create a random forest regression model
model = RandomForestRegressor()

# Instantiate the visualizer
visualizer = FeatureImportances(model)

# Fit and visualize feature importances
visualizer.fit(X, y)
visualizer.show()

In this example, we load the Boston housing dataset. We create a random forest regression model and instantiate the FeatureImportances visualizer from Yellowbrick. We fit the visualizer on the data and display the feature importances plot. This visualization helps identify the most important features that contribute to the model's predictions.

Clustering Visualizations

Yellowbrick offers visualizations to analyze and evaluate clustering algorithms. Let’s look at an example:

from sklearn.datasets import make_blobs
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
from yellowbrick.cluster import KElbowVisualizer

# Generate a synthetic dataset
X, _ = make_blobs(n_samples=200, centers=4, random_state=42)

# Create a KMeans clustering model
model = KMeans()

# Instantiate the visualizer
visualizer = KElbowVisualizer(model, k=(2, 10))

# Fit and visualize the elbow curve
visualizer.fit(X)
visualizer.show()

In this example, we generate a synthetic dataset using make_blobs(). We create a KMeans clustering model and instantiate the KElbowVisualizer from Yellowbrick. We fit the visualizer on the data and display the elbow curve, which helps determine the optimal number of clusters for the KMeans algorithm.

Text Visualizations

Yellowbrick also offers visualizations specifically designed for text data analysis and natural language processing (NLP) tasks. Let’s see an example:

from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
from yellowbrick.text import TSNEVisualizer

# Create a TfidfVectorizer
vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer()

# Vectorize the text data
X = vectorizer.fit_transform(text_data)

# Create a KMeans clustering model
model = KMeans(n_clusters=3)

# Instantiate the visualizer
visualizer = TSNEVisualizer(model)

# Fit and visualize the t-SNE plot
visualizer.fit(X)
visualizer.show()

In this example, we create a TfidfVectorizer to convert text data into a numerical representation. We then create a KMeans clustering model and instantiate the TSNEVisualizer from Yellowbrick. We fit the visualizer on the vectorized text data and display the t-SNE plot, which visualizes the high-dimensional text data in a lower-dimensional space. This visualization helps identify patterns, clusters, and similarities in text data.

Yellowbrick is a powerful Python library for visualizing machine learning algorithms and analyzing data. In this blog post, we explored some of the practical applications of Yellowbrick, including model evaluation and selection, feature analysis and selection, clustering visualizations, and text visualizations. By leveraging Yellowbrick’s visualizations, data scientists can gain valuable insights, interpret models, and make informed decisions in their machine learning projects.

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Harshita Aswani

Passionate about unlocking insights from data through advanced analytics. Constantly learning and leveraging technology to solve real-world problems.