Chefboost is a lightweight gradient boosting, random forest and adaboost enabled decision tree framework including regular ID3, C4.5, CART, CHAID and regression tree algorithms with categorical features support. It is lightweight, you just need to write a few lines of code to build decision trees with Chefboost.

Basically, you just need to pass the dataset as pandas data frame and tree configurations after importing Chefboost as illustrated below. You just need to put the target label to the right. Besides, chefboost handles both numeric and nominal features and target values in contrast to its alternatives.

from chefboost import Chefboost as chef
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("dataset/golf.txt")

config = {'algorithm': 'ID3'}
model = chef.fit(df, config)

Built decision trees are stored as python if statements in the tests/outputs/rules directory. A sample of decision rules is demonstrated below.

def findDecision(Outlook,Temperature,Humidity,Wind,Decision):
   if Outlook == 'Rain':
      if Wind == 'Weak':
         return 'Yes'
      elif Wind == 'Strong':
         return 'No'
   elif Outlook == 'Sunny':
      if Humidity == 'High':
         return 'No'
      elif Humidity == 'Normal':
         return 'Yes'
   elif Outlook == 'Overcast':
      return 'Yes'

Decision rules will be stored in outputs/rules/ folder when you build decision trees. You can run the built decision tree for new instances as illustrated below.

test_instance = ['Sunny', 'Hot', 'High', 'Weak']
model = chef.fit(df, config)
prediction = chef.predict(model, test_instance)

You can consume built decision trees directly as well. In this way, you can restore already built decision trees and skip learning steps, or apply transfer learning. Loaded trees offer you findDecision method to test for new instances.

moduleName = "outputs/rules/rules" #this will load outputs/rules/rules.py
tree = chef.restoreTree(moduleName)
prediction = tree.findDecision(['Sunny', 'Hot', 'High', 'Weak'])

tests/global-unit-test.py will guide you how to build a different decision trees and make predictions.

You can save your trained models.

model = chef.fit(df.copy(), config)
chef.save_model(model, "model.pkl")

In this way, you can use the same model later to just make predictions. This skips the training steps. Restoration requires to store .py and .pkl files under outputs/rules.

model = chef.load_model("model.pkl")
prediction = chef.predict(model, ['Sunny',85,85,'Weak'])

Chefboost supports several decision tree, bagging and boosting algorithms. You just need to pass the configuration to use different algorithms.

Regular Decision Trees ID3 Video, C4.5 Video, CART Video, CHAID Video, Regression Tree Video

config = {'algorithm': 'C4.5'} #ID3, C4.5, CART, CHAID or Regression

Gradient Boosting Video

config = {'enableGBM': True, 'epochs': 7, 'learning_rate': 1}

Random Forest Video

config = {'enableRandomForest': True, 'num_of_trees': 5}

Adaboost Video

config = {'enableAdaboost': True, 'num_of_weak_classifier': 4}

This YouTube playlist guides you how to use Chefboost step by step for different algorithms. You can also find the detailed documentations about these core algorithms here.

Besides, you can enroll this online course - Decision Trees for Machine Learning From Scratch and follow the curriculum if you wonder the theory of decision trees and how this framework is developed.

The easiest way to install Chefboost framework is to download it from from PyPI.

pip install chefboost

Alternatively, you can directly download the source code from this repository. GitHub repo might be newer than the PyPI version.

git clone https://github.com/serengil/chefboost.git
cd chefboost
pip install -e .

Installation guideline is also captured as a video.

Initial tests are run for Python 3.6.4 on Windows 10 but this is an OS-independent framework. Even though pip handles to install dependent libraries, the framework basically needs some dependencies. You might need the install these dependencies if you'll install the source code from github.

There are many ways to support a project - starring⭐️ the GitHub repos is just one.

You can also support this project through Patreon.

Chefboost is licensed under the MIT License - see LICENSE for more details.

Logo is created by Tang Ge. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.