How to Explain Individual Classification Decisions

  • Authors:
  • David Baehrens;Timon Schroeter;Stefan Harmeling;Motoaki Kawanabe;Katja Hansen;Klaus-Robert Müller

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • The Journal of Machine Learning Research
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

After building a classifier with modern tools of machine learning we typically have a black box at hand that is able to predict well for unseen data. Thus, we get an answer to the question what is the most likely label of a given unseen data point. However, most methods will provide no answer why the model predicted a particular label for a single instance and what features were most influential for that particular instance. The only method that is currently able to provide such explanations are decision trees. This paper proposes a procedure which (based on a set of assumptions) allows to explain the decisions of any classification method.