The paper introduces Adaptive Derivative-Ordered Random Explanation (ADORE), a unified framework that uses first- and second-order derivatives to capture nonlinear feature interactions and feature-sample dynamics. ADORE combines global feature importance with local sample contributions, quantifying both magnitude and direction of feature impact while identifying critical samples. It achieves computational efficiency via randomized SVD and dynamic sparsity detection, outperforming LIME and SHAP across tabular, text, and image data, and is released as an open-source Python package on GitHub.
Background: Understanding individual predictions in complex tabular models remains challenging, as existing additive frameworks like SHAP and LIME often obscure structural logic by absorbing nonlinear...
The paper introduces localized case-based feature importance (CBFI), a framework that decomposes individual predictions in complex tabular models into distinct structural components, separating independent main effects from pure interactions. Unlike additive explanations such as SHAP and LIME, CBFI explicitly captures feature synergies, enabling the recovery of latent interaction structures. Experiments on wine quality classification and medical insurance regression, along with fidelity tests and synthetic benchmarks, show that CBFI accurately disentangles interactions hidden by additive models and aligns with the nonlinear dependencies in gradient boosting and deep neural networks.
The paper proposes a new evaluation test for explanation methods: if an explanation accurately captures how a model uses its features, one should be able to reconstruct the model’s predictions from it. The authors convert explanations into predictors by summing feature effects and assess how well these predictors reproduce the model on unseen data, without any fitting. They apply this test to partial dependence plots, accumulated local effects, SHAP, and LIME across multiple datasets and model families, showing that the best method depends on feature dependence and that some existing quality metrics can favor flawed explanations.
Inherently interpretable classifiers for tabular data typically rely on sparse features, rules, or patterns that users can inspect directly. The marginal feature-screening step common to these methods can discard variables whose predictive value emerges only through joint configurations with other variables.
arXiv:2603. 02221v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In clinical tabular prediction, classical machine learning models with feature engineering often outperform neural methods.
arXiv:2603.02221v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In clinical tabular prediction, classical machine learning models with feature engineering often outperform neural methods. LLMs are increasi...
The paper introduces a straightforward evaluation method for explanation techniques: by converting each explanation into a predictor that sums the feature effects, the authors assess how accurately this predictor reproduces the original model’s predictions on unseen data. This approach applies to any explanation expressible as a function of features and is demonstrated on PDP, ALE, SHAP, and LIME. The authors theoretically show that summing partial dependence curves yields the optimal additive summary when features are independent, but this property fails with dependent features, and empirical results across diverse datasets confirm that the best-performing method depends on feature dependence.
arXiv:2607. 07060v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Inherently interpretable classifiers for tabular data typically rely on sparse features, rules, or patterns that users can inspect directly.
arXiv:2607. 27463v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Dimensionality Reduction (DR) is a fundamental tool for high-dimensional data exploration, reducing the complexity of latent spaces of machine learning models, and assisting in the explanation of complex opaque models.
The paper introduces Conditionally Additive Local Models (CALMs), a new class of interpretable machine learning models that balance the simplicity of Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) with the accuracy of GA$^2$Ms. CALMs allow multiple univariate shape functions per feature, each active in distinct input subregions defined by simple logical conditions on interacting features, thereby capturing interactions while maintaining local additivity. A distillation-based training pipeline identifies homogeneous regions with limited interactions and fits interpretable shape functions via region-aware backfitting, leading to performance that consistently outperforms GAMs and rivals GA$^2$Ms on diverse classification and regression tasks.
The paper introduces ExCIR, a new explainability metric that addresses limitations of existing post‑hoc explainers by accurately handling correlated features and avoiding costly perturbations. ExCIR is theoretically grounded, computationally efficient, and remains stable under noise and sampling variations. Experiments on EEG, synthetic vehicular data, Digits, and Cats‑Dogs datasets show that ExCIR provides more interpretable feature explanations than current methods, and its information‑theoretic extension supports multi‑output and class‑conditioned explanations at scale.
arXiv:2512. 11081v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Feature and Interaction Importance (FII) methods are essential in supervised learning for assessing the relevance of input variables and their interactions in complex prediction models.