The paper introduces Interpretable Network-assisted Random Forest+ (RF+), a family of flexible models that combine the predictive power of random forests with network information. It offers intrinsic interpretability by providing global and local feature importance measures, as well as sample influence metrics, allowing researchers to assess both feature effects and the contribution of network neighbors. The authors claim that RF+ achieves competitive prediction accuracy while remaining transparent, making it suitable for high-impact problems where understanding model decisions is crucial.
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.
arXiv:2606. 30995v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent work has shown that well-optimized individual decision trees can match complex black box models in some settings, primarily in noisy domains.
arXiv:2509.22100v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have achieved remarkable success across a range of learning tasks. However, scaling GNNs to large graphs remains a sig...
arXiv:2105. 07610v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Building trustworthy machine learning algorithms for biological applications requires adapting to data heterogeneity from different sources, batches, distributions, or studies.
arXiv:2607. 19392v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Arsenic contamination in groundwater presents a longstanding public health crisis in the United States, especially for households depending on private wells.
arXiv:2608. 05265v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Prediction of post-wildfire debris flows is critical for mitigating hazards to communities, infrastructure, and resources during intense rainfall in recently burned areas.
arXiv:2506. 01486v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Data imbalance persists as a pervasive challenge in regression tasks, introducing bias in model performance and undermining predictive reliability.
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.
arXiv:2512. 22240v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Machine learning models are primarily judged by predictive performance, especially in applied genomics, where explanations are read as biological findings.
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:2606. 03495v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Heterogeneous graph neural networks (HGNNs) have demonstrated remarkable performance in modeling complex relational data, however their interpretability in high-stakes applications remains a critical challenge.
arXiv:2607. 28124v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As forecasts increasingly drive decisions in fields such as energy, transportation, and healthcare, understanding the historical data behind these predictions has become as crucial as the predictions themselves.