Chapter 7. Combining Different Models for Ensemble Learning
In the previous chapter, we focused on the best practices for tuning and evaluating different models for classification. In this chapter, we will build upon these techniques and explore different methods for constructing a set of classifiers that can often have a better predictive performance than any of its individual members. You will learn how to:
- Make predictions based on majority voting
- Reduce overfitting by drawing random combinations of the training set with repetition
- Build powerful models from weak learners that learn from their mistakes
Learning with ensembles
The goal behind ensemble methods is to combine different classifiers into a meta-classifier that has a better generalization performance than each individual classifier alone. For example, assuming that we collected predictions from 10 experts, ensemble methods would allow us to strategically combine these predictions by the 10 experts to come up with a prediction...
