Quick Start Guide: Optimal Policy Trees with Numeric Treatment
This is an R version of the corresponding OptimalTrees quick start guide.
In this example we will give a demonstration of how to use Optimal Policy Trees with numeric treatment options. For this example, we will the auto-mpg dataset, where the task is usually to predict a car's fuel efficiency (in miles-per-gallon, or MPG) based on other characteristics of the car. To apply a prescriptive lens to this case, we will instead treat the amount of acceleration as a treatment that can be controlled, and try to find the value that optimizes the MPG for a given car.
Note: this case is not intended to serve as a practical application of policy trees, but rather to serve as an illustration of the training and evaluation process. For a real-world case study using similar techniques, see the grocery pricing case study.
First we load in the data and drop 6 rows with missing values:
df <- na.omit(read.csv("auto-mpg.csv", na.strings = "?"))
mpg cylinders displacement horsepower weight acceleration model.year origin
1 18 8 307 130 3504 12.0 70 1
2 15 8 350 165 3693 11.5 70 1
3 18 8 318 150 3436 11.0 70 1
4 16 8 304 150 3433 12.0 70 1
5 17 8 302 140 3449 10.5 70 1
6 15 8 429 198 4341 10.0 70 1
car.name
1 chevrolet chevelle malibu
2 buick skylark 320
3 plymouth satellite
4 amc rebel sst
5 ford torino
6 ford galaxie 500
[ reached 'max' / getOption("max.print") -- omitted 386 rows ]Policy trees are trained using a features matrix/dataframe X as usual and a rewards matrix that has one column for each potential treatment that contains the outcome for each sample under that treatment.
There are two ways to get this rewards matrix:
- in rare cases, the problem may have full information about the outcome associated with each treatment for each sample
- more commonly, we have observational data, and use this partial data to train models to estimate the outcome associated with each treatment
Refer to the documentation on data preparation for more information on the data format.
In this case, the dataset is observational, and so we will use RewardEstimation to estimate our rewards matrix.
Reward Estimation
Please refer to the Reward Estimation documentation for a detailed description on how to perform reward estimation for numeric treatments properly. For simplicity and to keep the focus on Optimal Policy Trees, this quick start guide does not cover tuning the reward estimation parameters, but in real problems this tuning is an important step.
First, we split into training and testing:
X <- subset(df, select = -c(mpg, acceleration, car.name))
treatments <- df$acceleration
outcomes <- df$mpg
split <- iai::split_data("policy_maximize", X, treatments, outcomes,
seed = 123, train_proportion = 0.5)
train_X <- split$train$X
train_treatments <- split$train$treatments
train_outcomes <- split$train$outcomes
test_X <- split$test$X
test_treatments <- split$test$treatments
test_outcomes <- split$test$outcomes
Note that we have used a training/test split of 60%/40%, so that we save more data for testing to ensure high-quality reward estimation on the test set.
The treatment, acceleration, is a numeric value, so we follow the process for estimating rewards with numeric treatments. We will consider prescribing acceleration values from 11 to 20, in steps of 3:
treatment_candidates <- seq(11, 20, 3)
The outcome is continuous, so we use a numeric_regression_reward_estimator to estimate the MPG under our candidate acceleration values using a random forest model:
reward_lnr = iai::numeric_regression_reward_estimator(
propensity_estimator = iai::random_forest_regressor(),
outcome_estimator = iai::random_forest_regressor(),
reward_estimator = "doubly_robust",
propensity_min_value = 0.1,
random_seed = 1,
)
train_rewards <- iai::fit_predict(reward_lnr, train_X, train_treatments,
train_outcomes, treatment_candidates)
train_rewards$predictions$reward
11 14 17 20
1 15.51925 14.321092 15.90945 15.71609
2 17.98429 17.068355 16.18260 16.68442
3 15.19930 11.280400 14.17194 15.82092
4 13.61431 11.021572 14.17194 15.82092
5 14.04781 11.247633 14.50928 16.11677
6 15.05722 15.595349 16.19910 16.68442
7 15.03142 13.373021 14.79301 16.01834
8 13.32171 15.075400 18.35853 18.22019
9 21.83795 22.238509 21.34982 18.91490
10 22.72739 17.816080 18.46572 20.29285
11 22.84085 24.624090 20.63584 19.50574
12 25.97438 28.254161 32.75685 24.65389
13 22.41439 23.645034 22.50530 25.11956
14 12.88894 -1.422647 15.23888 15.95957
15 14.33635 9.438246 14.33904 16.68442
[ reached 'max' / getOption("max.print") -- omitted 181 rows ]train_rewards$score$propensity
$`17`
[1] 0.1205333
$`20`
[1] 0.200617
$`11`
[1] 0.2871446
$`14`
[1] 0.1653518train_rewards$score$outcome
$`17`
[1] 0.8642112
$`20`
[1] 0.2502764
$`11`
[1] 0.6539758
$`14`
[1] 0.8337176We can see that the R2 of the internal outcome models for each candidate treatment are between 0.25 and 0.86, whereas the propensity models have R2 between 0.12 and 0.29. The non-zero propensity scores tell us that there is a small amount of treatment assignment bias in this data (keeping in mind that we arbitrarily selected a feature to use as the treatment column). It seems we can predict the outcomes reasonably well, so we have a good base for the reward estimates.
Optimal Policy Trees
Now that we have a complete rewards matrix, we can train a tree to learn an optimal prescription policy that maximizes MPG. We will use a grid_search to fit an optimal_tree_policy_maximizer (note that if we were trying to minimize the outcomes, we would use optimal_tree_policy_minimizer):
grid <- iai::grid_search(
iai::optimal_tree_policy_maximizer(
random_seed = 1,
minbucket = 15,
),
max_depth = 4:5,
)
iai::fit(grid, train_X, train_rewards$predictions$reward)
iai::get_learner(grid)
The resulting tree recommends different accelerations based on the characteristics of the car. The intensity of the color in each leaf shows the difference in quality between the best and second-best acceleration values.
We can see that a variety of our candidate acceleration values are prescribed by the tree. For instance, older cars with higher horsepower receive the highest acceleration.
We can make treatment prescriptions using predict:
prescriptions <- iai::predict(grid, train_X)
The prescriptions are always returned as strings matching the column names of the input rewards matrix. In our case the treatments are numeric values, and if we want them in numeric form to use later we can convert them to numeric treatments using convert_treatments_to_numeric:
iai::convert_treatments_to_numeric(prescriptions)
[1] 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 17 17 20 20 20 17 20 20 17 20 20 20 17 20 17
[26] 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 17 17 17 20 17 20 20 20 20 20
[51] 14 14 14 14 20 20 20 14 20 20
[ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 136 entries ]If we want more information about the relative performance of treatments for these points, we can predict the full treatment ranking with predict_treatment_rank:
rank <- iai::predict_treatment_rank(grid, train_X)
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[2,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[3,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[4,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[5,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[6,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[7,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[8,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[9,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[10,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[11,] "17" "14" "11" "20"
[12,] "17" "14" "11" "20"
[13,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[14,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[15,] "20" "11" "17" "14"
[ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 181 rows ]For each point in the data, this gives the treatments in order of effectiveness. As before, this are returned as strings, but we can convert the treatments to numeric values with convert_treatments_to_numeric:
iai::convert_treatments_to_numeric(rank)
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] 20 11 17 14
[2,] 20 11 17 14
[3,] 20 11 17 14
[4,] 20 11 17 14
[5,] 20 11 17 14
[6,] 20 11 17 14
[7,] 20 11 17 14
[8,] 20 11 17 14
[9,] 20 11 17 14
[10,] 20 11 17 14
[11,] 17 14 11 20
[12,] 17 14 11 20
[13,] 20 11 17 14
[14,] 20 11 17 14
[15,] 20 11 17 14
[ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 181 rows ]To quantify the difference in performance behind the treatment rankings, we can use predict_treatment_outcome to extract the estimated quality of each treatment for each point:
iai::predict_treatment_outcome(grid, train_X)
11 14 17 20
1 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
2 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
3 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
4 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
5 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
6 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
7 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
8 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
9 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
10 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
11 24.90946 27.00216 27.47972 21.37083
12 24.90946 27.00216 27.47972 21.37083
13 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
14 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
15 17.02099 14.75048 16.92219 18.28656
[ reached 'max' / getOption("max.print") -- omitted 181 rows ]We can also extract the standard errors of the outcome estimates with predict_treatment_outcome_standard_error:
iai::predict_treatment_outcome_standard_error(grid, train_X)
11 14 17 20
1 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
2 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
3 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
4 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
5 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
6 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
7 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
8 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
9 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
10 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
11 0.5065745 0.9721001 1.4637801 3.2545938
12 0.5065745 0.9721001 1.4637801 3.2545938
13 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
14 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
15 0.8035298 1.0631867 0.7700922 0.7108964
[ reached 'max' / getOption("max.print") -- omitted 181 rows ]These standard errors can be combined with the outcome estimates to construct confidence intervals in the usual way.
Evaluating Optimal Policy Trees
It is critical for a fair evaluation that we do not evaluate the quality of the policy using rewards from our existing reward estimator trained on the training set. This is to avoid any information from the training set leaking through to the out-of-sample evaluation.
Instead, what we need to do is to estimate a new set of rewards using only the test set, and evaluate the policy against these rewards:
test_rewards <- iai::fit_predict(reward_lnr, test_X, test_treatments,
test_outcomes, treatment_candidates)
test_rewards$predictions$reward
11 14 17 20
1 18.82648 17.900647 15.27409 16.59605
2 18.58371 17.337311 15.36507 16.85433
3 16.83168 17.759072 15.45162 17.11098
4 14.83714 12.413611 14.33168 16.15389
5 15.88567 13.500115 14.05962 16.24789
6 14.91925 16.836939 14.90004 16.21220
7 28.65420 23.726073 23.45553 23.74469
8 28.76123 26.935723 25.24217 24.94676
9 26.26507 23.819701 30.65151 23.93741
10 26.81575 21.021514 24.82638 21.05603
11 25.18304 25.036279 22.28024 20.38562
12 19.58809 21.393769 21.08518 20.55536
13 14.41206 4.447412 15.31462 18.35806
14 14.15102 13.431400 -10.75589 -20.27758
15 27.03075 26.650123 27.35851 28.31963
[ reached 'max' / getOption("max.print") -- omitted 181 rows ]test_rewards$score$propensity
$`17`
[1] 0.1580786
$`20`
[1] 0.2672843
$`11`
[1] 0.3930468
$`14`
[1] 0.217413test_rewards$score$outcome
$`17`
[1] 0.705786
$`20`
[1] 0.7703811
$`11`
[1] 0.4707763
$`14`
[1] 0.8866579We see the internal models of our test reward estimator have scores that are similar to those on the test set. As with the training set, this gives us confidence that the estimated rewards are a fair reflection of reality, and will serve as a good basis for evaluation.
We can now evaluate the quality using these new estimated rewards. First, we will calculate the average predicted MPG under the treatments prescribed by the tree for the test set. To do this, we use predict_outcomes which uses the model to make prescriptions and looks up the predicted outcomes under these prescriptions:
policy_outcomes <- iai::predict_outcomes(grid, test_X,
test_rewards$predictions$reward)
[1] 16.5960521 16.8543325 17.1109804 16.1538891 16.2478888 16.2121968
[7] 23.7446893 25.2421742 30.6515066 24.8263822 20.3856155 21.0851790
[13] 18.3580644 -20.2775797 27.3585081 19.5190238 18.1880693 18.5801374
[19] 18.3580644 15.7020594 15.7020594 16.2478888 18.6640016 17.8342597
[25] 22.1556307 30.9552814 23.8479498 22.6997853 -0.2941414 18.3580644
[31] 16.3788466 15.7020594 18.3580644 16.4519758 16.5286969 16.5286969
[37] 19.1528634 16.7992609 25.0225700 17.1740027 15.6819372 13.6194815
[43] 16.2892893 16.2892893 15.6819372 16.5286969 19.7528795 19.9767409
[49] 16.2892893 16.2892893 16.6319255 26.6297141 26.2681754 24.8270815
[55] 24.0698631 19.1903106 16.5286969 26.8281826 24.8245924 13.3755188
[ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 136 entries ]We can then get the average estimated MPG under our treatments:
mean(policy_outcomes)
[1] 23.93173We can compare this number to the average estimated MPG under a baseline policy that assigns the same treatment to all observations regardless of their features. Let us compare to a policy that assigns 17 everywhere:
mean(test_rewards$predictions$reward[,"17"])
[1] 23.32036We can see that the personalization offered by the tree policy indeed improves upon a baseline where each observation receives the same treatment.