This notebook contains an excerpt from the Python Data Science Handbook by Jake VanderPlas; the content is available on GitHub. The text is released under the CC-BY-NC-ND license, and code is released under the MIT license.

In-Depth: Support Vector Machines


In [1]:
%matplotlib inline
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from scipy import stats

# use seaborn plotting defaults
import seaborn as sns; sns.set()

Motivating Support Vector Machines


In [2]:
from sklearn.datasets.samples_generator import make_blobs
X, y = make_blobs(n_samples=50, centers=2,
                  random_state=0, cluster_std=0.60)
plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn');



In [3]:
xfit = np.linspace(-1, 3.5)
plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')
plt.plot([0.6], [2.1], 'x', color='red', markeredgewidth=2, markersize=10)

for m, b in [(1, 0.65), (0.5, 1.6), (-0.2, 2.9)]:
    plt.plot(xfit, m * xfit + b, '-k')

plt.xlim(-1, 3.5);


Support Vector Machines: Maximizing the Margin

Support vector machines offer one way to improve on this. The intuition is this: rather than simply drawing a zero-width line between the classes, we can draw around each line a margin of some width, up to the nearest point. Here is an example of how this might look:


In [4]:
xfit = np.linspace(-1, 3.5)
plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')

for m, b, d in [(1, 0.65, 0.33), (0.5, 1.6, 0.55), (-0.2, 2.9, 0.2)]:
    yfit = m * xfit + b
    plt.plot(xfit, yfit, '-k')
    plt.fill_between(xfit, yfit - d, yfit + d, edgecolor='none',
                     color='#AAAAAA', alpha=0.4)

plt.xlim(-1, 3.5);


Fitting a support vector machine

Let's see the result of an actual fit to this data: we will use Scikit-Learn's support vector classifier to train an SVM model on this data. For the time being, we will use a linear kernel and set the C parameter to a very large number (we'll discuss the meaning of these in more depth momentarily).


In [5]:
from sklearn.svm import SVC # "Support vector classifier"
model = SVC(kernel='linear', C=1E10)
model.fit(X, y)


Out[5]:
SVC(C=10000000000.0, cache_size=200, class_weight=None, coef0=0.0,
  decision_function_shape=None, degree=3, gamma='auto', kernel='linear',
  max_iter=-1, probability=False, random_state=None, shrinking=True,
  tol=0.001, verbose=False)

To better visualize what's happening here, let's create a quick convenience function that will plot SVM decision boundaries for us:


In [6]:
def plot_svc_decision_function(model, ax=None, plot_support=True):
    """Plot the decision function for a 2D SVC"""
    if ax is None:
        ax = plt.gca()
    xlim = ax.get_xlim()
    ylim = ax.get_ylim()
    
    # create grid to evaluate model
    x = np.linspace(xlim[0], xlim[1], 30)
    y = np.linspace(ylim[0], ylim[1], 30)
    Y, X = np.meshgrid(y, x)
    xy = np.vstack([X.ravel(), Y.ravel()]).T
    P = model.decision_function(xy).reshape(X.shape)
    
    # plot decision boundary and margins
    ax.contour(X, Y, P, colors='k',
               levels=[-1, 0, 1], alpha=0.5,
               linestyles=['--', '-', '--'])
    
    # plot support vectors
    if plot_support:
        ax.scatter(model.support_vectors_[:, 0],
                   model.support_vectors_[:, 1],
                   s=300, linewidth=1, facecolors='none');
    ax.set_xlim(xlim)
    ax.set_ylim(ylim)

In [7]:
plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')
plot_svc_decision_function(model);



In [8]:
model.support_vectors_


Out[8]:
array([[ 0.44359863,  3.11530945],
       [ 2.33812285,  3.43116792],
       [ 2.06156753,  1.96918596]])

In [9]:
def plot_svm(N=10, ax=None):
    X, y = make_blobs(n_samples=200, centers=2,
                      random_state=0, cluster_std=0.60)
    X = X[:N]
    y = y[:N]
    model = SVC(kernel='linear', C=1E10)
    model.fit(X, y)
    
    ax = ax or plt.gca()
    ax.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')
    ax.set_xlim(-1, 4)
    ax.set_ylim(-1, 6)
    plot_svc_decision_function(model, ax)

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(16, 6))
fig.subplots_adjust(left=0.0625, right=0.95, wspace=0.1)
for axi, N in zip(ax, [60, 120]):
    plot_svm(N, axi)
    axi.set_title('N = {0}'.format(N))



In [10]:
from ipywidgets import interact, fixed
interact(plot_svm, N=[10, 200], ax=fixed(None));


Beyond linear boundaries: Kernel SVM

Where SVM becomes extremely powerful is when it is combined with kernels. We have seen a version of kernels before, in the basis function regressions of In Depth: Linear Regression. There we projected our data into higher-dimensional space defined by polynomials and Gaussian basis functions, and thereby were able to fit for nonlinear relationships with a linear classifier.

In SVM models, we can use a version of the same idea. To motivate the need for kernels, let's look at some data that is not linearly separable:


In [11]:
from sklearn.datasets.samples_generator import make_circles
X, y = make_circles(100, factor=.1, noise=.1)

clf = SVC(kernel='linear').fit(X, y)

plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')
plot_svc_decision_function(clf, plot_support=False);



In [12]:
r = np.exp(-(X ** 2).sum(1))

We can visualize this extra data dimension using a three-dimensional plot—if you are running this notebook live, you will be able to use the sliders to rotate the plot:


In [13]:
from mpl_toolkits import mplot3d

def plot_3D(elev=30, azim=30, X=X, y=y):
    ax = plt.subplot(projection='3d')
    ax.scatter3D(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], r, c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')
    ax.view_init(elev=elev, azim=azim)
    ax.set_xlabel('x')
    ax.set_ylabel('y')
    ax.set_zlabel('r')

interact(plot_3D, elev=[-90, 90], azip=(-180, 180),
         X=fixed(X), y=fixed(y));



In [14]:
clf = SVC(kernel='rbf', C=1E6)
clf.fit(X, y)


Out[14]:
SVC(C=1000000.0, cache_size=200, class_weight=None, coef0=0.0,
  decision_function_shape=None, degree=3, gamma='auto', kernel='rbf',
  max_iter=-1, probability=False, random_state=None, shrinking=True,
  tol=0.001, verbose=False)

In [15]:
plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')
plot_svc_decision_function(clf)
plt.scatter(clf.support_vectors_[:, 0], clf.support_vectors_[:, 1],
            s=300, lw=1, facecolors='none');


Tuning the SVM: Softening Margins

Our discussion thus far has centered around very clean datasets, in which a perfect decision boundary exists. But what if your data has some amount of overlap? For example, you may have data like this:


In [16]:
X, y = make_blobs(n_samples=100, centers=2,
                  random_state=0, cluster_std=1.2)
plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn');



In [17]:
X, y = make_blobs(n_samples=100, centers=2,
                  random_state=0, cluster_std=0.8)

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(16, 6))
fig.subplots_adjust(left=0.0625, right=0.95, wspace=0.1)

for axi, C in zip(ax, [10.0, 0.1]):
    model = SVC(kernel='linear', C=C).fit(X, y)
    axi.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], c=y, s=50, cmap='autumn')
    plot_svc_decision_function(model, axi)
    axi.scatter(model.support_vectors_[:, 0],
                model.support_vectors_[:, 1],
                s=300, lw=1, facecolors='none');
    axi.set_title('C = {0:.1f}'.format(C), size=14)