MAI-IML Exercise 4: Adaboost from Scratch and Predicting Customer Churn
Abstract
In this work, we develop a custom adaboost classifier compatible with the sklearn package and test it on a dataset from a telecommunication company requiring the correct classification of custumers likely to "churn", or quit their services, for use in developing investment plans to retain these high risk customers.
Adaboost from Scratch
Defined below is an sklearn compatable estimator utilizing the adaboost algorithm to perform binary classification. The input parameters for this estimator is the number of weak learners (which are decision tree stubs on a single, randomly selected feature) to train and aggregate to produce the final classifier. An optional weight distribution can also be passed to the classifier, which defaults to uniform if not set. This custom estimator will later be utilized to develop a classifier capable of predicting customer churn from labelled customer data.
Continue Reading...