pySubDisc

pySubDisc is a Python wrapper for SubDisc: Subgroup Discovery.

Installation

pySubDisc is available from PyPI. To install it, run:

python3 -m pip install pysubdisc

Installation from source

To install pySubDisc from its sources, follow these steps:

• From https://github.com/SubDisc/SubDisc, use mvn package to build target/subdisc-gui.jar
• Place subdisc-gui.jar in src/pysubdisc/jars
• Run pip install . from the root directory of the repository (containing pyproject.toml)

Example

Using the data from https://github.com/SubDisc/SubDisc/blob/main/adult.txt :

import pysubdisc
import pandas

data = pandas.read_csv('adult.txt')
sd = pysubdisc.singleNominalTarget(data, 'target', 'gr50K')
sd.qualityMeasureMinimum = 0.25
sd.run()
print(sd.asDataFrame())

Some detailed examples can be found in the /examples folder.

Documentation

The SubDisc documentation might be of help for working with pySubDisc: https://github.com/SubDisc/SubDisc/wiki.

Data loading

pySubDisc uses pandas.DataFrame tables as input. There are two options to pass these from pySubDisc to SubDisc itself:

data = pandas.read_csv('adult.txt')

# Either, create a SubgroupDiscovery target structure directly
sd = pysubdisc.singleNominalTarget(data, 'target', 'gr50K')

# Or, first load the dataframe into SubDisc for further preparation
table = pysubdisc.loadDataFrame(data)
sd = pysubdisc.singleNominalTarget(table, 'target', 'gr50K')

Data preparation

A pySubDisc.Table object can be manipulated before creating a SubDisc target using the following functions:

# Load a pandas.DataFrame object
table = pysubdisc.loadDataFrame(data)

# Describe the columns (name, type, cardinality, enabled)
print(table.describeColumns())

# Change column type to binary
table.makeColumnsBinary(['column', 'other_column']

# Change column type to numeric
table.makeColumnsNumeric(['column', 'other_column']

# Change column type to nominal
table.makeColumnsNominal(['column', 'other_column']

# Disable columns
table.disableColumns(['column', 'other_column']

# Enable columns
table.enableColumns(['column', 'other_column']

# Select a subset of the rows by passing a pandas boolean Series
table.setSelection(data['education'] == 'Bachelors')

# Reset selection of rows to the full data set
table.clearSelection()

Configuring subgroup discovery

A pySubDisc.SubgroupDiscovery object can be created by the following target functions:

# single nominal target
sd = pysubdisc.singleNominalTarget(data, targetColumn, targetValue)

# single numeric target
sd = pysubdisc.singleNumericTarget(data, targetColumn)

# double regression target
sd = pysubdisc.doubleRegressionTarget(data, primaryTargetColumn, secondaryTargetColumn)

# double correlation target
sd = pysubdisc.doubleCorrelationTarget(data, primaryTargetColumn, secondaryTargetColumn)

# double binary target
sd = pysubdisc.doubleBinaryTarget(data, primaryTargetColumn, secondaryTargetColumn)

# multi numeric target
sd = pysubdisc.multiNumericTarget(data, targetColumns)

After creating a pySubDisc.SubgroupDiscovery object, you can configure its search parameters. For example:

print(sd.describeSearchParameters())

sd.numericStrategy = 'NUMERIC_BEST'
sd.qualityMeasure = 'RELATIVE_WRACC'
sd.qualityMeasureMinimum = 2
sd.searchDepth = 2

An appropriate value of the qualityMeasure option can in particular be computed for various target types using the computeThreshold() function.

# If setAsMinimum is set to True, the qualityMeasureMinimum parameter is updated directly
threshold = sd.computeThreshold(significanceLevel=0.05, method='SWAP_RANDOMIZATION', amount=100, setAsMinimum=True)

Running subgroup discovery

After configuring the search parameters, you can run the subgroup discovery process by calling the run() method.

sd.run()

Examining the results

# The resulting subgroups are given as a pandas.DataFrame, with one row per subgroup
print(sd.asDataFrame())

The function getSubgroupMembers() returns a set of members of a subgroup as a pandas boolean Series.

# Get rows corresponding to subgroup #0
subset = data[sd.getSubgroupMembers(0)]

For a number of the target types, a showModel() method is available to aid visualization of the discovered subgroups. The scripts in the /examples directory demonstrate its use.

The function getPatternTeam() returns a Pattern Team for the discovered subgroups.

# if returnGrouping is True, getPatternTeam will also return
# the grouping of subgroups according to the pattern team
patternTeam, grouping = sd.getPatternTeam(3, returnGrouping=True)

print(patternTeam)

# print the subgroups for the first of the three determined groups
df = sd.asDataFrame()
print(df[grouping[0]])