The Negev Hi-Tech Faculty Startup Accelerator (NHSA)
and the Frenkel Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
are proud to announce a lecture in its "Distinguished Guest Lecturer Series"
by Prof. Mark Last, Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Title:
Improving Explainability of Decision Tree Models
ABSTRACT:
Born about 50 years ago, decision trees have survived the hype of support vector machines, deep neural networks, and other creative ways to generate 'black-box" models from data. They are still appreciated for their remarkable ability to provide an interpretable flowchart-like representation of a nonlinear decision-making process. However, decision-tree learning algorithms often produce over-complex models, which may be too sensitive to small, random variations in the training data. My talk will start with a brief introduction to Info-Fuzzy Networks (IFN), a robust method for inducing compact, stable, and accurate decision trees. Then I will describe in detail several IFN extensions for mining dynamic data streams, named IOLIN – Incremental Online Information Network algorithms. Another extension of IFN, aimed at evolving classification of event data streams, where some features of a monitored entity can be delayed or updated over time, will also be discussed. Finally, if time permits, I will present the results of initial experiments with an ensemble of IFN models.
BIO:
Mark Last is a Full Professor at the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and the Head of the Data Science Research Center at Ben-Gurion University.
Prof. Last obtained his Ph.D. degree from Tel Aviv University, Israel in 2000. Prior to starting his appointment at Ben-Gurion University in March 2001, Mark Last was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA (1999-2001). Between the years 2009-2012, Prof. Last has served as the Head of the Software Engineering Program at Ben-Gurion University. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and 11 books on data mining, text mining, and cybersecurity. Prof. Last is a Senior Member of the IEEE Computer Society and a Professional Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He currently serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics and an Editorial Board Member of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery. From 2007 to 2016, he has served as an Associate Editor of Pattern Analysis and Applications. His main research interests are focused on data mining, cross-lingual text mining, soft computing, cyber intelligence, and medical informatics.
