We propose a fast, model agnostic method for finding interpretable counterfactual explanations of classifier predictions by using class prototypes. We show that class prototypes, obtained using either an encoder or through class specific k-d trees, significantly speed up the the search for counterfactual instances and result in more interpretable explanations. We introduce two novel metrics to quantitatively evaluate local interpretability at the instance level. We use these metrics to illustrate the effectiveness of our method on an image and tabular dataset, respectively MNIST and Breast Cancer Wisconsin (Diagnostic). The method also eliminates the computational bottleneck that arises because of numerical gradient evaluation for @math models.
We discuss a method for selecting prototypes in the classification setting (in which the samples fall into known discrete categories). Our method of focus is derived from three basic properties that we believe a good prototype set should satisfy. This intuition is translated into a set cover optimization problem, which we solve approximately using standard approaches. While prototype selection is usually viewed as purely a means toward building an efficient classifier, in this paper we emphasize the inherent value of having a set of prototypical elements. That said, by using the nearest-neighbor rule on the set of prototypes, we can of course discuss our method as a classifier as well. We demonstrate the interpretative value of producing prototypes on the well-known USPS ZIP code digits data set and show that as a classifier it performs reasonably well. We apply the method to a proteomics data set in which the samples are strings and therefore not naturally embedded in a vector space. Our method is compatible with any dissimilarity measure, making it amenable to situations in which using a non-Euclidean metric is desirable or even necessary. A recent approach to few-shot classification called matching networks has demonstrated the benefits of coupling metric learning with a training procedure that mimics test. This approach relies on a complicated fine-tuning procedure and an attention scheme that forms a distribution over all points in the support set, scaling poorly with its size. We propose a more streamlined approach, prototypical networks, that learns a metric space in which few-shot classification can be performed by computing Euclidean distances to prototype representations of each class, rather than individual points. Our method is competitive with state-of-the-art one-shot classification approaches while being much simpler and more scalable with the size of the support set. We empirically demonstrate the performance of our approach on the Omniglot and mini-ImageNet datasets. We further demonstrate that a similar idea can be used for zero-shot learning, where each class is described by a set of attributes, and achieve state-of-the-art results on the Caltech UCSD bird dataset. This paper develops the multidimensional binary search tree (or k -d tree, where k is the dimensionality of the search space) as a data structure for storage of information to be retrieved by associative searches. The k -d tree is defined and examples are given. It is shown to be quite efficient in its storage requirements. A significant advantage of this structure is that a single data structure can handle many types of queries very efficiently. Various utility algorithms are developed; their proven average running times in an n record file are: insertion, O (log n ); deletion of the root, O ( n ( k -1) k ); deletion of a random node, O (log n ); and optimization (guarantees logarithmic performance of searches), O ( n log n ). Search algorithms are given for partial match queries with t keys specified [proven maximum running time of O ( n ( k - t ) k )] and for nearest neighbor queries [empirically observed average running time of O (log n ).] These performances far surpass the best currently known algorithms for these tasks. An algorithm is presented to handle any general intersection query. The main focus of this paper is theoretical. It is felt, however, that k -d trees could be quite useful in many applications, and examples of potential uses are given.  We propose a general framework for nonparametric classification of multi-dimensional numerical patterns. Given training points for each class, it builds a set cover with convex sets each of which contains some training points of the class but no points of the other classes. Each convex set has thus an associated class label, and classification of a query point is made to the class of the convex set such that the projection of the query point onto its boundary is minimal. In this sense, the convex sets of a class are regarded as ''prototypes'' for that class. We then apply this framework to two special types of convex sets, minimum enclosing balls and convex hulls, giving algorithms for constructing a set cover with them and for computing the projection length onto their boundaries. For convex hulls, we also give a method for implicitly evaluating whether a point is contained in a convex hull, which can avoid computational difficulty for explicit construction of convex hulls in high-dimensional space. In this paper we propose an efficient algorithm ProtoDash for selecting prototypical examples from complex datasets. Our work builds on top of the learn to criticize (L2C) work by (2016) and generalizes it to not only select prototypes for a given sparsity level @math but also to associate non-negative weights with each of them indicative of the importance of each prototype. Unlike in the case of L2C, this extension provides a single coherent framework under which both prototypes and criticisms (i.e. lowest weighted prototypes) can be found. Furthermore, our framework works for any symmetric positive definite kernel thus addressing one of the open questions laid out in (2016). Our additional requirement of learning non-negative weights introduces technical challenges as the objective is no longer submodular as in the previous work. However, we show that the problem is weakly submodular and derive approximation guarantees for our fast ProtoDash algorithm. Moreover, ProtoDash can not only find prototypical examples for a dataset @math , but it can also find (weighted) prototypical examples from @math that best represent another dataset @math , where @math and @math belong to the same feature space. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method on diverse domains namely; retail, digit recognition (MNIST) and on the latest publicly available 40 health questionnaires obtained from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website maintained by the US Dept. of Health. We validate the results quantitatively as well as qualitatively based on expert feedback and recently published scientific studies on public health. Example-based explanations are widely used in the effort to improve the interpretability of highly complex distributions. However, prototypes alone are rarely sufficient to represent the gist of the complexity. In order for users to construct better mental models and understand complex data distributions, we also need criticism to explain what are captured by prototypes. Motivated by the Bayesian model criticism framework, we develop MMD-critic which efficiently learns prototypes and criticism, designed to aid human interpretability. A human subject pilot study shows that the MMD-critic selects prototypes and criticism that are useful to facilitate human understanding and reasoning. We also evaluate the prototypes selected by MMD-critic via a nearest prototype classifier, showing competitive performance compared to baselines. This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem, The Generalized Delta Rule, Simulation Results, Some Further Generalizations, Conclusion