Frequently Asked Questions¶

Here we try to give some answers to questions that regularly pop up on the mailing list.

What is the project name (a lot of people get it wrong)?¶

scikit-learn, but not scikit or SciKit nor sci-kit learn. Also not scikits.learn or scikits-learn, which where previously used.

How do you pronounce the project name?¶

sy-kit learn. sci stands for science!

Why scikit?¶

There are multiple scikits, which are scientific toolboxes build around SciPy. You can find a list at https://scikits.appspot.com/scikits. Apart from scikit-learn, another popular one is scikit-image.

How can I contribute to scikit-learn?¶

See Contributing.

Can I add this new algorithm that I (or someone else) just published?¶

No. As a rule we only add well-established algorithms. A rule of thumb is at least 3 years since publications, 1000+ cites and wide use and usefullness.

Can I add this classical algorithm from the 80s?¶

Depends. If there is a common usecase within the scope of scikit-learn, such as classification, regression or clustering, where it outperforms methods that are already implemented in scikit-learn, we will consider it.

Why did you remove HMMs from scikit-learn?¶

See Will you add graphical models or sequence prediction to scikit-learn?.

Will you add graphical models or sequence prediction to scikit-learn?¶

Not in the forseeable future. scikit-learn tries to provide a unified API for the basic tasks in machine learning, with pipelines and meta-algorithms like grid search to tie everything together. The required concepts, APIs, algorithms and expertise required for structured learning are different from what scikit-learn has to offer. If we started doing arbitrary structured learning, we’d need to redesign the whole package and the project would likely collapse under its own weight.

There are two project with API similar to scikit-learn that do structured prediction:

pystruct handles general structured learning (focuses on SSVMs on arbitrary graph structures with approximate inference; defines the notion of sample as an instance of the graph structure)
seqlearn handles sequences only (focuses on exact inference; has HMMs, but mostly for the sake of completeness; treats a feature vector as a sample and uses an offset encoding for the dependencies between feature vectors)

Will you add GPU support?¶

No, or at least not in the near future. The main reason is that GPU support will introduce many software dependencies and introduce platform specific issues. scikit-learn is designed to be easy to install on a wide variety of platforms. Outside of neural networks, GPUs don’t play a large role in machine learning today, and much larger gains in speed can often be achieved by a careful choice of algorithms.

Do you support PyPy?¶

In case you didn’t know, PyPy is the new, fast, just-in-time compiling Python implementation. We don’t support it. When the NumPy support in PyPy is complete or near-complete, and SciPy is ported over as well, we can start thinking of a port. We use too much of NumPy to work with a partial implementation.