========================================================================== Statistical learning: the setting and the estimator object in scikit-learn ========================================================================== Datasets ========= Scikit-learn deals with learning information from one or more datasets that are represented as 2D arrays. They can be understood as a list of multi-dimensional observations. We say that the first axis of these arrays is the **samples** axis, while the second is the **features** axis. .. topic:: A simple example shipped with scikit-learn: iris dataset :: >>> from sklearn import datasets >>> iris = datasets.load_iris() >>> data = iris.data >>> data.shape (150, 4) It is made of 150 observations of irises, each described by 4 features: their sepal and petal length and width, as detailed in ``iris.DESCR``. When the data is not initially in the ``(n_samples, n_features)`` shape, it needs to be preprocessed in order to be used by scikit-learn. .. topic:: An example of reshaping data would be the digits dataset .. image:: /auto_examples/datasets/images/sphx_glr_plot_digits_last_image_001.png :target: ../../auto_examples/datasets/plot_digits_last_image.html :align: right :scale: 60 The digits dataset is made of 1797 8x8 images of hand-written digits :: >>> digits = datasets.load_digits() >>> digits.images.shape (1797, 8, 8) >>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt #doctest: +SKIP >>> plt.imshow(digits.images[-1], cmap=plt.cm.gray_r) #doctest: +SKIP To use this dataset with scikit-learn, we transform each 8x8 image into a feature vector of length 64 :: >>> data = digits.images.reshape((digits.images.shape[0], -1)) Estimators objects =================== .. Some code to make the doctests run >>> from sklearn.base import BaseEstimator >>> class Estimator(BaseEstimator): ... def __init__(self, param1=0, param2=0): ... self.param1 = param1 ... self.param2 = param2 ... def fit(self, data): ... pass >>> estimator = Estimator() **Fitting data**: the main API implemented by scikit-learn is that of the `estimator`. An estimator is any object that learns from data; it may be a classification, regression or clustering algorithm or a *transformer* that extracts/filters useful features from raw data. All estimator objects expose a ``fit`` method that takes a dataset (usually a 2-d array): >>> estimator.fit(data) **Estimator parameters**: All the parameters of an estimator can be set when it is instantiated or by modifying the corresponding attribute:: >>> estimator = Estimator(param1=1, param2=2) >>> estimator.param1 1 **Estimated parameters**: When data is fitted with an estimator, parameters are estimated from the data at hand. All the estimated parameters are attributes of the estimator object ending by an underscore:: >>> estimator.estimated_param_ #doctest: +SKIP