sklearn.feature_selection.RFECV

class sklearn.feature_selection.RFECV(estimator, *, step=1, min_features_to_select=1, cv=None, scoring=None, verbose=0, n_jobs=None, importance_getter='auto')[source]

Recursive feature elimination with cross-validation to select the number of features.

See glossary entry for cross-validation estimator.

Read more in the User Guide.

Parameters
estimatorEstimator instance

A supervised learning estimator with a fit method that provides information about feature importance either through a coef_ attribute or through a feature_importances_ attribute.

stepint or float, default=1

If greater than or equal to 1, then step corresponds to the (integer) number of features to remove at each iteration. If within (0.0, 1.0), then step corresponds to the percentage (rounded down) of features to remove at each iteration. Note that the last iteration may remove fewer than step features in order to reach min_features_to_select.

min_features_to_selectint, default=1

The minimum number of features to be selected. This number of features will always be scored, even if the difference between the original feature count and min_features_to_select isn’t divisible by step.

New in version 0.20.

cvint, cross-validation generator or an iterable, default=None

Determines the cross-validation splitting strategy. Possible inputs for cv are:

  • None, to use the default 5-fold cross-validation,

  • integer, to specify the number of folds.

  • CV splitter,

  • An iterable yielding (train, test) splits as arrays of indices.

For integer/None inputs, if y is binary or multiclass, StratifiedKFold is used. If the estimator is a classifier or if y is neither binary nor multiclass, KFold is used.

Refer User Guide for the various cross-validation strategies that can be used here.

Changed in version 0.22: cv default value of None changed from 3-fold to 5-fold.

scoringstr, callable or None, default=None

A string (see model evaluation documentation) or a scorer callable object / function with signature scorer(estimator, X, y).

verboseint, default=0

Controls verbosity of output.

n_jobsint or None, default=None

Number of cores to run in parallel while fitting across folds. None means 1 unless in a joblib.parallel_backend context. -1 means using all processors. See Glossary for more details.

New in version 0.18.

importance_getterstr or callable, default=’auto’

If ‘auto’, uses the feature importance either through a coef_ or feature_importances_ attributes of estimator.

Also accepts a string that specifies an attribute name/path for extracting feature importance. For example, give regressor_.coef_ in case of TransformedTargetRegressor or named_steps.clf.feature_importances_ in case of Pipeline with its last step named clf.

If callable, overrides the default feature importance getter. The callable is passed with the fitted estimator and it should return importance for each feature.

New in version 0.24.

Attributes
classes_ndarray of shape (n_classes,)

Classes labels available when estimator is a classifier.

estimator_Estimator instance

The fitted estimator used to select features.

grid_scores_ndarray of shape (n_subsets_of_features,)

DEPRECATED: The grid_scores_ attribute is deprecated in version 1.0 in favor of cv_results_ and will be removed in version 1.2.

cv_results_dict of ndarrays

A dict with keys:

split(k)_test_scorendarray of shape (n_features,)

The cross-validation scores across (k)th fold.

mean_test_scorendarray of shape (n_features,)

Mean of scores over the folds.

std_test_scorendarray of shape (n_features,)

Standard deviation of scores over the folds.

New in version 1.0.

n_features_int

The number of selected features with cross-validation.

n_features_in_int

Number of features seen during fit. Only defined if the underlying estimator exposes such an attribute when fit.

New in version 0.24.

feature_names_in_ndarray of shape (n_features_in_,)

Names of features seen during fit. Defined only when X has feature names that are all strings.

New in version 1.0.

ranking_narray of shape (n_features,)

The feature ranking, such that ranking_[i] corresponds to the ranking position of the i-th feature. Selected (i.e., estimated best) features are assigned rank 1.

support_ndarray of shape (n_features,)

The mask of selected features.

See also

RFE

Recursive feature elimination.

Notes

The size of grid_scores_ is equal to ceil((n_features - min_features_to_select) / step) + 1, where step is the number of features removed at each iteration.

Allows NaN/Inf in the input if the underlying estimator does as well.

References

1

Guyon, I., Weston, J., Barnhill, S., & Vapnik, V., “Gene selection for cancer classification using support vector machines”, Mach. Learn., 46(1-3), 389–422, 2002.

Examples

The following example shows how to retrieve the a-priori not known 5 informative features in the Friedman #1 dataset.

>>> from sklearn.datasets import make_friedman1
>>> from sklearn.feature_selection import RFECV
>>> from sklearn.svm import SVR
>>> X, y = make_friedman1(n_samples=50, n_features=10, random_state=0)
>>> estimator = SVR(kernel="linear")
>>> selector = RFECV(estimator, step=1, cv=5)
>>> selector = selector.fit(X, y)
>>> selector.support_
array([ True,  True,  True,  True,  True, False, False, False, False,
       False])
>>> selector.ranking_
array([1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 4, 3, 2, 5])

Methods

decision_function(X)

Compute the decision function of X.

fit(X, y[, groups])

Fit the RFE model and automatically tune the number of selected features.

fit_transform(X[, y])

Fit to data, then transform it.

get_feature_names_out([input_features])

Mask feature names according to selected features.

get_params([deep])

Get parameters for this estimator.

get_support([indices])

Get a mask, or integer index, of the features selected.

inverse_transform(X)

Reverse the transformation operation.

predict(X)

Reduce X to the selected features and then predict using the underlying estimator.

predict_log_proba(X)

Predict class log-probabilities for X.

predict_proba(X)

Predict class probabilities for X.

score(X, y, **fit_params)

Reduce X to the selected features and return the score of the underlying estimator.

set_params(**params)

Set the parameters of this estimator.

transform(X)

Reduce X to the selected features.
property classes_

Classes labels available when estimator is a classifier.

Returns
ndarray of shape (n_classes,)
decision_function(X)[source]

Compute the decision function of X.

Parameters
X{array-like or sparse matrix} of shape (n_samples, n_features)

The input samples. Internally, it will be converted to dtype=np.float32 and if a sparse matrix is provided to a sparse csr_matrix.

Returns
scorearray, shape = [n_samples, n_classes] or [n_samples]

The decision function of the input samples. The order of the classes corresponds to that in the attribute classes_. Regression and binary classification produce an array of shape [n_samples].

fit(X, y, groups=None)[source]

Fit the RFE model and automatically tune the number of selected features.

Parameters
X{array-like, sparse matrix} of shape (n_samples, n_features)

Training vector, where n_samples is the number of samples and n_features is the total number of features.

yarray-like of shape (n_samples,)

Target values (integers for classification, real numbers for regression).

groupsarray-like of shape (n_samples,) or None, default=None

Group labels for the samples used while splitting the dataset into train/test set. Only used in conjunction with a “Group” cv instance (e.g., GroupKFold).

New in version 0.20.

Returns
selfobject

Fitted estimator.

fit_transform(X, y=None, **fit_params)[source]

Fit to data, then transform it.

Fits transformer to X and y with optional parameters fit_params and returns a transformed version of X.

Parameters
Xarray-like of shape (n_samples, n_features)

Input samples.

yarray-like of shape (n_samples,) or (n_samples, n_outputs), default=None

Target values (None for unsupervised transformations).

**fit_paramsdict

Additional fit parameters.

Returns
X_newndarray array of shape (n_samples, n_features_new)

Transformed array.

get_feature_names_out(input_features=None)[source]

Mask feature names according to selected features.

Parameters
input_featuresarray-like of str or None, default=None

Input features.

  • If input_features is None, then feature_names_in_ is used as feature names in. If feature_names_in_ is not defined, then names are generated: [x0, x1, ..., x(n_features_in_)].

  • If input_features is an array-like, then input_features must match feature_names_in_ if feature_names_in_ is defined.

Returns
feature_names_outndarray of str objects

Transformed feature names.

get_params(deep=True)[source]

Get parameters for this estimator.

Parameters
deepbool, default=True

If True, will return the parameters for this estimator and contained subobjects that are estimators.

Returns
paramsdict

Parameter names mapped to their values.

get_support(indices=False)[source]

Get a mask, or integer index, of the features selected.

Parameters
indicesbool, default=False

If True, the return value will be an array of integers, rather than a boolean mask.

Returns
supportarray

An index that selects the retained features from a feature vector. If indices is False, this is a boolean array of shape [# input features], in which an element is True iff its corresponding feature is selected for retention. If indices is True, this is an integer array of shape [# output features] whose values are indices into the input feature vector.

property grid_scores_

DEPRECATED: The grid_scores_ attribute is deprecated in version 1.0 in favor of cv_results_ and will be removed in version 1.2.

inverse_transform(X)[source]

Reverse the transformation operation.

Parameters
Xarray of shape [n_samples, n_selected_features]

The input samples.

Returns
X_rarray of shape [n_samples, n_original_features]

X with columns of zeros inserted where features would have been removed by transform.

predict(X)[source]

Reduce X to the selected features and then predict using the underlying estimator.

Parameters
Xarray of shape [n_samples, n_features]

The input samples.

Returns
yarray of shape [n_samples]

The predicted target values.

predict_log_proba(X)[source]

Predict class log-probabilities for X.

Parameters
Xarray of shape [n_samples, n_features]

The input samples.

Returns
parray of shape (n_samples, n_classes)

The class log-probabilities of the input samples. The order of the classes corresponds to that in the attribute classes_.

predict_proba(X)[source]

Predict class probabilities for X.

Parameters
X{array-like or sparse matrix} of shape (n_samples, n_features)

The input samples. Internally, it will be converted to dtype=np.float32 and if a sparse matrix is provided to a sparse csr_matrix.

Returns
parray of shape (n_samples, n_classes)

The class probabilities of the input samples. The order of the classes corresponds to that in the attribute classes_.

score(X, y, **fit_params)[source]

Reduce X to the selected features and return the score of the underlying estimator.

Parameters
Xarray of shape [n_samples, n_features]

The input samples.

yarray of shape [n_samples]

The target values.

**fit_paramsdict

Parameters to pass to the score method of the underlying estimator.

New in version 1.0.

Returns
scorefloat

Score of the underlying base estimator computed with the selected features returned by rfe.transform(X) and y.

set_params(**params)[source]

Set the parameters of this estimator.

The method works on simple estimators as well as on nested objects (such as Pipeline). The latter have parameters of the form <component>__<parameter> so that it’s possible to update each component of a nested object.

Parameters
**paramsdict

Estimator parameters.

Returns
selfestimator instance

Estimator instance.

transform(X)[source]

Reduce X to the selected features.

Parameters
Xarray of shape [n_samples, n_features]

The input samples.

Returns
X_rarray of shape [n_samples, n_selected_features]

The input samples with only the selected features.

Examples using sklearn.feature_selection.RFECV

Recursive feature elimination with cross-validation

Recursive feature elimination with cross-validation