How to get classification probabilities from PySpark MultilayerPerceptronClassifier?

Question

I\'m using Spark 2.0.1 in python, my dataset is in DataFrame, so I\'m using the ML (not MLLib) library for machine learning. I have a multilayer perceptron classifier and I

Answer 1

Indeed, as of version 2.0, MLP in Spark ML does not seem to provide classification probabilities; nevertheless, there are a number of other classifiers doing so, i.e. Logistic Regression, Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, and Random Forest. Here is a short example with the first and the last one:

from pyspark.ml.classification import LogisticRegression, RandomForestClassifier
from pyspark.ml.linalg import Vectors
from pyspark.sql import Row
df = sqlContext.createDataFrame([
     (0.0, Vectors.dense(0.0, 1.0)),
     (1.0, Vectors.dense(1.0, 0.0))], 
     ["label", "features"])
df.show()
# +-----+---------+ 
# |label| features| 
# +-----+---------+ 
# | 0.0 |[0.0,1.0]| 
# | 1.0 |[1.0,0.0]| 
# +-----+---------+

lr = LogisticRegression(maxIter=5, regParam=0.01, labelCol="label")
lr_model = lr.fit(df)

rf = RandomForestClassifier(numTrees=3, maxDepth=2, labelCol="label", seed=42)
rf_model = rf.fit(df)

# test data:
test = sc.parallelize([Row(features=Vectors.dense(0.2, 0.5)),
                       Row(features=Vectors.dense(0.5, 0.2))]).toDF()

lr_result = lr_model.transform(test)
lr_result.show()
# +---------+--------------------+--------------------+----------+
# | features|       rawPrediction|         probability|prediction|
# +---------+--------------------+--------------------+----------+
# |[0.2,0.5]|[0.98941878916476...|[0.72897310704261...|       0.0|
# |[0.5,0.2]|[-0.9894187891647...|[0.27102689295738...|       1.0|  
# +---------+--------------------+--------------------+----------+

rf_result = rf_model.transform(test)
rf_result.show()
# +---------+-------------+--------------------+----------+ 
# | features|rawPrediction|         probability|prediction| 
# +---------+-------------+--------------------+----------+ 
# |[0.2,0.5]|    [1.0,2.0]|[0.33333333333333...|       1.0| 
# |[0.5,0.2]|    [1.0,2.0]|[0.33333333333333...|       1.0| 
# +---------+-------------+--------------------+----------+

For MLlib, see my answer here; for several undocumented & counter-intuitive features of PySpark classification, see my relevant blog post.