predicting numbers produces bad results

[David Touretzky]

When I train a "predicting numbers" project to predict "required calories" from "weight" and "age" using the csv dataset below, the result is always a number of form 2312.4xxxxxx, no mwatter what the input values.

"weight","age","required calories"
58, 10, 2400
110, 15, 3000
70, 12, 1800
140, 16, 2200
180, 18, 2600
115, 14, 2350
150, 17, 2100
85, 13, 2050
95, 14, 2150
105, 15, 2250

[Dale Lane]

Sorry about that! 

I assume that something I've done is preventing the service from adequately handling such a small training set (primarily because I don't see that behaviour with the larger training sets that users normally have). 

I've got a very busy couple of days coming up, so won't be able to look at this now - but I'll pick this up on Wednesday to see what I could do to more appropriately handle tiny data sets. 

Kind regards

D

[Dale Lane]

I've made some changes that I think should help. I was only normalizing the inputs before - I've updated this so now I normalize both inputs and outputs, and I hope this will give better results with small datasets. 

Kind regards

D

[Dave Touretzky]

It appears this fix wasn't tested on the little 10-example "calorie"
dataset I supplied. It's still failing spectacularly.

How are you doing the regression? What algorithm is used?

-- Dave

[Dale Lane]

"spectacularly" feels a little over the top as a reaction, don't you think? 

Considering I took the time to reply to you, to investigate the issue you raised, to implement a fix, and yes - to test the fix, and then reach out to you again to let you know... how likely do you really think it is that I'd do all of that if I hadn't tried it with your data? 

Did you perhaps consider that you're using a web app and try doing things like refreshing the page a few times, disabling your cache, that sort of thing? And even if you did try that, and there really is some other issue I haven't considered, there are still nicer ways to raise an issue. 

At this point, it feels a little ridiculous to have to prove that I really did try your data but given that's where we seem to be now, here you go: https://youtu.be/CU2S4rrONOU 

As for what algorithm I'm using, I literally gave you a link to the implementation in my last post, so perhaps take 30 seconds to go look? 

Sorry if my reaction seems over the top, but there are more courteous ways to ask for things.