CClassifier

The unified interface CClassifier defines the structure of classifiers.

We differentiate a standard classifier from Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), which require a more advanced interface defined by CClassifierDNN (described below).

Standard classifiers (CClassifier)

List of methods to implement:

  • _forward: performs a forward pass of the input x. It should return the output of the decision function of the classifier.

  • _backward: this method returns the gradient of the decision function output with respect to data. It takes a CArray as input, w, which pre-multiplies the gradient as in standard reverse-mode autodiff.

  • _fit: fit the classifier on the data. Takes as input a CDataset.

DNN backends (CClassifierDNN)

The backend for DNN (CClassifierDNN) is based on the CClassifier interface, adding more methods specific to DNNs and their frameworks.

An example of how to extend the CClassifierDNN interface is our PyTorch wrapper CClassifierPyTorch.

List of methods to implement:

  • _forward: performs a forward pass of the input x. It is slightly different from the _forward method of CClassifier, as it returns the output of the layer of the DNN specified in the attribute _out_layer. If _out_layer is None, the last layer output is returned (applies the softmax if softmax_outputs is True).

  • _backward: returns the gradient of the output of the DNN layer specified in _out_layer, with respect to the input data.

  • _fit: trains the classifier. Takes as input a CDataset.

  • layers (property): returns a list of tuples containing the layers of the model, each tuple is structured as (layer_name, layer).

  • layer_shapes (property): returns the output shape of each layer (as a dictionary with layer names as keys).

  • _to_tensor: converts a CArray into the tensor data type of the backend framework.

  • _from_tensor: converts a backend tensor data type to a CArray.

  • save_model: saves the model weight and parameters into a gz archive. If possible, it should allow model restoring as a checkpoint, i.e. the user should be able to continue training of the restored model.

  • load_model: restores the model. If possible, it restores also the optimization parameters as the user may need to continue training.

It may be necessary to implement a custom data loader for the specific DNN backend. The data loader should take as input a CDataset and load the data for the backend. This is necessary because the inputs to the network may have their own shapes, whereas the CArray treats each sample as a row vector. We suggest to add the input_shape as an input parameter of the wrapper and handle the conversion inside.