arXiv subjects

Dean Frederick Hougen

Publications and source records attributed to Dean Frederick Hougen.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

SR4-Fit: A Unified Interpretable Rule-Based Machine Learning Framework for Informative and Trustworthy Decision-Making

In many high-stakes applications, machine learning is dominated by black-box models that require post hoc explanations to justify their predictions. These explanations are often unreliable because they do not reflect the model's actual computations, limiting accountability and trust. A natural alternative is to use models that are interpretable by design. However, existing rule-based approaches, such as RuleFit and decision trees, while transparent, often lack stability and predictive strength, reinforcing a perceived trade-off between traditional performance measures and model understandability. To address this, we propose Sparse Relaxed Regularized Regression Rule-Fit (SR4-Fit), an intrinsically interpretable algorithm for both classification and regression that produces compact and stable rule sets without sacrificing performance. Using demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, SR4-Fit predicts U.S. House election outcomes with high accuracy and interpretability while uncovering demographic interactions missed by black-box models. We further validate SR4-Fit across fourteen benchmark datasets (six classification and eight regression), where it outperforms existing rule-based methods, including RuleFit and decision trees in terms of accuracy, stability, and compactness while remaining competitive with black-box models in predictivity. These results demonstrate that interpretability and predictive reliability need not be mutually exclusive, offering a practical and transparent alternative for high-stakes decision-making.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

SR4-Fit: An Interpretable and Informative Classification Algorithm Applied to Prediction of U.S. House of Representatives Elections

The growth of machine learning demands interpretable models for critical applications, yet most high-performing models are ``black-box'' systems that obscure input-output relationships, while traditional rule-based algorithms like RuleFit suffer from a lack of predictive power and instability despite their simplicity. This motivated our development of Sparse Relaxed Regularized Regression Rule-Fit (SR4-Fit), a novel interpretable classification algorithm that addresses these limitations while maintaining superior classification performance. Using demographic characteristics of U.S. congressional districts from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, we demonstrate that SR4-Fit can predict House election party outcomes with unprecedented accuracy and interpretability. Our results show that while the majority party remains the strongest predictor, SR4-Fit has revealed intrinsic combinations of demographic factors that affect prediction outcomes that were unable to be interpreted in black-box algorithms such as random forests. The SR4-Fit algorithm surpasses both black-box models and existing interpretable rule-based algorithms such as RuleFit with respect to accuracy, simplicity, and robustness, generating stable and interpretable rule sets while maintaining superior predictive performance, thus addressing the traditional trade-off between model interpretability and predictive capability in electoral forecasting. To further validate SR4-Fit's performance, we also apply it to six additional publicly available classification datasets, like the breast cancer, Ecoli, page blocks, Pima Indians, vehicle, and yeast datasets, and find similar results.

cs.LG↗