How to Compute Precision and Recall from Scratch in Python for Multi-Class Classification?
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Condition f0r Calculating Precision and Recall from Scratch for a 3-Class Classification Problem
Description: Precision and recall are metrics used to evaluate the performance of a classification model, particularly for multi-class problems. Precision helps determine how many of the predicted positive instances are correct, while recall measures how many of the actual positive instances are correctly identified. For a 3-class classification problem, we calculate precision and recall for each class individually.
Why Should We Choose Precision and Recall?
Precision: Precision is crucial when false positives are costly. For example, in medical diagnoses, predicting a healthy person as diseased (false positive) can be dangerous.
Recall: Recall is important when false negatives are critical. For instance, in fraud detection, missing a fraudulent transaction (false negative) can be very costly.
Multi-Class Evaluation: Precision and recall offer valuable insights when evaluating the performance of a model across multiple classes, especially when class distribution is imbalanced.
Step-by-Step Process
Define the Confusion Matrix: For a 3-class classification, the confusion matrix is a 3x3 matrix that shows the true vs predicted classes for each instance. The values represent:
True Positive (TP): Correctly predicted instances for a class.
False Positive (FP): Instances predicted as a class, but the true class is different.
False Negative (FN): Instances of a class predicted as a different class.
True Negative (TN): Instances that are neither the predicted class nor the actual class.
Calculate Precision and Recall: Calculate precision and recall for each class using the confusion matrix. Precision for class i is TP/(TP+FP), and recall for class i is TP/(TP+FN).
Evaluate Performance: Precision and recall for each class give insights into the model's performance. You can also compute macro-average or weighted average precision and recall.
Plot Results: Visualize the performance using confusion matrices, precision-recall curves, or bar graphs for each class.
Sample Source Code
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sklearn.metrics import confusion_matrix
import seaborn as sns