Which Boosting Algorithm to Use?

Now it is a very basic question, if all of these machine learning algorithms are the best performing, fast, and gives higher accuracies, then which to use?

Well, the answer to these questions can not be a single boosting algorithm among them as all of them are the best-fit solution for a particular type of problem on which we are working.

For example, If you think that there is a need for regularization according to your dataset, then you can definitely use XGBoost, If you want to deal with categorical data, then CatBoost and LightGBM perform very well on those types of datasets. If you need more community support for the algorithm then use algorithms which was developed years back XGBoost or Gradient Boosting.

GradientBoosting vs AdaBoost vs XGBoost vs CatBoost vs LightGBM

Boosting algorithms are one of the best-performing algorithms among all the other Machine Learning algorithms with the best performance and higher accuracies. All the boosting algorithms work on the basis of learning from the errors of the previous model trained and tried avoiding the same mistakes made by the previously trained weak learning algorithm.

It is also a big interview question that might be asked in data science interviews. In this article, we will be discussing the main difference between GradientBoosting, AdaBoost, XGBoost, CatBoost, and LightGBM algorithms, with their working mechanisms and their mathematics of them.

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Gradient Boosting

Gradient Boosting is the boosting algorithm that works on the principle of the stagewise addition method, where multiple weak learning algorithms are trained and a strong learner algorithm is used as a final model from the addition of multiple weak learning algorithms trained on the same dataset....

XGBoost

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AdaBoost

XGBoost is also a boosting machine learning algorithm, which is the next version on top of the gradient boosting algorithm. The full name of the XGBoost algorithm is the eXtreme Gradient Boosting algorithm, as the name suggests it is an extreme version of the previous gradient boosting algorithm....

CatBoost

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LightGBM

AdaBoost is a boosting algorithm, which also works on the principle of the stagewise addition method where multiple weak learners are used for getting strong learners. Unlike Gradient Boosting in XGBoost, the alpha parameter I calculated is related to the errors of the weak learner, here the value of the alpha parameter will be indirectly proportional to the error of the weak learner....

Difference Between Boosting Algorithms

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Which Boosting Algorithm to Use?

In CatBoost the main difference that makes it different and better than others is the growing of decision trees in it. In CatBoost the decision trees which is grown are symmetric. One can easily install this library by using the below command:...

Comparison Between Different Boosting Algorithms

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Conclusion

LightGBM is also a boosting algorithm, which means Light Gradient Boosting Machine. It is used in the field of machine learning. In LightGBM decision trees are grown leaf wise meaning that at a single time only one leaf from the whole tree will be grown. One can install the required library by using the below command:...