A scalable decision-tree-based method to explain interactions in dyadic data

Abstract

[Abstract]: Gaining relevant insight from a dyadic dataset, which describes interactions between two entities, is an open problem that has sparked the interest of researchers and industry data scientists alike. However, the existing methods have poor explainability, a quality that is becoming essential in certain applications. We describe an explainable and scalable method that, operating on dyadic datasets, obtains an easily interpretable high-level summary of the relationship between entities. To do this, we propose a quality measure, which can be configured to a level that suits the user, that factors in the explainability of the model. We report experiments that confirm better results for the proposed method over alternatives, in terms of both explainability and accuracy. We also analyse the method's capacity to extract relevant actionable information and to handle large datasets.