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Latent Dirichlet Allocation component

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This article describes how to use the Latent Dirichlet Allocation component in Azure Machine Learning designer, to group otherwise unclassified text into categories.

Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is often used in natural language processing to find texts that are similar. Another common term is topic modeling.

This component takes a column of text and generates these outputs:

  • The source text, together with a score for each category

  • A feature matrix that contains extracted terms and coefficients for each category

  • A transformation, which you can save and reapply to new text used as input

This component uses the scikit-learn library. For more information about scikit-learn, see the GitHub repository, which includes tutorials and an explanation of the algorithm.

More about Latent Dirichlet Allocation

LDA is generally not a method for classification. But it uses a generative approach, so you don't need to provide known class labels and then infer the patterns. Instead, the algorithm generates a probabilistic model that's used to identify groups of topics. You can use the probabilistic model to classify either existing training cases or new cases that you provide to the model as input.

You might prefer a generative model because it avoids making strong assumptions about the relationship between the text and categories. It uses only the distribution of words to mathematically model topics.

The theory is discussed in this paper, available as a PDF download: Latent Dirichlet Allocation: Blei, Ng, and Jordan.

The implementation in this component is based on the scikit-learn library for LDA.

For more information, see the Technical notes section.

How to configure Latent Dirichlet Allocation

This component requires a dataset that contains a column of text, either raw or preprocessed.

  1. Add the Latent Dirichlet Allocation component to your pipeline.

    In the list of assets under Text Analytics, drag and drop the Latent Dirichlet Allocation component onto the canvas.

  2. As input for the component, provide a dataset that contains one or more text columns.

  3. For Target columns, choose one or more columns that contain text to analyze.

    You can choose multiple columns, but they must be of the string data type.

    Because LDA creates a large feature matrix from the text, you'll typically analyze a single text column.

  4. For Number of topics to model, enter an integer between 1 and 1000 that indicates how many categories or topics you want to derive from the input text.

    By default, 5 topics are created.

  5. For N-grams, specify the maximum length of N-grams generated during hashing.

    The default is 2, meaning that both bigrams and unigrams are generated.

  6. Select the Normalize option to convert output values to probabilities.

    Rather than representing the transformed values as integers, values in the output and feature dataset will be transformed as follows:

    • Values in the dataset will be represented as a probability where P(topic|document).

    • Values in the feature topic matrix will be represented as a probability where P(word|topic).

    Note

    In Azure Machine Learning designer, the scikit-learn library no longer supports unnormalized doc_topic_distr output from version 0.19. In this component, the Normalize parameter can only be applied to feature Topic matrix output. Transformed dataset output is always normalized.

  7. Select the option Show all options, and then set it to TRUE if you want to set the following advanced parameters.

    These parameters are specific to the scikit-learn implementation of LDA. There are some good tutorials about LDA in scikit-learn, as well as the official scikit-learn document.

    • Rho parameter. Provide a prior probability for the sparsity of topic distributions. This parameter corresponds to sklearn's topic_word_prior parameter. Use the value 1 if you expect that the distribution of words is flat; that is, all words are assumed equiprobable. If you think most words appear sparsely, you might set it to a lower value.

    • Alpha parameter. Specify a prior probability for the sparsity of per-document topic weights. This parameter corresponds to sklearn's doc_topic_prior parameter.

    • Estimated number of documents. Enter a number that represents your best estimate of the number of documents (rows) that will be processed. This parameter lets the component allocate a hash table of sufficient size. It corresponds to the total_samples parameter in scikit-learn.

    • Size of the batch. Enter a number that indicates how many rows to include in each batch of text sent to the LDA model. This parameter corresponds to the batch_size parameter in scikit-learn.

    • Initial value of iteration used in learning update schedule. Specify the starting value that downweights the learning rate for early iterations in online learning. This parameter corresponds to the learning_offset parameter in scikit-learn.

    • Power applied to the iteration during updates. Indicate the level of power applied to the iteration count in order to control learning rate during online updates. This parameter corresponds to the learning_decay parameter in scikit-learn.

    • Number of passes over the data. Specify the maximum number of times the algorithm will cycle over the data. This parameter corresponds to the max_iter parameter in scikit-learn.

  8. Select the option Build dictionary of ngrams or Build dictionary of ngrams prior to LDA, if you want to create the n-gram list in an initial pass before classifying text.

    If you create the initial dictionary beforehand, you can later use the dictionary when reviewing the model. Being able to map results to text rather than numerical indices is generally easier for interpretation. However, saving the dictionary will take longer and use additional storage.

  9. For Maximum size of ngram dictionary, enter the total number of rows that can be created in the n-gram dictionary.

    This option is useful for controlling the size of the dictionary. But if the number of ngrams in the input exceeds this size, collisions may occur.

  10. Submit the pipeline. The LDA component uses Bayes theorem to determine what topics might be associated with individual words. Words are not exclusively associated with any topics or groups. Instead, each n-gram has a learned probability of being associated with any of the discovered classes.

Results

The component has two outputs:

  • Transformed dataset: This output contains the input text, a specified number of discovered categories, and the scores for each text example for each category.

  • Feature topic matrix: The leftmost column contains the extracted text feature. A column for each category contains the score for that feature in that category.

LDA transformation

This component also outputs the LDA transformation that applies LDA to the dataset.

You can save this transformation and reuse it for other datasets. This technique might be useful if you've trained on a large corpus and want to reuse the coefficients or categories.

To reuse this transformation, select the Register dataset icon in the right panel of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation component to keep the component under the Datasets category in the component list. Then you can connect this component to the Apply Transformation component to reuse this transformation.

Refining an LDA model or results

Typically, you can't create a single LDA model that will meet all needs. Even a model designed for one task might require many iterations to improve accuracy. We recommend that you try all these methods to improve your model:

  • Changing the model parameters
  • Using visualization to understand the results
  • Getting the feedback of subject matter experts to determine whether the generated topics are useful

Qualitative measures can also be useful for assessing the results. To evaluate topic modeling results, consider:

  • Accuracy. Are similar items really similar?
  • Diversity. Can the model discriminate between similar items when required for the business problem?
  • Scalability. Does it work on a wide range of text categories or only on a narrow target domain?

You can often improve the accuracy of models based on LDA by using natural language processing to clean, summarize and simplify, or categorize text. For example, the following techniques, all supported in Azure Machine Learning, can improve classification accuracy:

  • Stop word removal

  • Case normalization

  • Lemmatization or stemming

  • Named entity recognition

For more information, see Preprocess Text.

In the designer, you can also use R or Python libraries for text processing: Execute R Script, Execute Python Script.

Technical notes

This section contains implementation details, tips, and answers to frequently asked questions.

Implementation details

By default, the distributions of outputs for a transformed dataset and feature-topic matrix are normalized as probabilities:

  • The transformed dataset is normalized as the conditional probability of topics given a document. In this case, the sum of each row equals 1.

  • The feature-topic matrix is normalized as the conditional probability of words given a topic. In this case, the sum of each column equals 1.

Tip

Occasionally the component might return an empty topic. Most often, the cause is pseudo-random initialization of the algorithm. If this happens, you can try changing related parameters. For example, change the maximum size of the N-gram dictionary or the number of bits to use for feature hashing.

LDA and topic modeling

Latent Dirichlet Allocation is often used for content-based topic modeling, which basically means learning categories from unclassified text. In content-based topic modeling, a topic is a distribution over words.

For example, assume that you've provided a corpus of customer reviews that includes many products. The text of reviews that have been submitted by customers over time contains many terms, some of which are used in multiple topics.

A topic that the LDA process identifies might represent reviews for an individual product, or it might represent a group of product reviews. To LDA, the topic itself is just a probability distribution over time for a set of words.

Terms are rarely exclusive to any one product. They can refer to other products, or be general terms that apply to everything ("great", "awful"). Other terms might be noise words. However, the LDA method doesn't try to capture all words in the universe or to understand how words are related, aside from probabilities of co-occurrence. It can only group words that are used in the target domain.

After the term indexes are computed, a distance-based similarity measure compares individual rows of text to determine whether two pieces of text are similar. For example, you might find that the product has multiple names that are strongly correlated. Or, you might find that strongly negative terms are usually associated with a particular product. You can use the similarity measure both to identify related terms and to create recommendations.

Component parameters

Name Type Range Optional Default Description
Target column(s) Column Selection Required StringFeature Target column name or index.
Number of topics to model Integer [1;1000] Required 5 Model the document distribution against N topics.
N-grams Integer [1;10] Required 2 Order of N-grams generated during hashing.
Normalize Boolean True or False Required true Normalize output to probabilities. The transformed dataset will be P(topic|document) and the feature topic matrix will be P(word|topic).
Show all options Boolean True or False Required False Presents additional parameters specific to scikit-learn online LDA.
Rho parameter Float [0.00001;1.0] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected 0.01 Topic word prior distribution.
Alpha parameter Float [0.00001;1.0] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected 0.01 Document topic prior distribution.
Estimated number of documents Integer [1;int.MaxValue] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected 1000 Estimated number of documents. Corresponds to the total_samples parameter.
Size of the batch Integer [1;1024] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected 32 Size of the batch.
Initial value of iteration used in learning rate update schedule Integer [0;int.MaxValue] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected 0 Initial value that downweights learning rate for early iterations. Corresponds to the learning_offset parameter.
Power applied to the iteration during updates Float [0.0;1.0] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected 0.5 Power applied to the iteration count in order to control learning rate. Corresponds to the learning_decay parameter.
Number of training iterations Integer [1;1024] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected 25 Number of training iterations.
Build dictionary of ngrams Boolean True or False Applies when the Show all options check box is not selected True Builds a dictionary of ngrams prior to computing LDA. Useful for model inspection and interpretation.
Maximum size of ngram dictionary Integer [1;int.MaxValue] Applies when the option Build dictionary of ngrams is True 20000 Maximum size of the ngrams dictionary. If the number of tokens in the input exceeds this size, collisions might occur.
Number of bits to use for feature hashing. Integer [1;31] Applies when the Show all options check box is not selected and Build dictionary of ngrams is False 12 Number of bits to use for feature hashing.
Build dictionary of ngrams prior to LDA Boolean True or False Applies when the Show all options check box is selected True Builds a dictionary of ngrams prior to LDA. Useful for model inspection and interpretation.
Maximum number of ngrams in dictionary Integer [1;int.MaxValue] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected and the option Build dictionary of ngrams is True 20000 Maximum size of the dictionary. If the number of tokens in the input exceeds this size, collisions might occur.
Number of hash bits Integer [1;31] Applies when the Show all options check box is selected and the option Build dictionary of ngrams is False 12 Number of bits to use during feature hashing.

Next steps

See the set of components available to Azure Machine Learning.

For a list of errors specific to the components, see Exceptions and error codes for the designer.