Robustness Verification of Tree-based Models

We study the robustness verification problem for tree-based models, including decision trees, random forests (RFs) and gradient boosted decision trees (GBDTs). Formal robustness verification of decision tree ensembles involves finding the exact minimal adversarial perturbation or a guaranteed lower bound of it. Existing approaches find the minimal adversarial perturbation by a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem, which takes exponential time so is impractical for large ensembles. Although this verification problem is NP-complete in general, we give a more precise complexity characterization. We show that there is a simple linear time algorithm for verifying a single tree, and for tree ensembles, the verification problem can be cast as a max-clique problem on a multi-partite graph with bounded boxicity. For low dimensional problems when boxicity can be viewed as constant, this reformulation leads to a polynomial time algorithm. For general problems, by exploiting the boxicity of the graph, we develop an efficient multi-level verification algorithm that can give tight lower bounds on the robustness of decision tree ensembles, while allowing iterative improvement and any-time termination. OnRF/GBDT models trained on 10 datasets, our algorithm is hundreds of times faster than the previous approach that requires solving MILPs, and is able to give tight robustness verification bounds on large GBDTs with hundreds of deep trees.Comment: Hongge Chen and Huan Zhang contributed equall

On Finding and Enumerating Maximal and Maximum k-Partite Cliques in k-Partite Graphs

Let k denote an integer greater than 2, let G denote a k-partite graph, and let S denote the set of all maximal k-partite cliques in G. Several open questions concerning the computation of S are resolved. A straightforward and highly-scalable modification to the classic recursive backtracking approach of Bron and Kerbosch is first described and shown to run in O(3n/3) time. A series of novel graph constructions is then used to prove that this bound is best possible in the sense that it matches an asymptotically tight upper limit on |S|. The task of identifying a vertex-maximum element of S is also considered and, in contrast with the k = 2 case, shown to be NP-hard for every k ≥ 3. A special class of k-partite graphs that arises in the context of functional genomics and other problem domains is studied as well and shown to be more readily solvable via a polynomial-time transformation to bipartite graphs. Applications, limitations, potentials for faster methods, heuristic approaches, and alternate formulations are also addressed