Explainable Boosting Machines with Sparsity -- Maintaining Explainability in High-Dimensional Settings

Compared to "black-box" models, like random forests and deep neural networks, explainable boosting machines (EBMs) are considered "glass-box" models that can be competitively accurate while also maintaining a higher degree of transparency and explainability. However, EBMs become readily less transparent and harder to interpret in high-dimensional settings with many predictor variables; they also become more difficult to use in production due to increases in scoring time. We propose a simple solution based on the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) that can help introduce sparsity by reweighting the individual model terms and removing the less relevant ones, thereby allowing these models to maintain their transparency and relatively fast scoring times in higher-dimensional settings. In short, post-processing a fitted EBM with many (i.e., possibly hundreds or thousands) of terms using the LASSO can help reduce the model's complexity and drastically improve scoring time. We illustrate the basic idea using two real-world examples with code.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Rohstoffpartnerschaften: Kein Garant für Versorgungssicherheit und Entwicklung

Ende 2010 legte die Bundesregierung eine Rohstoffstrategie für Deutschland vor, um die Versorgung mit kritischen Metallen und Mineralien zu sichern. Ein Herzstück dieser Strategie sind Partnerschaften mit ausgewählten rohstoffreichen Ländern. Die Bundesregierung verpflichtet sich, den Aufbau rohstoffverarbeitender Industrien im Partnerland zu fördern und Bemühungen um besseres Rohstoffmanagement zu unterstützen. Im Gegenzug garantiert die Partnerregierung deutschen Unternehmen diskriminierungsfreie und faire Investitionsmöglichkeiten. Mittlerweile hat Deutschland Abkommen mit der Mongolei und Kasachstan geschlossen. Rohstoffpartnerschaften sind zwar zu begrüßen, werden aber nicht ausreichen, um die Verwundbarkeit der deutschen Wirtschaft gegenüber Lieferengpässen spürbar zu reduzieren. Außerdem können sie nur einen bescheidenen Beitrag zur Entwicklung der Partnerländer leiste

Value chain restructuring in Europe in a global economy

Project number: CIT3-CT-2005-006193 The material in this report draws on the collective work of the WORKS consortium, funded by the European Commission under its 6th Framework Programme, and the copyright is held by the WORKS project. However the views expressed in this report are those of the named authors and do not necessarily reflect the European Commission’s official view on the subject nor that of the consortium as a whole. The Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of data/information appearing therein

Value chain restructuring in Europe in a global economy

In order to understand the impact of globalisation in Europe it is necessary to understand the place occupied by European workplaces in global value chains, how the structure and governance of these value chains is changing, and what the impact is on work organisation and on workers. As well as making an important theoretical contribution to the conceptualisation of value chains, this report draws on the quantitative and qualitative research of the WORKS project to examine the impacts of value chain restructuring. Fifty-eight case studies in the food and beverage, textiles and clothing, IT and public sectors ware analysed to shed light on questions such as: - Is it really the case that value chains are getting longer and more elaborated, both contractually and spatially? - What is the relationship between codification of workers' knowledge and value chain restructuring? - To what extent, and how, do national institutional environments shape decisions to locate particular business functions on their territories? - Is there evidence that new types of value chain are emerging in business services? And, if so, do they follow the same patterns as those in manufacturing? - What power relationships are emerging, between managers and employees within the units of value chains and between the different units and how is this power exercised?nrpages: 111status: publishe