Tree boosting is a highly effective and widely used machine learning method. In this paper, we describe a scalable end-to-end tree boosting system called XGBoost, which is used widely by data scientists to achieve state-of-the-art results on many machine learning challenges. We propose a novel sparsity-aware algorithm for sparse data and weighted quantile sketch for approximate tree learning. More importantly, we provide insights on cache access patterns, data compression and sharding to build a scalable tree boosting system. By combining these insights, XGBoost scales beyond billions of examples using far fewer resources than existing systems.

/pdf/xgboost-a-scalable-tree-boosting-system-48ocu6x4c7.pdf

XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System

This open source computing framework unifies streaming, batch, and interactive big data workloads to unlock new applications

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2934664

Apache Spark: a unified engine for big data processing

Apache Spark is a popular open-source platform for large-scale data processing that is well-suited for iterative machine learning tasks. In this paper we present MLlib, Spark's open-source distributed machine learning library. MLLIB provides efficient functionality for a wide range of learning settings and includes several underlying statistical, optimization, and linear algebra primitives. Shipped with Spark, MLLIB supports several languages and provides a high-level API that leverages Spark's rich ecosystem to simplify the development of end-to-end machine learning pipelines. MLLIB has experienced a rapid growth due to its vibrant open-source community of over 140 contributors, and includes extensive documentation to support further growth and to let users quickly get up to speed.

/pdf/mllib-machine-learning-in-apache-spark-27ddi10m3m.pdf

MLlib: machine learning in apache spark

Deep learning describes a class of machine learning algorithms that are capable of combining raw inputs into layers of intermediate features. These algorithms have recently shown impressive results across a variety of domains. Biology and medicine are data-rich disciplines, but the data are complex and often ill-understood. Hence, deep learning techniques may be particularly well suited to solve problems of these fields. We examine applications of deep learning to a variety of biomedical problems-patient classification, fundamental biological processes and treatment of patients-and discuss whether deep learning will be able to transform these tasks or if the biomedical sphere poses unique challenges. Following from an extensive literature review, we find that deep learning has yet to revolutionize biomedicine or definitively resolve any of the most pressing challenges in the field, but promising advances have been made on the prior state of the art. Even though improvements over previous baselines have been modest in general, the recent progress indicates that deep learning methods will provide valuable means for speeding up or aiding human investigation. Though progress has been made linking a specific neural network's prediction to input features, understanding how users should interpret these models to make testable hypotheses about the system under study remains an open challenge. Furthermore, the limited amount of labelled data for training presents problems in some domains, as do legal and privacy constraints on work with sensitive health records. Nonetheless, we foresee deep learning enabling changes at both bench and bedside with the potential to transform several areas of biology and medicine.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2017.0387

Opportunities and obstacles for deep learning in biology and medicine.

Spark SQL is a new module in Apache Spark that integrates relational processing with Spark's functional programming API. Built on our experience with Shark, Spark SQL lets Spark programmers leverage the benefits of relational processing (e.g. declarative queries and optimized storage), and lets SQL users call complex analytics libraries in Spark (e.g. machine learning). Compared to previous systems, Spark SQL makes two main additions. First, it offers much tighter integration between relational and procedural processing, through a declarative DataFrame API that integrates with procedural Spark code. Second, it includes a highly extensible optimizer, Catalyst, built using features of the Scala programming language, that makes it easy to add composable rules, control code generation, and define extension points. Using Catalyst, we have built a variety of features (e.g. schema inference for JSON, machine learning types, and query federation to external databases) tailored for the complex needs of modern data analysis. We see Spark SQL as an evolution of both SQL-on-Spark and of Spark itself, offering richer APIs and optimizations while keeping the benefits of the Spark programming model.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/matei/papers/2015/sigmod_spark_sql.pdf

Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark

Apache Spark is a popular open-source platform for large-scale data processing that is well-suited for iterative machine learning tasks. In this paper we present MLlib, Spark's open-source distributed machine learning library. MLlib provides efficient functionality for a wide range of learning settings and includes several underlying statistical, optimization, and linear algebra primitives. Shipped with Spark, MLlib supports several languages and provides a high-level API that leverages Spark's rich ecosystem to simplify the development of end-to-end machine learning pipelines. MLlib has experienced a rapid growth due to its vibrant open-source community of over 140 contributors, and includes extensive documentation to support further growth and to let users quickly get up to speed.

MLlib: Machine Learning in Apache Spark

R is a popular statistical programming language with a number of extensions that support data processing and machine learning tasks. However, interactive data analysis in R is usually limited as the R runtime is single threaded and can only process data sets that fit in a single machine's memory. We present SparkR, an R package that provides a frontend to Apache Spark and uses Spark's distributed computation engine to enable large scale data analysis from the R shell. We describe the main design goals of SparkR, discuss how the high-level DataFrame API enables scalable computation and present some of the key details of our implementation.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2882903.2903740

Davies Liu

Papers

MLlib: machine learning in apache spark

Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark

MLlib: Machine Learning in Apache Spark

SparkR: Scaling R Programs with Spark