To determine a good lasso-penalty strength for a linear classification model that uses a logistic regression learner, compare test-sample classification error rates.

Load the NLP data set. Preprocess the data as in Specify Custom Classification Loss.

load nlpdata
Ystats = Y == 'stats';
X = X'; 

rng(10); % For reproducibility
Partition = cvpartition(Ystats,'Holdout',0.30);
testIdx = test(Partition);
XTest = X(:,testIdx);
YTest = Ystats(testIdx);

Create a set of 11 logarithmically-spaced regularization strengths from $$10^{-6}$$ through $$10^{-0.5}$$.

Lambda = logspace(-6,-0.5,11);

Train binary, linear classification models that use each of the regularization strengths. Optimize the objective function using SpaRSA. Lower the tolerance on the gradient of the objective function to 1e-8.

CVMdl = fitclinear(X,Ystats,'ObservationsIn','columns',...
    'CVPartition',Partition,'Learner','logistic','Solver','sparsa',...
    'Regularization','lasso','Lambda',Lambda,'GradientTolerance',1e-8)

CVMdl = 
  ClassificationPartitionedLinear
    CrossValidatedModel: 'Linear'
           ResponseName: 'Y'
        NumObservations: 31572
                  KFold: 1
              Partition: [1x1 cvpartition]
             ClassNames: [0 1]
         ScoreTransform: 'none'


  Properties, Methods

Extract the trained linear classification model.

Mdl = CVMdl.Trained{1}

Mdl = 
  ClassificationLinear
      ResponseName: 'Y'
        ClassNames: [0 1]
    ScoreTransform: 'logit'
              Beta: [34023x11 double]
              Bias: [1x11 double]
            Lambda: [1x11 double]
           Learner: 'logistic'


  Properties, Methods

Mdl is a ClassificationLinear model object. Because Lambda is a sequence of regularization strengths, you can think of Mdl as 11 models, one for each regularization strength in Lambda.

Estimate the test-sample classification error.

ce = loss(Mdl,X(:,testIdx),Ystats(testIdx),'ObservationsIn','columns');

Because there are 11 regularization strengths, ce is a 1-by-11 vector of classification error rates.

Higher values of Lambda lead to predictor variable sparsity, which is a good quality of a classifier. For each regularization strength, train a linear classification model using the entire data set and the same options as when you cross-validated the models. Determine the number of nonzero coefficients per model.

Mdl = fitclinear(X,Ystats,'ObservationsIn','columns',...
    'Learner','logistic','Solver','sparsa','Regularization','lasso',...
    'Lambda',Lambda,'GradientTolerance',1e-8);
numNZCoeff = sum(Mdl.Beta~=0);

In the same figure, plot the test-sample error rates and frequency of nonzero coefficients for each regularization strength. Plot all variables on the log scale.

figure;
[h,hL1,hL2] = plotyy(log10(Lambda),log10(ce),...
    log10(Lambda),log10(numNZCoeff + 1)); 
hL1.Marker = 'o';
hL2.Marker = 'o';
ylabel(h(1),'log_{10} classification error')
ylabel(h(2),'log_{10} nonzero-coefficient frequency')
xlabel('log_{10} Lambda')
title('Test-Sample Statistics')
hold off

Choose the index of the regularization strength that balances predictor variable sparsity and low classification error. In this case, a value between $$10^{-4}$$ to $$10^{-1}$$ should suffice.

idxFinal = 7;

Select the model from Mdl with the chosen regularization strength.

MdlFinal = selectModels(Mdl,idxFinal);

MdlFinal is a ClassificationLinear model containing one regularization strength. To estimate labels for new observations, pass MdlFinal and the new data to predict.