Advanced Topics =============== Missing Value Handle -------------------- - LightGBM enables the missing value handle by default. Disable it by setting ``use_missing=false``. - LightGBM uses NA (NaN) to represent missing values by default. Change it to use zero by setting ``zero_as_missing=true``. - When ``zero_as_missing=false`` (default), the unshown values in sparse matrices (and LightSVM) are treated as zeros. - When ``zero_as_missing=true``, NA and zeros (including unshown values in sparse matrices (and LightSVM)) are treated as missing. Categorical Feature Support --------------------------- - LightGBM offers good accuracy with integer-encoded categorical features. LightGBM applies `Fisher (1958) `_ to find the optimal split over categories as `described here <./Features.rst#optimal-split-for-categorical-features>`_. This often performs better than one-hot encoding. - Use ``categorical_feature`` to specify the categorical features. Refer to the parameter ``categorical_feature`` in `Parameters <./Parameters.rst#categorical_feature>`__. - Categorical features must be encoded as non-negative integers (``int``) less than ``Int32.MaxValue`` (2147483647). It is best to use a contiguous range of integers started from zero. - Use ``min_data_per_group``, ``cat_smooth`` to deal with over-fitting (when ``#data`` is small or ``#category`` is large). - For a categorical feature with high cardinality (``#category`` is large), it often works best to treat the feature as numeric, either by simply ignoring the categorical interpretation of the integers or by embedding the categories in a low-dimensional numeric space. LambdaRank ---------- - The label should be of type ``int``, such that larger numbers correspond to higher relevance (e.g. 0:bad, 1:fair, 2:good, 3:perfect). - Use ``label_gain`` to set the gain(weight) of ``int`` label. - Use ``max_position`` to set the NDCG optimization position. Parameters Tuning ----------------- - Refer to `Parameters Tuning <./Parameters-Tuning.rst>`__. Parallel Learning ----------------- - Refer to `Parallel Learning Guide <./Parallel-Learning-Guide.rst>`__. GPU Support ----------- - Refer to `GPU Tutorial <./GPU-Tutorial.rst>`__ and `GPU Targets <./GPU-Targets.rst>`__. Recommendations for gcc Users (MinGW, \*nix) -------------------------------------------- - Refer to `gcc Tips <./gcc-Tips.rst>`__.