Univariate Drift Detection

Why Perform Univariate Drift Detection

Univariate Drift Detection looks at each feature individually and checks whether its distribution has changed. It’s a simple, fully explainable form of data drift detection and is the most straightforward to understand and communicate.

Just The Code

import nannyml as nml
import pandas as pd
from IPython.display import display

reference_df = nml.load_synthetic_binary_classification_dataset()[0]
analysis_df = nml.load_synthetic_binary_classification_dataset()[1]

display(reference_df.head())

feature_column_names = [
    col for col in reference_df.columns if col not in ['timestamp', 'y_pred_proba', 'period', 'y_pred', 'work_home_actual', 'identifier']]

calc = nml.UnivariateStatisticalDriftCalculator(feature_column_names=feature_column_names, timestamp_column_name='timestamp')

calc.fit(reference_df)

results = calc.calculate(analysis_df)

display(results.data.iloc[:5, :9])
display(results.data.iloc[:-5, :9])

for feature in calc.feature_column_names:
    drift_fig = results.plot(kind='feature_drift', feature_column_name=feature, plot_reference=True)
    drift_fig.show()

for cat_feat in calc.categorical_column_names:
    results.plot(kind='feature_distribution', feature_column_name=cat_feat, plot_reference=True).show()

ranker = nml.Ranker.by('alert_count')
ranked_features = ranker.rank(results, only_drifting = False)
display(ranked_features)

Walkthrough

NannyML’s Univariate approach for data drift looks at each variable individually and conducts statistical tests comparing the chunks created from the analysis data period with the reference period. You can read more about the data required in our section on data periods

NannyML uses the 2 sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test for continuous features and the Chi squared test for categorical features. Both tests provide a statistic where they measure the observed drift and a p-value that shows how likely we are to get the observed sample under the assumption that there was no drift.

If the p-value is less than 0.05 NannyML considers the result unlikely to be due to chance and issues an alert for the associated chunk and feature.

We begin by loading some synthetic data provided in the NannyML package. This is data for a binary classification model, but other model types operate in the same way.

import nannyml as nml
import pandas as pd
from IPython.display import display

reference_df = nml.load_synthetic_binary_classification_dataset()[0]
analysis_df = nml.load_synthetic_binary_classification_dataset()[1]

display(reference_df.head())

distance_from_office

salary_range

gas_price_per_litre

public_transportation_cost

wfh_prev_workday

workday

tenure

work_home_actual

timestamp

y_pred_proba

partition

y_pred

0

5.96225

40K - 60K €

2.11948

8.56806

False

Friday

0.212653

1

2014-05-09 22:27:20

0.99

reference

1

1

0.535872

40K - 60K €

2.3572

5.42538

True

Tuesday

4.92755

0

2014-05-09 22:59:32

0.07

reference

0

2

1.96952

40K - 60K €

2.36685

8.24716

False

Monday

0.520817

1

2014-05-09 23:48:25

1

reference

1

3

2.53041

20K - 40K €

2.31872

7.94425

False

Tuesday

0.453649

1

2014-05-10 01:12:09

0.98

reference

1

4

2.25364

60K+ €

2.22127

8.88448

True

Thursday

5.69526

1

2014-05-10 02:21:34

0.99

reference

1

The UnivariateStatisticalDriftCalculator class implements the functionality needed for Univariate Drift Detection. We need to instantiate it with appropriate parameters - the column headers of the features that we want to run drift detection on, and the timestamp column header. The features can be passed in as a simple list of strings, but here we have created this list by excluding the columns in the dataframe that are not features, and passed that into the argument.

feature_column_names = [
    col for col in reference_df.columns if col not in ['timestamp', 'y_pred_proba', 'period', 'y_pred', 'work_home_actual']]

calc = nml.UnivariateStatisticalDriftCalculator(feature_column_names=feature_column_names, timestamp_column_name='timestamp')

Next, the fit() method needs to be called on the reference data, which provides the baseline that the analysis data will be compared with. Then the calculate() method will calculate the drift results on the data provided to it.

We then display a small subset of our results by specifying columns in the results() method.

NannyML returns a dataframe with 3 columns for each feature. The first column contains the corresponding test statistic. The second column contains the corresponding p-value and the third column says whether there is a drift alert for that feature and chunk.

calc.fit(reference_df)

results = calc.calculate(analysis_df)

display(results.data.iloc[:5, :9])

key

start_index

end_index

start_date

end_date

partition

salary_range_chi2

salary_range_p_value

salary_range_alert

0

[0:4999]

0

4999

2014-05-09 22:27:20

2014-09-09 08:18:27

reference

2.89878

0.407

False

1

[5000:9999]

5000

9999

2014-09-09 09:13:35

2015-01-09 00:02:51

reference

3.14439

0.37

False

2

[10000:14999]

10000

14999

2015-01-09 00:04:43

2015-05-09 15:54:26

reference

2.45188

0.484

False

3

[15000:19999]

15000

19999

2015-05-09 16:02:08

2015-09-07 07:14:37

reference

4.06262

0.255

False

4

[20000:24999]

20000

24999

2015-09-07 07:27:47

2016-01-08 16:02:05

reference

2.41399

0.491

False

display(univariate_results.data.iloc[-5:, :9])

key

start_index

end_index

start_date

end_date

partition

salary_range_chi2

salary_range_p_value

salary_range_alert

15

[75000:79999]

75000

79999

2019-04-30 11:02:00

2019-09-01 00:24:27

analysis

455.622

0

True

16

[80000:84999]

80000

84999

2019-09-01 00:28:54

2019-12-31 09:09:12

analysis

428.633

0

True

17

[85000:89999]

85000

89999

2019-12-31 10:07:15

2020-04-30 11:46:53

analysis

453.247

0

True

18

[90000:94999]

90000

94999

2020-04-30 12:04:32

2020-09-01 02:46:02

analysis

438.26

0

True

19

[95000:99999]

95000

99999

2020-09-01 02:46:13

2021-01-01 04:29:32

analysis

474.892

0

True

NannyML can also visualize those results on plots.

for feature in calc.feature_column_names:
    drift_fig = results.plot(kind='feature_drift', feature_column_name=feature, plot_reference=True)
    drift_fig.show()
../../_images/drift-guide-distance_from_office.svg../../_images/drift-guide-gas_price_per_litre.svg../../_images/drift-guide-tenure.svg../../_images/drift-guide-wfh_prev_workday.svg../../_images/drift-guide-workday.svg../../_images/drift-guide-public_transportation_cost.svg../../_images/drift-guide-salary_range.svg

NannyML can also plot details about the distributions of different features. In these plots, NannyML highlights the areas with possible data drift.

If we want to focus only on the categorical plots, we can specify that only these be plotted.

for cat_feat in calc.categorical_column_names:
    results.plot(kind='feature_distribution', feature_column_name=cat_feat, plot_reference=True).show()
../../_images/drift-guide-stacked-salary_range.svg../../_images/drift-guide-stacked-wfh_prev_workday.svg../../_images/drift-guide-stacked-workday.svg

NannyML can also rank features according to how many alerts they have had within the data analyzed for data drift. NannyML allows viewing the ranking of all the model inputs, or just the ones that have drifted. NannyML provides a dataframe with the resulting ranking of features.

ranker = nml.Ranker.by('alert_count')
ranked_features = ranker.rank(results, only_drifting = False)
display(ranked_features)

feature

number_of_alerts

rank

0

salary_range

5

1

1

wfh_prev_workday

5

2

2

distance_from_office

5

3

3

public_transportation_cost

5

4

4

tenure

2

5

5

workday

0

6

6

gas_price_per_litre

0

7

Insights

After reviewing the above results we have a good understanding of what has changed in our model’s population.

What Next

The Performance Estimation functionality of NannyML can help provide estimates of the impact of the observed changes to Model Performance.

If needed, we can investigate further as to why our population characteristics have changed the way they did. This is an ad-hoc investigating that is not covered by NannyML.