Hyperopt

The hyperopt section of the Ludwig configuration defines what metrics to optimize for, which parameters to optimize, search strategy and execution strategy.

hyperopt:
  goal: minimize
  output_feature: combined
  metric: loss
  split: validation
  parameters:
    title.cell_type: ... # title is a text feature type
    title.num_layers: ... 
    combiner.num_fc_layers: ...
    section.embedding_size: ...
    preprocessing.text.vocab_size: ...
    trainer.learning_rate: ...
    trainer.optimizer.type: ...
    ...
  search_alg:
    type: variant_generator  # random, hyperopt, bohb, ...
    # search_alg parameters...
  executor:
    type: ray
    num_samples: ...
    scheduler:
      type: fifo  # hb_bohb, asynchyperband, ...
      # scheduler parameters...

Hyperopt configuration parameters¶

goal which indicates if to minimize or maximize a metric or a loss of any of the output features on any of the dataset splits. Available values are: minimize (default) or maximize.
output_feature is a str containing the name of the output feature that we want to optimize the metric or loss of. Available values are combined (default) or the name of any output feature provided in the configuration. combined is a special output feature that allows to optimize for the aggregated loss and metrics of all output features.
metric is the metric that we want to optimize for. The default one is loss, but depending on the type of the feature defined in output_feature, different metrics and losses are available. Check the metrics section of the specific output feature type to figure out what metrics are available to use.
split is the split of data that we want to compute our metric on. By default it is the validation split, but you have the flexibility to specify also train or test splits.
parameters section consists of a set of hyperparameters to optimize. They are provided as keys (the names of the parameters) and values associated with them (that define the search space). The values vary depending on the type of the hyperparameter. Syntax for this section is based on Ray Tune's Search Space parameters.
search_alg section specifies the algorithm to sample the defined parameters space. Candidate algorithms are those found in Ray Tune's Search Algorithms.
executor section specifies how to execute the hyperparameter optimization. The execution could happen locally in a serial manner or in parallel across multiple workers and with GPUs as well if available. The executor section includes specification for work scheduling and the number of samples to generate.

Defining hyperparameter search spaces¶

In the parameters section, hyperparameters are dot( .) separate names. The parts of the hyperparameter names separated by . are references to nested sections in the Ludwig configuration. For instance, to reference the learning_rate, in the trainer section one would use the name trainer.learning_rate. If the parameter to reference is inside an input or output feature, the name of that feature will be be used as starting point. For instance, for referencing the cell_type of the title feature, use the name title.cell_type.

Numeric Hyperparameters¶

space: Use Ray Tune's Search Space types, e.g., uniform, quniform, loguniform, choice, etc. Refer the cited page for details.

For numeric spaces, these define the range where the value is generated

lower: the minimum value the parameter can have
upper: the maximum value the parameter can have
q: quantization number, used in spaces such as quniform, qloguniform, qrandn, qrandint, qlograndint
base: defines the base of the log for loguniform, qloguniform, lograndint and qlograndint

Note

Depending on the specific numeric space, the upper parameter may be inclusive or excluse. Refer to the Ray Tune documentation for the specific distribution for details.

Float example: Uniform floating point random values (in log space) between 0.001 and 0.1

trainer.learning_rate:
  space: loguniform
  lower: 0.001
  upper: 0.1

Integer example: Uniform random integer values 1, 2, 3

combiner.num_fc_layers:
  space: randint
  lower: 1
  upper: 4

Quantized Example: Uniform random floating point values such a 0, 0.1, 0.2, ..., 0.9

my_output_feature.dropout:
  space: quniform
  lower: 0
  upper: 1
  q: 0.1

Categorical Hyperparameters¶

space: Use choice.
categories: a list of possible values. The type of each value of the list is general, i.e., they could be strings, integers, floats and anything else, even entire dictionaries. The values will be a uniform random selection.

Example:

title.cell_type:
  space: choice
  categories: [rnn, gru, lstm]

Hyperparameters in a Grid¶

For space: grid_search

values: is a list of values to use in creating the grid search space. The type of each value of the list is general, i.e., they could be strings, integers, floats and anything else, even entire dictionaries.

Example:

title.cell_type:
  space: grid_search
  values: [rnn, gru, lstm]

More comprehensive example¶

hyperopt:
  parameters:
    trainer.learning_rate:
      space: loguniform
      lower: 0.001
      upper: 0.1
    combiner.num_fc_layers:
      space: randint
      lower: 2
      upper: 6
    title.cell_type:
      space: grid_search
      values: ["rnn", "gru"]
    title.bidirectional:
      space: choice
      categories: [True, False]
    title.fc_layers:
      space: choice
      categories:
        - [{"output_size": 512}, {"output_size": 256}]
        - [{"output_size": 512}]
        - [{"output_size": 256}]

Search Algorithm¶

Ray Tune supports its own collection of search algorithms, specified by the search_alg section of the hyperopt config:

search_alg:
  type: variant_generator

You can find the full list of supported search algorithm names in Ray Tune's create_searcher function. Please note these algorithms require installation of additional packages. As of this version of Ludwig, Ludwig installs the packages for the search algorithm hyperopt. For all other search algorithms, the user is expected to install the required packages.

Executor¶

Ray Tune Executor¶

The ray executor is used to enable Ray Tune for both local and distributed hyperopt across a cluster of machines.

Parameters:

num_samples: This parameter, along with the space specifications in the parameters section, controls how many trials are generated (default: 1).

Note

If all the hyperparameters in the parameters section have non-grid_search specifications (e.g., uniform, randn, choice, etc.), then the number of trials will be num_samples.
If all the hyperparameters have grid_search, then the number of trials will be the product of the number of values specified for each hyperparameter. In this case, num_samples should be set to 1. For example, if there are three grid_search hyperparameters, with 2, 4 and 4 values, respectively. The number of trials will be 2 X 4 X 4 = 32, where each trial is a unique combination of the three grid_search hyperparameter values.
If there is a mixture of grid_search and non-grid_search spaces, the number of trials will be product of the number of values specified for each grid_search hyperpameter multiplied by the value of num_samples. To illustrate this point, we take the three grid_search hyperparameters described in the preceding bullet item and add 2 hyperparameters with uniform and randint spaces. With num_samples = 10, for each unique combination of values from the grid_search hyperparameters, 10 trials will be generated with random values selected for the uniform and randint hyperparameters. This will lead to a total of 32 X 10 = 320 trials.

cpu_resources_per_trial: The number of CPU cores allocated to each trial (default: 1).
gpu_resources_per_trial: The number of GPU devices allocated to each trial (default: 0).
kubernetes_namespace: When running on Kubernetes, provide the namespace of the Ray cluster to sync results between pods. See the Ray docs for more info.
time_budget_s: The number of seconds for the entire hyperopt run.

Scheduler¶

Ray Tune also allows you to specify a scheduler to support features like early stopping and other population-based strategies that may pause and resume trials during trainer. Ludwig exposes the complete scheduler API in the scheduler section of the executor config.

You can find the full list of supported schedulers in Ray Tune's create_scheduler function.

Example:

executor:
  type: ray
  cpu_resources_per_trial: 2
  gpu_resources_per_trial: 1
  kubernetes_namespace: ray
  time_budget_s: 7200
  scheduler:
    type: async_hyperband
    time_attr: training_iteration
    reduction_factor: 4

Running Ray Executor:

See the section on Running Ludwig with Ray for guidance on setting up your Ray cluster.

Full hyperparameter optimization example¶

Following is a full example of a Ludwig configuration with hyperparameter optimization.

Example YAML:

input_features:
  -
    name: title
    type: text
    encoder: rnn
    cell_type: lstm
    num_layers: 2
combiner:
  type: concat
  num_fc_layers: 1
output_features:
  -
    name: class
    type: category
preprocessing:
  text:
    word_vocab_size: 10000
training:
  learning_rate: 0.001
  optimizer:
    type: adam
hyperopt:
  goal: maximize
  output_feature: class
  metric: accuracy
  split: validation
  parameters:
    trainer.learning_rate:
      space: loguniform
      lower: 0.0001
      upper: 0.1
    trainer.optimizer.type:
      space: choice
      categories: [sgd, adam, adagrad]
    preprocessing.text.word_vocab_size:
      space: qrandint
      lower: 700
      upper: 1200
      q: 5
    combiner.num_fc_layers:
      space: randint
      lower: 1
      upper: 5
    title.cell_type:
      space: choice
      values: [rnn, gru, lstm]
  search_alg:
    type: random
  executor:
    type: ray
    num_samples: 12

Example CLI command:

ludwig hyperopt --dataset reuters-allcats.csv --config_str "{input_features: [{name: title, type: text, encoder: rnn, cell_type: lstm, num_layers: 2}], output_features: [{name: class, type: category}], training: {learning_rate: 0.001}, hyperopt: {goal: maximize, output_feature: class, metric: accuracy, split: validation, parameters: {trainer.learning_rate: {space: loguniform, lower: 0.0001, upper: 0.1}, title.cell_type: {space: choice, categories: [rnn, gru, lstm]}}, search_alg: {type: variant_generator},executor: {type: ray, num_samples: 10}}}"