1. Scikit-Learn
(or why I joined an open source software project)
Gilles Louppe
Dept. of EE & CS, & GIGA-R
Universit´ de Li`ge, Belgium
e
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October 30, 2013

2. Publishing scientific software matters 1
Software is a central part of modern scientific discovery.
Software developed in one field can often be applied to
advance a different field if the underlying mathematics is
common.
The public availability of code is a corner stone of the
scientific method.
1. Pradal C. et al, Publishing scientific software matters, 2013.

3. if it’s not open and verifiable by others, it’s not science, or
engineering, or whatever it is you call what we do 2
2. V. Stodden, The scientific method in practice.

4. As a young PhD student full of illusions...
I wanted to write useful scientific software, for me and others

5. Leverage existing software
... but I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel !

6. ... and then I joined an OSS project
An open source Machine Learning library in Python
Classical and well-established algorithms
- Supervised and unsupervised algorithms
- Model evaluation and selection
- Data processing and feature engineering

7. Collaborative development

8. Software quality matters
Peer-reviewed and well-tested code

9. Simple and consistent API
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
clf = RandomForestClassifier()
clf.fit(X_train, y_train)
y_pred = clf.predict(X_test)

10. Simple and consistent API
from sklearn.svm import SVC
clf = SVC()
clf.fit(X_train, y_train)
y_pred = clf.predict(X_test)

11. Simple and consistent API
from sklearn.linear_model import LassoCV
clf = LassoCV()
clf.fit(X_train, y_train)
y_pred = clf.predict(X_test)

12. Side effect 1 : Learn and improve your skills
Strict programming practices
Software management (release cycle, git, etc)
Team work

13. Side effect 2 : People might start using your software
In research
In industry

14. Side effect 3 : You get to meet interesting people
(and eat pizzas !)

15. Start with small contributions...

16. Publish and share your research code
Join an open source software project

17. Questions ?