BART: Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
Hugh A. ChipmanEdward I. GeorgeRobert E. McCulloch
Introduces Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART), a nonparametric sum-of-trees model that combines the high predictive accuracy of ensemble learning with full Bayesian uncertainty quantification and variable selection.
- Paper: Greedy function approximation: A gradient boosting machine, Jerome H. Friedman (2001). This seminal paper introduces gradient boosting and regularized sum-of-trees models, which directly inspire the additive tree architecture and regularization philosophy of BART.
- Paper: Random Forests, Leo Breiman (2001). It provides foundational principles on ensemble decision-tree modeling and randomizing tree structures that form the conceptual background for ensemble regression methods like BART.
- Paper: Bagging Predictors, L. Breiman (1996). It establishes the variance-reduction benefits of aggregating multiple decision trees, establishing the baseline ensemble methodology that BART formalizes probabilistically.
- Paper: A Decision-Theoretic Generalization of On-Line Learning and an Application to Boosting, Yoav Freund et al. (1997). It introduces the theoretical foundations of boosting weak learners into strong predictors, serving as primary motivation for constraining BART trees to be weak learners.
- Paper: Sparse Bayesian Learning and the Relevance Vector Machine, Michael E. Tipping (2001). It illustrates how Bayesian priors and marginal likelihood regularization yield sparse, adaptive nonparametric regression models with principled uncertainty quantification.
- Paper: Estimation and Inference of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects using Random Forests, Stefan Wager et al. (2018). It extends flexible tree ensemble modeling to formal statistical inference and heterogeneous treatment effect estimation in causal settings.
- Paper: From Local Explanations to Global Understanding with Explainable AI for Trees, Scott M. Lundberg et al. (2020). It introduces exact game-theoretic methods to explain individual predictions and variable interactions in complex tree ensemble models.
- Paper: A random forest guided tour, Gérard Biau et al. (2015). It surveys the mathematical theory, consistency, and variable importance mechanics of tree ensembles that place empirical sum-of-trees estimators on rigorous foundations.
- Paper: Tabular Data: Deep Learning is Not All You Need, Ravid Shwartz-Ziv et al. (2021). It provides a rigorous modern benchmark evaluating tree-based ensemble methods against emerging deep learning architectures on tabular regression and classification data.
