Title:	Hyperband for 'mlr3'
Version:	1.0.0
Description:	Successive Halving (Jamieson and Talwalkar (2016) <doi:10.48550/arXiv.1502.07943>) and Hyperband (Li et al. 2018 <doi:10.48550/arXiv.1603.06560>) optimization algorithm for the mlr3 ecosystem. The implementation in mlr3hyperband features improved scheduling and parallelizes the evaluation of configurations. The package includes tuners for hyperparameter optimization in mlr3tuning and optimizers for black-box optimization in bbotk.
License:	LGPL-3
URL:	https://mlr3hyperband.mlr-org.com, https://github.com/mlr-org/mlr3hyperband
BugReports:	https://github.com/mlr-org/mlr3hyperband/issues
Depends:	mlr3tuning (≥ 1.4.0), R (≥ 3.1.0)
Imports:	bbotk (≥ 1.6.0), checkmate (≥ 1.9.4), data.table, lgr, mlr3 (≥ 0.13.1), mlr3misc (≥ 0.10.0), paradox (≥ 0.9.0), R6, uuid
Suggests:	emoa, mirai, mlr3learners (≥ 0.5.2), mlr3pipelines, redux, rpart, rush (≥ 0.2.0), testthat (≥ 3.0.0), xgboost
Config/testthat/edition:	3
Config/testthat/parallel:	no
Encoding:	UTF-8
NeedsCompilation:	no
RoxygenNote:	7.3.2
Collate:	'OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving.R' 'aaa.R' 'OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving.R' 'OptimizerBatchHyperband.R' 'TunerAsyncSuccessiveHalving.R' 'TunerBatchHyperband.R' 'TunerBatchSuccessiveHalving.R' 'bibentries.R' 'helper.R' 'zzz.R'
Packaged:	2025-07-10 08:35:32 UTC; marc
Author:	Marc Becker [aut, cre], Sebastian Gruber [aut], Jakob Richter [aut], Julia Moosbauer [aut], Bernd Bischl [aut]
Maintainer:	Marc Becker <marcbecker@posteo.de>
Repository:	CRAN
Date/Publication:	2025-07-10 09:00:02 UTC

mlr3hyperband: Hyperband for 'mlr3'

Description

Successive Halving (Jamieson and Talwalkar (2016) doi:10.48550/arXiv.1502.07943) and Hyperband (Li et al. 2018 doi:10.48550/arXiv.1603.06560) optimization algorithm for the mlr3 ecosystem. The implementation in mlr3hyperband features improved scheduling and parallelizes the evaluation of configurations. The package includes tuners for hyperparameter optimization in mlr3tuning and optimizers for black-box optimization in bbotk.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Marc Becker marcbecker@posteo.de (ORCID)

Authors:

• Sebastian Gruber gruber_sebastian@t-online.de (ORCID)

• Jakob Richter jakob1richter@gmail.com (ORCID)

• Julia Moosbauer ju.moosbauer@googlemail.com (ORCID)

• Bernd Bischl bernd_bischl@gmx.net (ORCID)

See Also

Useful links:

• https://mlr3hyperband.mlr-org.com

• https://github.com/mlr-org/mlr3hyperband

• Report bugs at https://github.com/mlr-org/mlr3hyperband/issues

Hyperband Budget

Description

Calculates the total budget used by hyperband.

Usage

hyperband_budget(r_min, r_max, eta, integer_budget = FALSE)

Arguments

Value

integer(1)

Hyperband Configs

Description

Calculates how many different configurations are sampled.

Usage

hyperband_n_configs(r_min, r_max, eta)

Arguments

Value

integer(1)

Hyperband Schedule

Description

Returns hyperband schedule.

Usage

hyperband_schedule(r_min, r_max, eta, integer_budget = FALSE)

Arguments

Value

data.table::data.table()

Asynchronous Hyperparameter Optimization with Successive Halving

Description

OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving class that implements the Asynchronous Successive Halving Algorithm (ASHA). This class implements the asynchronous version of OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving.

Dictionary

This bbotk::Optimizer can be instantiated via the dictionary bbotk::mlr_optimizers or with the associated sugar function bbotk::opt():

mlr_optimizers$get("async_successive_halving")
opt("async_successive_halving")

Parameters

eta

numeric(1)
With every stage, the budget is increased by a factor of eta and only the best 1 / eta configurations are promoted to the next stage. Non-integer values are supported, but eta is not allowed to be less or equal to 1.

sampler

paradox::Sampler
Object defining how the samples of the parameter space should be drawn. The default is uniform sampling.

Archive

The bbotk::Archive holds the following additional columns that are specific to SHA:

• stage (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Stage index. Starts counting at 0.

• asha_id (⁠character(1))⁠
  Unique identifier for each configuration across stages.

Custom Sampler

Hyperband supports custom paradox::Sampler object for initial configurations in each bracket. A custom sampler may look like this (the full example is given in the examples section):

# - beta distribution with alpha = 2 and beta = 5
# - categorical distribution with custom probabilities
sampler = SamplerJointIndep$new(list(
  Sampler1DRfun$new(params[[2]], function(n) rbeta(n, 2, 5)),
  Sampler1DCateg$new(params[[3]], prob = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.5))
))

Super classes

bbotk::Optimizer -> bbotk::OptimizerAsync -> OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving

Methods

Public methods

• OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$new()

• OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$optimize()

• OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$clone()

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$new()

Method optimize()

Performs the optimization on a bbotk::OptimInstanceAsyncSingleCrit or bbotk::OptimInstanceAsyncMultiCrit until termination. The single evaluations will be written into the bbotk::ArchiveAsync. The result will be written into the instance object.

Usage

OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$optimize(inst)

Arguments

Returns

data.table::data.table()

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

Source

Li L, Jamieson K, Rostamizadeh A, Gonina E, Ben-tzur J, Hardt M, Recht B, Talwalkar A (2020). “A System for Massively Parallel Hyperparameter Tuning.” In Dhillon I, Papailiopoulos D, Sze V (eds.), Proceedings of Machine Learning and Systems, volume 2, 230–246. https://proceedings.mlsys.org/paper_files/paper/2020/hash/a06f20b349c6cf09a6b171c71b88bbfc-Abstract.html.

Optimizer Using the Hyperband Algorithm

Description

Optimizer using the Hyperband (HB) algorithm. HB runs the Successive Halving Algorithm (SHA) with different numbers of stating configurations. The algorithm is initialized with the same parameters as Successive Halving but without n. Each run of Successive Halving is called a bracket and starts with a different budget r_0. A smaller starting budget means that more configurations can be tried out. The most explorative bracket allocated the minimum budget r_min. The next bracket increases the starting budget by a factor of eta. In each bracket, the starting budget increases further until the last bracket s = 0 essentially performs a random search with the full budget r_max. The number of brackets s_max + 1 is calculated with s_max = log(r_min / r_max)(eta). Under the condition that r_0 increases by eta with each bracket, r_min sometimes has to be adjusted slightly in order not to use more than r_max resources in the last bracket. The number of configurations in the base stages is calculated so that each bracket uses approximately the same amount of budget. The following table shows a full run of HB with eta = 2, r_min = 1 and r_max = 8.

s is the bracket number, i is the stage number, n_i is the number of configurations and r_i is the budget allocated to a single configuration.

The budget hyperparameter must be tagged with "budget" in the search space. The minimum budget (r_min) which is allocated in the base stage of the most explorative bracket, is set by the lower bound of the budget parameter. The upper bound defines the maximum budget (r_max) which is allocated to the candidates in the last stages.

Resources

The gallery features a collection of case studies and demos about optimization.

• Tune the hyperparameters of XGBoost with Hyperband.

• Use data subsampling and Hyperband to optimize a support vector machine.

Dictionary

This bbotk::Optimizer can be instantiated via the dictionary bbotk::mlr_optimizers or with the associated sugar function bbotk::opt():

mlr_optimizers$get("hyperband")
opt("hyperband")

Parameters

eta

numeric(1)
With every stage, the budget is increased by a factor of eta and only the best 1 / eta points are promoted to the next stage. Non-integer values are supported, but eta is not allowed to be less or equal to 1.

sampler

paradox::Sampler
Object defining how the samples of the parameter space should be drawn in the base stage of each bracket. The default is uniform sampling.

repetitions

integer(1)
If 1 (default), optimization is stopped once all brackets are evaluated. Otherwise, optimization is stopped after repetitions runs of HB. The bbotk::Terminator might stop the optimization before all repetitions are executed.

Archive

The bbotk::Archive holds the following additional columns that are specific to HB:

• bracket (integer(1))
  The bracket index. Counts down to 0.

• stage (⁠integer(1))⁠
  The stages of each bracket. Starts counting at 0.

• repetition (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Repetition index. Start counting at 1.

Custom Sampler

Hyperband supports custom paradox::Sampler object for initial configurations in each bracket. A custom sampler may look like this (the full example is given in the examples section):

# - beta distribution with alpha = 2 and beta = 5
# - categorical distribution with custom probabilities
sampler = SamplerJointIndep$new(list(
  Sampler1DRfun$new(params[[2]], function(n) rbeta(n, 2, 5)),
  Sampler1DCateg$new(params[[3]], prob = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.5))
))

Progress Bars

⁠$optimize()⁠ supports progress bars via the package progressr combined with a bbotk::Terminator. Simply wrap the function in progressr::with_progress() to enable them. We recommend to use package progress as backend; enable with progressr::handlers("progress").

Logging

Hyperband uses a logger (as implemented in lgr) from package bbotk. Use lgr::get_logger("bbotk") to access and control the logger.

Super classes

bbotk::Optimizer -> bbotk::OptimizerBatch -> OptimizerBatchHyperband

Methods

Public methods

• OptimizerBatchHyperband$new()

• OptimizerBatchHyperband$clone()

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

OptimizerBatchHyperband$new()

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

OptimizerBatchHyperband$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

Source

Li L, Jamieson K, DeSalvo G, Rostamizadeh A, Talwalkar A (2018). “Hyperband: A Novel Bandit-Based Approach to Hyperparameter Optimization.” Journal of Machine Learning Research, 18(185), 1-52. https://jmlr.org/papers/v18/16-558.html.

Examples

library(bbotk)
library(data.table)

# set search space
search_space = domain = ps(
  x1 = p_dbl(-5, 10),
  x2 = p_dbl(0, 15),
  fidelity = p_dbl(1e-2, 1, tags = "budget")
)

# Branin function with fidelity, see `bbotk::branin()`
fun = function(xs) branin_wu(xs[["x1"]], xs[["x2"]], xs[["fidelity"]])

# create objective
objective = ObjectiveRFun$new(
  fun = fun,
  domain = domain,
  codomain = ps(y = p_dbl(tags = "minimize"))
)

# initialize instance and optimizer
instance = OptimInstanceSingleCrit$new(
  objective = objective,
  search_space = search_space,
  terminator = trm("evals", n_evals = 50)
)

optimizer = opt("hyperband")

# optimize branin function
optimizer$optimize(instance)

# best scoring evaluation
instance$result

# all evaluations
as.data.table(instance$archive)

Hyperparameter Optimization with Successive Halving

Description

Optimizer using the Successive Halving Algorithm (SHA). SHA is initialized with the number of starting configurations n, the proportion of configurations discarded in each stage eta, and the minimum r_min and maximum ⁠_max⁠ budget of a single evaluation. The algorithm starts by sampling n random configurations and allocating the minimum budget r_min to them. The configurations are evaluated and 1 / eta of the worst-performing configurations are discarded. The remaining configurations are promoted to the next stage and evaluated on a larger budget. The following table is the stage layout for eta = 2, r_min = 1 and r_max = 8.

i is the stage number, n_i is the number of configurations and r_i is the budget allocated to a single configuration.

The number of stages is calculated so that each stage consumes approximately the same budget. This sometimes results in the minimum budget having to be slightly adjusted by the algorithm.

Resources

The gallery features a collection of case studies and demos about optimization.

• Tune the hyperparameters of XGBoost with Hyperband (Hyperband can be easily swapped with SHA).

• Use data subsampling and Hyperband to optimize a support vector machine.

Dictionary

This bbotk::Optimizer can be instantiated via the dictionary bbotk::mlr_optimizers or with the associated sugar function bbotk::opt():

mlr_optimizers$get("successive_halving")
opt("successive_halving")

Parameters

n

integer(1)
Number of configurations in the base stage.

eta

numeric(1)
With every stage, the budget is increased by a factor of eta and only the best 1 / eta configurations are promoted to the next stage. Non-integer values are supported, but eta is not allowed to be less or equal to 1.

sampler

paradox::Sampler
Object defining how the samples of the parameter space should be drawn. The default is uniform sampling.

repetitions

integer(1)
If 1 (default), optimization is stopped once all stages are evaluated. Otherwise, optimization is stopped after repetitions runs of SHA. The bbotk::Terminator might stop the optimization before all repetitions are executed.

adjust_minimum_budget

logical(1)
If TRUE, the minimum budget is increased so that the last stage uses the maximum budget defined in the search space.

Archive

The bbotk::Archive holds the following additional columns that are specific to SHA:

• stage (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Stage index. Starts counting at 0.

• repetition (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Repetition index. Start counting at 1.

Custom Sampler

Hyperband supports custom paradox::Sampler object for initial configurations in each bracket. A custom sampler may look like this (the full example is given in the examples section):

# - beta distribution with alpha = 2 and beta = 5
# - categorical distribution with custom probabilities
sampler = SamplerJointIndep$new(list(
  Sampler1DRfun$new(params[[2]], function(n) rbeta(n, 2, 5)),
  Sampler1DCateg$new(params[[3]], prob = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.5))
))

Progress Bars

⁠$optimize()⁠ supports progress bars via the package progressr combined with a bbotk::Terminator. Simply wrap the function in progressr::with_progress() to enable them. We recommend to use package progress as backend; enable with progressr::handlers("progress").

Logging

Hyperband uses a logger (as implemented in lgr) from package bbotk. Use lgr::get_logger("bbotk") to access and control the logger.

Super classes

bbotk::Optimizer -> bbotk::OptimizerBatch -> OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving

Methods

Public methods

• OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving$new()

• OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving$clone()

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving$new()

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

Source

Jamieson K, Talwalkar A (2016). “Non-stochastic Best Arm Identification and Hyperparameter Optimization.” In Gretton A, Robert CC (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, volume 51 series Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 240-248. http://proceedings.mlr.press/v51/jamieson16.html.

Examples

library(bbotk)
library(data.table)

# set search space
search_space = domain = ps(
  x1 = p_dbl(-5, 10),
  x2 = p_dbl(0, 15),
  fidelity = p_dbl(1e-2, 1, tags = "budget")
)

# Branin function with fidelity, see `bbotk::branin()`
fun = function(xs) branin_wu(xs[["x1"]], xs[["x2"]], xs[["fidelity"]])

# create objective
objective = ObjectiveRFun$new(
  fun = fun,
  domain = domain,
  codomain = ps(y = p_dbl(tags = "minimize"))
)

# initialize instance and optimizer
instance = OptimInstanceSingleCrit$new(
  objective = objective,
  search_space = search_space,
  terminator = trm("evals", n_evals = 50)
)

optimizer = opt("successive_halving")

# optimize branin function
optimizer$optimize(instance)

# best scoring evaluation
instance$result

# all evaluations
as.data.table(instance$archive)

Asynchronous Hyperparameter Tuning with Successive Halving

Description

OptimizerAsyncSuccessiveHalving class that implements the Asynchronous Successive Halving Algorithm (ASHA). This class implements the asynchronous version of OptimizerBatchSuccessiveHalving.

Dictionary

This mlr3tuning::Tuner can be instantiated via the dictionary mlr3tuning::mlr_tuners or with the associated sugar function mlr3tuning::tnr():

TunerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$new()
mlr_tuners$get("async_successive_halving")
tnr("async_successive_halving")

Subsample Budget

If the learner lacks a natural budget parameter, mlr3pipelines::PipeOpSubsample can be applied to use the subsampling rate as budget parameter. The resulting mlr3pipelines::GraphLearner is fitted on small proportions of the mlr3::Task in the first stage, and on the complete task in last stage.

Custom Sampler

Hyperband supports custom paradox::Sampler object for initial configurations in each bracket. A custom sampler may look like this (the full example is given in the examples section):

# - beta distribution with alpha = 2 and beta = 5
# - categorical distribution with custom probabilities
sampler = SamplerJointIndep$new(list(
  Sampler1DRfun$new(params[[2]], function(n) rbeta(n, 2, 5)),
  Sampler1DCateg$new(params[[3]], prob = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.5))
))

Parameters

eta

numeric(1)
With every stage, the budget is increased by a factor of eta and only the best 1 / eta configurations are promoted to the next stage. Non-integer values are supported, but eta is not allowed to be less or equal to 1.

sampler

paradox::Sampler
Object defining how the samples of the parameter space should be drawn. The default is uniform sampling.

Archive

The bbotk::Archive holds the following additional columns that are specific to SHA:

• stage (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Stage index. Starts counting at 0.

• asha_id (⁠character(1))⁠
  Unique identifier for each configuration across stages.

Super classes

mlr3tuning::Tuner -> mlr3tuning::TunerAsync -> mlr3tuning::TunerAsyncFromOptimizerAsync -> TunerAsyncSuccessiveHalving

Methods

Public methods

• TunerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$new()

• TunerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$clone()

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

TunerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$new()

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

TunerAsyncSuccessiveHalving$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

Source

Li L, Jamieson K, Rostamizadeh A, Gonina E, Ben-tzur J, Hardt M, Recht B, Talwalkar A (2020). “A System for Massively Parallel Hyperparameter Tuning.” In Dhillon I, Papailiopoulos D, Sze V (eds.), Proceedings of Machine Learning and Systems, volume 2, 230–246. https://proceedings.mlsys.org/paper_files/paper/2020/hash/a06f20b349c6cf09a6b171c71b88bbfc-Abstract.html.

Tuner Using the Hyperband Algorithm

Description

Optimizer using the Hyperband (HB) algorithm. HB runs the Successive Halving Algorithm (SHA) with different numbers of stating configurations. The algorithm is initialized with the same parameters as Successive Halving but without n. Each run of Successive Halving is called a bracket and starts with a different budget r_0. A smaller starting budget means that more configurations can be tried out. The most explorative bracket allocated the minimum budget r_min. The next bracket increases the starting budget by a factor of eta. In each bracket, the starting budget increases further until the last bracket s = 0 essentially performs a random search with the full budget r_max. The number of brackets s_max + 1 is calculated with s_max = log(r_min / r_max)(eta). Under the condition that r_0 increases by eta with each bracket, r_min sometimes has to be adjusted slightly in order not to use more than r_max resources in the last bracket. The number of configurations in the base stages is calculated so that each bracket uses approximately the same amount of budget. The following table shows a full run of HB with eta = 2, r_min = 1 and r_max = 8.

s is the bracket number, i is the stage number, n_i is the number of configurations and r_i is the budget allocated to a single configuration.

The budget hyperparameter must be tagged with "budget" in the search space. The minimum budget (r_min) which is allocated in the base stage of the most explorative bracket, is set by the lower bound of the budget parameter. The upper bound defines the maximum budget (r_max) which is allocated to the candidates in the last stages.

Dictionary

This mlr3tuning::Tuner can be instantiated via the dictionary mlr3tuning::mlr_tuners or with the associated sugar function mlr3tuning::tnr():

TunerBatchHyperband$new()
mlr_tuners$get("hyperband")
tnr("hyperband")

Subsample Budget

If the learner lacks a natural budget parameter, mlr3pipelines::PipeOpSubsample can be applied to use the subsampling rate as budget parameter. The resulting mlr3pipelines::GraphLearner is fitted on small proportions of the mlr3::Task in the first stage, and on the complete task in last stage.

Custom Sampler

Hyperband supports custom paradox::Sampler object for initial configurations in each bracket. A custom sampler may look like this (the full example is given in the examples section):

# - beta distribution with alpha = 2 and beta = 5
# - categorical distribution with custom probabilities
sampler = SamplerJointIndep$new(list(
  Sampler1DRfun$new(params[[2]], function(n) rbeta(n, 2, 5)),
  Sampler1DCateg$new(params[[3]], prob = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.5))
))

Progress Bars

⁠$optimize()⁠ supports progress bars via the package progressr combined with a bbotk::Terminator. Simply wrap the function in progressr::with_progress() to enable them. We recommend to use package progress as backend; enable with progressr::handlers("progress").

Parallelization

This hyperband implementation evaluates hyperparameter configurations of equal budget across brackets in one batch. For example, all configurations in stage 1 of bracket 3 and stage 0 of bracket 2 in one batch. To select a parallel backend, use the plan() function of the future package.

Logging

Hyperband uses a logger (as implemented in lgr) from package bbotk. Use lgr::get_logger("bbotk") to access and control the logger.

Resources

The gallery features a collection of case studies and demos about optimization.

• Tune the hyperparameters of XGBoost with Hyperband.

• Use data subsampling and Hyperband to optimize a support vector machine.

Parameters

eta

numeric(1)
With every stage, the budget is increased by a factor of eta and only the best 1 / eta points are promoted to the next stage. Non-integer values are supported, but eta is not allowed to be less or equal to 1.

sampler

paradox::Sampler
Object defining how the samples of the parameter space should be drawn in the base stage of each bracket. The default is uniform sampling.

repetitions

integer(1)
If 1 (default), optimization is stopped once all brackets are evaluated. Otherwise, optimization is stopped after repetitions runs of HB. The bbotk::Terminator might stop the optimization before all repetitions are executed.

Archive

The bbotk::Archive holds the following additional columns that are specific to HB:

• bracket (integer(1))
  The bracket index. Counts down to 0.

• stage (⁠integer(1))⁠
  The stages of each bracket. Starts counting at 0.

• repetition (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Repetition index. Start counting at 1.

Super classes

mlr3tuning::Tuner -> mlr3tuning::TunerBatch -> mlr3tuning::TunerBatchFromOptimizerBatch -> TunerBatchHyperband

Methods

Public methods

• TunerBatchHyperband$new()

• TunerBatchHyperband$clone()

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

TunerBatchHyperband$new()

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

TunerBatchHyperband$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

Source

Li L, Jamieson K, DeSalvo G, Rostamizadeh A, Talwalkar A (2018). “Hyperband: A Novel Bandit-Based Approach to Hyperparameter Optimization.” Journal of Machine Learning Research, 18(185), 1-52. https://jmlr.org/papers/v18/16-558.html.

Examples

if(requireNamespace("xgboost")) {
  library(mlr3learners)

  # define hyperparameter and budget parameter
  search_space = ps(
    nrounds = p_int(lower = 1, upper = 16, tags = "budget"),
    eta = p_dbl(lower = 0, upper = 1),
    booster = p_fct(levels = c("gbtree", "gblinear", "dart"))
  )

  
  # hyperparameter tuning on the pima indians diabetes data set
  instance = tune(
    tnr("hyperband"),
    task = tsk("pima"),
    learner = lrn("classif.xgboost", eval_metric = "logloss"),
    resampling = rsmp("cv", folds = 3),
    measures = msr("classif.ce"),
    search_space = search_space,
    term_evals = 100
  )

  # best performing hyperparameter configuration
  instance$result
  
}

Hyperparameter Tuning with Successive Halving

Description

Optimizer using the Successive Halving Algorithm (SHA). SHA is initialized with the number of starting configurations n, the proportion of configurations discarded in each stage eta, and the minimum r_min and maximum ⁠_max⁠ budget of a single evaluation. The algorithm starts by sampling n random configurations and allocating the minimum budget r_min to them. The configurations are evaluated and 1 / eta of the worst-performing configurations are discarded. The remaining configurations are promoted to the next stage and evaluated on a larger budget. The following table is the stage layout for eta = 2, r_min = 1 and r_max = 8.

i is the stage number, n_i is the number of configurations and r_i is the budget allocated to a single configuration.

The number of stages is calculated so that each stage consumes approximately the same budget. This sometimes results in the minimum budget having to be slightly adjusted by the algorithm.

Dictionary

This mlr3tuning::Tuner can be instantiated via the dictionary mlr3tuning::mlr_tuners or with the associated sugar function mlr3tuning::tnr():

TunerBatchSuccessiveHalving$new()
mlr_tuners$get("successive_halving")
tnr("successive_halving")

Subsample Budget

If the learner lacks a natural budget parameter, mlr3pipelines::PipeOpSubsample can be applied to use the subsampling rate as budget parameter. The resulting mlr3pipelines::GraphLearner is fitted on small proportions of the mlr3::Task in the first stage, and on the complete task in last stage.

Custom Sampler

Hyperband supports custom paradox::Sampler object for initial configurations in each bracket. A custom sampler may look like this (the full example is given in the examples section):

# - beta distribution with alpha = 2 and beta = 5
# - categorical distribution with custom probabilities
sampler = SamplerJointIndep$new(list(
  Sampler1DRfun$new(params[[2]], function(n) rbeta(n, 2, 5)),
  Sampler1DCateg$new(params[[3]], prob = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.5))
))

Progress Bars

⁠$optimize()⁠ supports progress bars via the package progressr combined with a bbotk::Terminator. Simply wrap the function in progressr::with_progress() to enable them. We recommend to use package progress as backend; enable with progressr::handlers("progress").

Parallelization

The hyperparameter configurations of one stage are evaluated in parallel with the future package. To select a parallel backend, use the plan() function of the future package.

Logging

Hyperband uses a logger (as implemented in lgr) from package bbotk. Use lgr::get_logger("bbotk") to access and control the logger.

Resources

The gallery features a collection of case studies and demos about optimization.

• Tune the hyperparameters of XGBoost with Hyperband (Hyperband can be easily swapped with SHA).

• Use data subsampling and Hyperband to optimize a support vector machine.

Parameters

n

integer(1)
Number of configurations in the base stage.

eta

numeric(1)
With every stage, the budget is increased by a factor of eta and only the best 1 / eta configurations are promoted to the next stage. Non-integer values are supported, but eta is not allowed to be less or equal to 1.

sampler

paradox::Sampler
Object defining how the samples of the parameter space should be drawn. The default is uniform sampling.

repetitions

integer(1)
If 1 (default), optimization is stopped once all stages are evaluated. Otherwise, optimization is stopped after repetitions runs of SHA. The bbotk::Terminator might stop the optimization before all repetitions are executed.

adjust_minimum_budget

logical(1)
If TRUE, the minimum budget is increased so that the last stage uses the maximum budget defined in the search space.

Archive

The bbotk::Archive holds the following additional columns that are specific to SHA:

• stage (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Stage index. Starts counting at 0.

• repetition (⁠integer(1))⁠
  Repetition index. Start counting at 1.

Super classes

mlr3tuning::Tuner -> mlr3tuning::TunerBatch -> mlr3tuning::TunerBatchFromOptimizerBatch -> TunerBatchSuccessiveHalving

Methods

Public methods

• TunerBatchSuccessiveHalving$new()

• TunerBatchSuccessiveHalving$clone()

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

TunerBatchSuccessiveHalving$new()

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

TunerBatchSuccessiveHalving$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

Source

Jamieson K, Talwalkar A (2016). “Non-stochastic Best Arm Identification and Hyperparameter Optimization.” In Gretton A, Robert CC (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, volume 51 series Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 240-248. http://proceedings.mlr.press/v51/jamieson16.html.

Examples

if(requireNamespace("xgboost")) {
  library(mlr3learners)

  # define hyperparameter and budget parameter
  search_space = ps(
    nrounds = p_int(lower = 1, upper = 16, tags = "budget"),
    eta = p_dbl(lower = 0, upper = 1),
    booster = p_fct(levels = c("gbtree", "gblinear", "dart"))
  )

  
  # hyperparameter tuning on the pima indians diabetes data set
  instance = tune(
    tnr("successive_halving"),
    task = tsk("pima"),
    learner = lrn("classif.xgboost", eval_metric = "logloss"),
    resampling = rsmp("cv", folds = 3),
    measures = msr("classif.ce"),
    search_space = search_space,
    term_evals = 100
  )

  # best performing hyperparameter configuration
  instance$result
  
}