.. note::
    :class: sphx-glr-download-link-note

    Click :ref:`here <sphx_glr_download_auto_examples_neural_networks_plot_mlp_alpha.py>` to download the full example code
.. rst-class:: sphx-glr-example-title

.. _sphx_glr_auto_examples_neural_networks_plot_mlp_alpha.py:


================================================
Varying regularization in Multi-layer Perceptron
================================================

A comparison of different values for regularization parameter 'alpha' on
synthetic datasets. The plot shows that different alphas yield different
decision functions.

Alpha is a parameter for regularization term, aka penalty term, that combats
overfitting by constraining the size of the weights. Increasing alpha may fix
high variance (a sign of overfitting) by encouraging smaller weights, resulting
in a decision boundary plot that appears with lesser curvatures.
Similarly, decreasing alpha may fix high bias (a sign of underfitting) by
encouraging larger weights, potentially resulting in a more complicated
decision boundary.



.. code-block:: python

    print(__doc__)


    # Author: Issam H. Laradji
    # License: BSD 3 clause

    import numpy as np
    from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
    from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap
    from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
    from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler
    from sklearn.datasets import make_moons, make_circles, make_classification
    from sklearn.neural_network import MLPClassifier

    h = .02  # step size in the mesh

    alphas = np.logspace(-5, 3, 5)
    names = []
    for i in alphas:
        names.append('alpha ' + str(i))

    classifiers = []
    for i in alphas:
        classifiers.append(MLPClassifier(alpha=i, random_state=1))

    X, y = make_classification(n_features=2, n_redundant=0, n_informative=2,
                               random_state=0, n_clusters_per_class=1)
    rng = np.random.RandomState(2)
    X += 2 * rng.uniform(size=X.shape)
    linearly_separable = (X, y)

    datasets = [make_moons(noise=0.3, random_state=0),
                make_circles(noise=0.2, factor=0.5, random_state=1),
                linearly_separable]

    figure = plt.figure(figsize=(17, 9))
    i = 1
    # iterate over datasets
    for X, y in datasets:
        # preprocess dataset, split into training and test part
        X = StandardScaler().fit_transform(X)
        X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=.4)

        x_min, x_max = X[:, 0].min() - .5, X[:, 0].max() + .5
        y_min, y_max = X[:, 1].min() - .5, X[:, 1].max() + .5
        xx, yy = np.meshgrid(np.arange(x_min, x_max, h),
                             np.arange(y_min, y_max, h))

        # just plot the dataset first
        cm = plt.cm.RdBu
        cm_bright = ListedColormap(['#FF0000', '#0000FF'])
        ax = plt.subplot(len(datasets), len(classifiers) + 1, i)
        # Plot the training points
        ax.scatter(X_train[:, 0], X_train[:, 1], c=y_train, cmap=cm_bright)
        # and testing points
        ax.scatter(X_test[:, 0], X_test[:, 1], c=y_test, cmap=cm_bright, alpha=0.6)
        ax.set_xlim(xx.min(), xx.max())
        ax.set_ylim(yy.min(), yy.max())
        ax.set_xticks(())
        ax.set_yticks(())
        i += 1

        # iterate over classifiers
        for name, clf in zip(names, classifiers):
            ax = plt.subplot(len(datasets), len(classifiers) + 1, i)
            clf.fit(X_train, y_train)
            score = clf.score(X_test, y_test)

            # Plot the decision boundary. For that, we will assign a color to each
            # point in the mesh [x_min, x_max]x[y_min, y_max].
            if hasattr(clf, "decision_function"):
                Z = clf.decision_function(np.c_[xx.ravel(), yy.ravel()])
            else:
                Z = clf.predict_proba(np.c_[xx.ravel(), yy.ravel()])[:, 1]

            # Put the result into a color plot
            Z = Z.reshape(xx.shape)
            ax.contourf(xx, yy, Z, cmap=cm, alpha=.8)

            # Plot also the training points
            ax.scatter(X_train[:, 0], X_train[:, 1], c=y_train, cmap=cm_bright,
                       edgecolors='black', s=25)
            # and testing points
            ax.scatter(X_test[:, 0], X_test[:, 1], c=y_test, cmap=cm_bright,
                       alpha=0.6, edgecolors='black', s=25)

            ax.set_xlim(xx.min(), xx.max())
            ax.set_ylim(yy.min(), yy.max())
            ax.set_xticks(())
            ax.set_yticks(())
            ax.set_title(name)
            ax.text(xx.max() - .3, yy.min() + .3, ('%.2f' % score).lstrip('0'),
                    size=15, horizontalalignment='right')
            i += 1

    figure.subplots_adjust(left=.02, right=.98)
    plt.show()

**Total running time of the script:** ( 0 minutes  0.000 seconds)


.. _sphx_glr_download_auto_examples_neural_networks_plot_mlp_alpha.py:


.. only :: html

 .. container:: sphx-glr-footer
    :class: sphx-glr-footer-example



  .. container:: sphx-glr-download

     :download:`Download Python source code: plot_mlp_alpha.py <plot_mlp_alpha.py>`



  .. container:: sphx-glr-download

     :download:`Download Jupyter notebook: plot_mlp_alpha.ipynb <plot_mlp_alpha.ipynb>`


.. only:: html

 .. rst-class:: sphx-glr-signature

    `Gallery generated by Sphinx-Gallery <https://sphinx-gallery.readthedocs.io>`_
