mlr_learners_regr.ranger: Ranger Regression Learner

In mlr3learners: Recommended Learners for 'mlr3'

Ranger Regression Learner

Description

Random regression forest. Calls ranger() from package ranger.

Details

Additionally to the uncertainty estimation methods provided by the ranger package, the learner provides a ensemble standard deviation and law of total variance uncertainty estimation. Both methods compute the empirical mean and variance of the training data points that fall into the predicted leaf nodes. The ensemble standard deviation method calculates the standard deviation of the mean of the leaf nodes. The law of total variance method calculates the mean of the variance of the leaf nodes plus the variance of the means of the leaf nodes. Formulas for the ensemble standard deviation and law of total variance method are given in Hutter et al. (2015).

For these 2 methods, the parameter sigma2.threshold can be used to set a threshold for the variance of the leaf nodes, this is a minimal value for the variance of the leaf nodes, if the variance is below this threshold, it is set to this value (as described in the paper). Default is 1e-2.

Dictionary

This mlr3::Learner can be instantiated via the dictionary mlr3::mlr_learners or with the associated sugar function mlr3::lrn():

mlr_learners$get("regr.ranger")
lrn("regr.ranger")

Meta Information

• Task type: “regr”

• Predict Types: “response”, “se”, “quantiles”

• Feature Types: “logical”, “integer”, “numeric”, “character”, “factor”, “ordered”

• Required Packages: mlr3, mlr3learners, ranger

Parameters

Id	Type	Default	Levels	Range
always.split.variables	untyped	-		-
holdout	logical	FALSE	TRUE, FALSE	-
importance	character	-	none, impurity, impurity_corrected, permutation	-
keep.inbag	logical	FALSE	TRUE, FALSE	-
max.depth	integer	NULL		[1, \infty)
min.bucket	integer	1		[1, \infty)
min.node.size	integer	5		[1, \infty)
mtry	integer	-		[1, \infty)
mtry.ratio	numeric	-		[0, 1]
na.action	character	na.learn	na.learn, na.omit, na.fail	-
node.stats	logical	FALSE	TRUE, FALSE	-
num.random.splits	integer	1		[1, \infty)
num.threads	integer	1		[1, \infty)
num.trees	integer	500		[1, \infty)
oob.error	logical	TRUE	TRUE, FALSE	-
poisson.tau	numeric	1		(-\infty, \infty)
regularization.factor	untyped	1		-
regularization.usedepth	logical	FALSE	TRUE, FALSE	-
replace	logical	TRUE	TRUE, FALSE	-
respect.unordered.factors	character	-	ignore, order, partition	-
sample.fraction	numeric	-		[0, 1]
save.memory	logical	FALSE	TRUE, FALSE	-
scale.permutation.importance	logical	FALSE	TRUE, FALSE	-
se.method	character	infjack	jack, infjack, ensemble_standard_deviation, law_of_total_variance	-
sigma2.threshold	numeric	0.01		(-\infty, \infty)
seed	integer	NULL		(-\infty, \infty)
split.select.weights	untyped	NULL		-
splitrule	character	variance	variance, extratrees, maxstat, beta, poisson	-
verbose	logical	TRUE	TRUE, FALSE	-
write.forest	logical	TRUE	TRUE, FALSE	-

Custom mlr3 parameters

• mtry:

  • This hyperparameter can alternatively be set via our hyperparameter mtry.ratio as mtry = max(ceiling(mtry.ratio * n_features), 1). Note that mtry and mtry.ratio are mutually exclusive.

Initial parameter values

• num.threads:

  • Actual default: 2, using two threads, while also respecting environment variable R_RANGER_NUM_THREADS, options(ranger.num.threads = N), or options(Ncpus = N), with precedence in that order.

  • Adjusted value: 1.

  • Reason for change: Conflicting with parallelization via future.

Super classes

mlr3::Learner -> mlr3::LearnerRegr -> LearnerRegrRanger

Methods

Public methods

• LearnerRegrRanger$new()

• LearnerRegrRanger$importance()

• LearnerRegrRanger$oob_error()

• LearnerRegrRanger$selected_features()

• LearnerRegrRanger$clone()

Inherited methods

• mlr3::Learner$base_learner()
• mlr3::Learner$configure()
• mlr3::Learner$encapsulate()
• mlr3::Learner$format()
• mlr3::Learner$help()
• mlr3::Learner$predict()
• mlr3::Learner$predict_newdata()
• mlr3::Learner$print()
• mlr3::Learner$reset()
• mlr3::Learner$train()
• mlr3::LearnerRegr$predict_newdata_fast()

---

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

LearnerRegrRanger$new()

---

Method importance()

The importance scores are extracted from the model slot variable.importance. Parameter importance.mode must be set to "impurity", "impurity_corrected", or "permutation"

Usage

LearnerRegrRanger$importance()

Returns

Named numeric().

---

Method oob_error()

The out-of-bag error, extracted from model slot prediction.error.

Usage

LearnerRegrRanger$oob_error()

Returns

numeric(1)

---

Method selected_features()

The set of features used for node splitting in the forest.

Usage

LearnerRegrRanger$selected_features()

Returns

character().

---

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

LearnerRegrRanger$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

deep

Whether to make a deep clone.

References

Wright, N. M, Ziegler, Andreas (2017). “ranger: A Fast Implementation of Random Forests for High Dimensional Data in C++ and R.” Journal of Statistical Software, 77(1), 1–17. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.18637/jss.v077.i01")}.

Breiman, Leo (2001). “Random Forests.” Machine Learning, 45(1), 5–32. ISSN 1573-0565, \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1023/A:1010933404324")}.

Hutter, Frank, Xu, Lin, Hoos, H. H, Leyton-Brown, Kevin (2015). “Algorithm runtime prediction: methods and evaluation.” In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, series IJCAI'15, 4197–4201.

See Also

• Chapter in the mlr3book: https://mlr3book.mlr-org.com/chapters/chapter2/data_and_basic_modeling.html#sec-learners

• Package mlr3extralearners for more learners.

• Dictionary of Learners: mlr3::mlr_learners

• as.data.table(mlr_learners) for a table of available Learners in the running session (depending on the loaded packages).

• mlr3pipelines to combine learners with pre- and postprocessing steps.

• Extension packages for additional task types:

  • mlr3proba for probabilistic supervised regression and survival analysis.

  • mlr3cluster for unsupervised clustering.

• mlr3tuning for tuning of hyperparameters, mlr3tuningspaces for established default tuning spaces.

Other Learner: mlr_learners_classif.cv_glmnet, mlr_learners_classif.glmnet, mlr_learners_classif.kknn, mlr_learners_classif.lda, mlr_learners_classif.log_reg, mlr_learners_classif.multinom, mlr_learners_classif.naive_bayes, mlr_learners_classif.nnet, mlr_learners_classif.qda, mlr_learners_classif.ranger, mlr_learners_classif.svm, mlr_learners_classif.xgboost, mlr_learners_regr.cv_glmnet, mlr_learners_regr.glmnet, mlr_learners_regr.kknn, mlr_learners_regr.km, mlr_learners_regr.lm, mlr_learners_regr.nnet, mlr_learners_regr.svm, mlr_learners_regr.xgboost

Examples

# Define the Learner and set parameter values
learner = lrn("regr.ranger")
print(learner)

# Define a Task
task = tsk("mtcars")

# Create train and test set
ids = partition(task)

# Train the learner on the training ids
learner$train(task, row_ids = ids$train)

# Print the model
print(learner$model)

# Importance method
if ("importance" %in% learner$properties) print(learner$importance)

# Make predictions for the test rows
predictions = learner$predict(task, row_ids = ids$test)

# Score the predictions
predictions$score()

mlr3learners documentation built on Dec. 13, 2025, 5:06 p.m.