auc: Area Under the ROC Curve

In mlr3measures: Performance Measures for 'mlr3'

Area Under the ROC Curve

Description

Measure to compare true observed labels with predicted probabilities in binary classification tasks.

Usage

auc(truth, prob, positive, sample_weights = NULL, na_value = NaN, ...)

Arguments

truth	(factor()) True (observed) labels. Must have the exactly same two levels and the same length as response.
prob	(numeric()) Predicted probability for positive class. Must have exactly same length as truth.
positive	(⁠character(1))⁠ Name of the positive class.
sample_weights	(numeric()) Vector of non-negative and finite sample weights. Must have the same length as truth. The vector gets automatically normalized to sum to one. Defaults to equal sample weights.
na_value	(numeric(1)) Value that should be returned if the measure is not defined for the input (as described in the note). Default is NaN.
...	(any) Additional arguments. Currently ignored.

Details

Computes the area under the Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve. The AUC can be interpreted as the probability that a randomly chosen positive observation has a higher predicted probability than a randomly chosen negative observation.

For n^+ positive and n^- negative observations with R_i^+ the rank of the i-th positive observation's predicted probability (average ranks for ties), the AUC is estimated as

\widehat{\operatorname{AUC}} = \frac{1}{n^+ n^-} \left( \sum_{i=1}^{n^+} R_i^+ \; - \; \frac{n^+(n^+ + 1)}{2} \right).

If sample_weights are provided, let w_i^+ be the weight of the i-th positive observation with predicted probability p_i^+, W^+ = \sum_i w_i^+, and W^- the total weight of the negative observations. Define the weighted Mann-Whitney contribution of positive observation i as U_i^w = W_{< p_i^+}^- + \tfrac{1}{2} W_{= p_i^+}^-, i.e. the total weight of negative observations with a smaller predicted probability plus half the weight of negatives tied with p_i^+. The weighted AUC is then

\widehat{\operatorname{AUC}}_w = \frac{1}{W^+ W^-} \sum_{i=1}^{n^+} w_i^+ U_i^w.

This measure is undefined if the true values are either all positive or all negative.

Value

Performance value as numeric(1).

Meta Information

• Type: "binary"

• Range: [0, 1]

• Minimize: FALSE

• Required prediction: prob

References

Youden WJ (1950). “Index for rating diagnostic tests.” Cancer, 3(1), 32–35. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1002/1097-0142(1950)3:1<32::aid-cncr2820030106>3.0.co;2-3")}.

See Also

Other Binary Classification Measures: bbrier(), dor(), fbeta(), fdr(), fn(), fnr(), fomr(), fp(), fpr(), gmean(), gpr(), npv(), ppv(), prauc(), tn(), tnr(), tp(), tpr()

Examples

truth = factor(c("a", "a", "a", "b"))
prob = c(.6, .7, .1, .4)
auc(truth, prob, "a")

mlr3measures documentation built on April 17, 2026, 5:06 p.m.