gbm.roc.area: Compute Information Retrieval measures.
Description
Functions to compute Information Retrieval measures for pairwise loss for a
single group. The function returns the respective metric, or a negative
value if it is undefined for the given group.
For simplicity, we have no special handling for ties; instead, we break ties
randomly. This is slightly inaccurate for individual groups, but should have
only a small effect on the overall measure.
gbm.conc computes the concordance index: Fraction of all pairs (i,j)
with i<j, x[i] != x[j], such that x[j] < x[i]
If obs is binary, then gbm.roc.area(obs, pred) =
gbm.conc(obs[order(-pred)]).
gbm.conc is more general as it allows non-binary targets, but is
significantly slower.
References
C. Burges (2010). "From RankNet to LambdaRank to LambdaMART: An
Overview", Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-2010-82.