Accumulated Local Effect plots (ALE) quantify how the predictions change when the features change. They are similar to partial dependency plots but are more robust to feature collinearity.
Mathematical details
If the defined variable is a numeric feature, the ALE is performed.
Here, the non centered effect for feature j with k equally distant neighborhoods is defined as:
Where \(N_j(k)\) is the k-th neighborhood and \(n_j(k)\) is the number of observations in the k-th neighborhood.
The last part of the equation,
\(\left[\hat{f}(z_{k,j},x^{(i)}_{\setminus{}j})-\hat{f}(z_{k-1,j},x^{(i)}_{\setminus{}j})\right]\)
represents the difference in model prediction when the value of feature j is exchanged with the upper and lower border of the current neighborhood.