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gung - Reinstate Monica
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Meaning of y axis in Random Forest partial dependence plot

I am using the RandomForest R package and am confused at how to interpret the values of the Y-axis in their partial dependence plots. Help docs state that the plot is a "graphical depiction of the marginal effect of a variable on the class probability." However, I am still confused as to what exactly the y-axis represents.

  • Particularly, what do the negative values mean?
  • What does it mean to have a negative influence on accurately predicting the class?
  • And what is the most important feature from these figures, is it the max value, the shape of the trend etc?
  • Can you compare the partial plots with partial plots of other variables?
  • How might these plots compare with response curves created in Maxent (a distribution modeling software)?

Some example partial dependence plots

jacobsap
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