diff --git a/R-package/vignettes/xgboostPresentation.Rmd b/R-package/vignettes/xgboostPresentation.Rmd index c7de706cf..c3c98ed02 100644 --- a/R-package/vignettes/xgboostPresentation.Rmd +++ b/R-package/vignettes/xgboostPresentation.Rmd @@ -14,9 +14,29 @@ vignette: > Introduction ============ -The purpose of this Vignette is to show you how to use **Xgboost** to make prediction from a model based on your own dataset. +This is an introductory document of using the \verb@xgboost@ package in **R**. -You may know **Xgboost** as a state of the art tool to build some kind of Machine learning models. It has been [used](https://github.com/tqchen/xgboost) to win several [Kaggle](http://www.kaggle.com) competitions. +**Xgboost** is short for e**X**treme **G**radient **B**oosting package. + +It is an efficient and scalable implementation of gradient boosting framework by \citep{friedman2001greedy}. + +The package includes efficient linear model solver and tree learning algorithm. It supports various objective functions, including *regression*, *classification* and *ranking*. The package is made to be extendible, so that users are also allowed to define their own objectives easily. + +It has been [used](https://github.com/tqchen/xgboost) to win several [Kaggle](http://www.kaggle.com) competitions. + +It has several features: + +* Speed: it can automatically do parallel computation on *Windows* and *Linux*, with **OpenMP**. It is generally over 10 times faster than `gbm`. +* Input Type: it takes several types of input data: + * Dense Matrix: **R**'s dense matrix, i.e. `matrix` ; + * Sparse Matrix: **R**'s sparse matrix, i.e. `Matrix::dgCMatrix` ; + * Data File: local data files ; + * `xgb.DMatrix`: it's own class (recommended) ; +* Sparsity: it accepts sparse input for both *tree booster* and *linear booster*, and is optimized for sparse input ; +* Customization: it supports customized objective function and evaluation function ; +* Performance: it has better performance on several different datasets. + +The purpose of this Vignette is to show you how to use **Xgboost** to make prediction from a model based on your own dataset. Installation ============