174 A comparison of machine learning algorithms in the classification of beef steers finished in feedlot
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The aim of this project is to compare some of the state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms on the classification of steers finished in feedlots based on performance, carcass and meat quality traits. The precise classification of animals allows for fast, real-time decision making in animal food industry, such as culling or retention of herd animals. Beef production presents high variability in its numerous carcass and beef quality traits. Machine learning algorithms and software provide an opportunity to evaluate the interactions between traits to better classify animals. Four different treatment levels of wet distiller’s grain were applied to 97 Angus-Nellore animals and used as features for the classification problem. The C4.5 decision tree, Naïve Bayes (NB), Random Forest (RF) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) Artificial Neural Network algorithms were used to predict and classify the animals based on recorded traits measurements, which include initial and final weights, sheer force and meat color. The top performing classifier was the C4.5 decision tree algorithm with a classification accuracy of 96.90%, while the RF, the MLP and NB classifiers had accuracies of 55.67%, 39.17% and 29.89% respectively. We observed that the final decision tree model constructed with C4.5 selected only the dry matter intake (DMI) feature as a differentiator. When DMI was removed, no other feature or combination of features was sufficiently strong to provide good prediction accuracies for any of the classifiers. We plan to investigate in a follow-up study on a significantly larger sample size, the reasons behind DMI being a more relevant parameter than the other measurements.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".