How to split data into 3 sets (train, validation and test)?

Question

I have a pandas dataframe and I wish to divide it to 3 separate sets. I know that using train_test_split from sklearn.cross_validation, one can divide the data

Answer 1

Here is a Python function that splits a Pandas dataframe into train, validation, and test dataframes with stratified sampling. It performs this split by calling scikit-learn's function train_test_split() twice.

import pandas as pd
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

def split_stratified_into_train_val_test(df_input, stratify_colname='y',
                                         frac_train=0.6, frac_val=0.15, frac_test=0.25,
                                         random_state=None):
    '''
    Splits a Pandas dataframe into three subsets (train, val, and test)
    following fractional ratios provided by the user, where each subset is
    stratified by the values in a specific column (that is, each subset has
    the same relative frequency of the values in the column). It performs this
    splitting by running train_test_split() twice.

    Parameters
    ----------
    df_input : Pandas dataframe
        Input dataframe to be split.
    stratify_colname : str
        The name of the column that will be used for stratification. Usually
        this column would be for the label.
    frac_train : float
    frac_val   : float
    frac_test  : float
        The ratios with which the dataframe will be split into train, val, and
        test data. The values should be expressed as float fractions and should
        sum to 1.0.
    random_state : int, None, or RandomStateInstance
        Value to be passed to train_test_split().

    Returns
    -------
    df_train, df_val, df_test :
        Dataframes containing the three splits.
    '''

    if frac_train + frac_val + frac_test != 1.0:
        raise ValueError('fractions %f, %f, %f do not add up to 1.0' % \
                         (frac_train, frac_val, frac_test))

    if stratify_colname not in df_input.columns:
        raise ValueError('%s is not a column in the dataframe' % (stratify_colname))

    X = df_input # Contains all columns.
    y = df_input[[stratify_colname]] # Dataframe of just the column on which to stratify.

    # Split original dataframe into train and temp dataframes.
    df_train, df_temp, y_train, y_temp = train_test_split(X,
                                                          y,
                                                          stratify=y,
                                                          test_size=(1.0 - frac_train),
                                                          random_state=random_state)

    # Split the temp dataframe into val and test dataframes.
    relative_frac_test = frac_test / (frac_val + frac_test)
    df_val, df_test, y_val, y_test = train_test_split(df_temp,
                                                      y_temp,
                                                      stratify=y_temp,
                                                      test_size=relative_frac_test,
                                                      random_state=random_state)

    assert len(df_input) == len(df_train) + len(df_val) + len(df_test)

    return df_train, df_val, df_test

Below is a complete working example.

Consider a dataset that has a label upon which you want to perform the stratification. This label has its own distribution in the original dataset, say 75% foo, 15% bar and 10% baz. Now let's split the dataset into train, validation, and test into subsets using a 60/20/20 ratio, where each split retains the same distribution of the labels. See the illustration below:

Here is the example dataset:

df = pd.DataFrame( { 'A': list(range(0, 100)),
                     'B': list(range(100, 0, -1)),
                     'label': ['foo'] * 75 + ['bar'] * 15 + ['baz'] * 10 } )

df.head()
#    A    B label
# 0  0  100   foo
# 1  1   99   foo
# 2  2   98   foo
# 3  3   97   foo
# 4  4   96   foo

df.shape
# (100, 3)

df.label.value_counts()
# foo    75
# bar    15
# baz    10
# Name: label, dtype: int64

Now, let's call the split_stratified_into_train_val_test() function from above to get train, validation, and test dataframes following a 60/20/20 ratio.

df_train, df_val, df_test = \
    split_stratified_into_train_val_test(df, stratify_colname='label', frac_train=0.60, frac_val=0.20, frac_test=0.20)

The three dataframes df_train, df_val, and df_test contain all the original rows but their sizes will follow the above ratio.

df_train.shape
#(60, 3)

df_val.shape
#(20, 3)

df_test.shape
#(20, 3)

Further, each of the three splits will have the same distribution of the label, namely 75% foo, 15% bar and 10% baz.

df_train.label.value_counts()
# foo    45
# bar     9
# baz     6
# Name: label, dtype: int64

df_val.label.value_counts()
# foo    15
# bar     3
# baz     2
# Name: label, dtype: int64

df_test.label.value_counts()
# foo    15
# bar     3
# baz     2
# Name: label, dtype: int64