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Mushroom Safety Classifier

Machine Learning Classification for Mycological Safety

Supervised learning model for accurate mushroom species classification and safety assessment, implementing advanced feature engineering techniques for interpretable binary classification.

Technical Approach

Feature Engineering

Implemented One-Hot Encoding to transform categorical mushroom attributes (cap shape, color, gill attachment) into numerical vectors for ML processing.

One-Hot Encoding Pandas

Decision Trees

Utilized DecisionTreeClassifier from Scikit-learn for interpretable binary classification (poisonous vs. safe), enabling visual inspection of decision paths.

Scikit-Learn Supervised Learning

Model Evaluation

Rigorous testing using train/test splits and cross-validation to ensure high accuracy and generalization on unseen mushroom specimens.

Cross-Validation Python

Why This Matters

01 Interpretable AI

Unlike black-box models, decision trees provide clear decision paths, making the classification process transparent and debuggable—crucial for safety-critical applications.

02 Real-World Impact

Demonstrates ML's potential in public health and safety domains, where accurate classification can prevent poisoning incidents and inform foragers.

Sample Implementation

from sklearn.tree import DecisionTreeClassifier
from sklearn.preprocessing import OneHotEncoder
import pandas as pd

# Feature engineering with One-Hot Encoding
encoder = OneHotEncoder()
X_encoded = encoder.fit_transform(mushroom_features)

# Train interpretable classifier
clf = DecisionTreeClassifier(max_depth=5)
clf.fit(X_encoded, y_labels)

# Predict safety classification
prediction = clf.predict(new_mushroom_sample)

Technology Stack

Python Scikit-Learn Pandas One-Hot Encoding Decision Trees Supervised Learning