Quick Reference · model debugging & explainability

ELI5 cheat sheet

The entire library is two questions and two functions. What did the model learn overall? → explain_weights. Why did it predict THIS? → explain_prediction. Everything else is: which estimator you point them at, and which format you render into. Its unmatched feature is highlighting the actual words that drove a text prediction.

foundations & formatters global — explain_weights local — explain_prediction black-box — permutation & LIME supported libraries trap ★ most common

Grounded against eli5.readthedocs.io (official docs) & github.com/eli5-org/eli5 — and every claim on this sheet was executed against eli5 0.16.0 / scikit-learn 1.8.0. All numbers in the diagrams are real output, not illustrations. Re-verified 2026-08-28: 0.16.0 (20 Apr 2025) is current, maintained at eli5-org, Python ≥ 3.9.

Two questions · two functions · one Explanation object · five formats

Foundations

Learn the explain → format split once and the rest of the API is mechanical. Card 02 is the trap nobody warns you about — the function every tutorial uses doesn't exist outside a notebook.

01Install & the Whole APIit really is this small

pip install eli5 import eli5★
Maintained at eli5-org/eli5 (a live fork of the original TeamHG-Memex repo, which stalled at 0.13). Current: 0.16.0 — and it works fine on scikit-learn 1.8. The "eli5 is dead" advice you'll find online is out of date.
eli5.explain_weights(clf, …) # GLOBAL eli5.explain_prediction(clf, doc, …) # LOCAL★
The two functions. Both return an Explanation object. Both dispatch on estimator type — so the same call works for a linear model, a random forest, XGBoost or a pipeline.
eli5.show_weights(clf) · eli5.show_prediction(clf, doc)★
explain + format_as_html in one step. Notebook only — see card 02.
eli5.format_as_html · format_as_text · format_as_dict eli5.format_as_dataframe · format_as_image
Five renderings of the same Explanation. HTML for notebooks, text for logs, dict for JSON APIs, DataFrame for analysis, image for Grad-CAM.
eli5.explain_weights_df(clf, feature_names=cols) eli5.explain_prediction_df(clf, row)★
The shortcut that skips HTML entirely. Returns a plain DataFrame — explain_weights_df gives [feature, weight, std]; explain_prediction_df gives [target, feature, weight, value]. Use these in scripts.
eli5.sklearn · eli5.xgboost · eli5.lightgbm · eli5.catboost eli5.keras · eli5.lightning · eli5.sklearn_crfsuite · eli5.lime · eli5.llm
The dispatch targets. You rarely import these directly — the top-level functions find them.

02show_* Needs IPythonverified, and it surprises people

Every tutorial opens with eli5.show_weights(...). In a plain Python script that raises AttributeError — the function is only attached when IPython is importable.

import eli5 eli5.show_weights(clf) # in a .py file # AttributeError: module 'eli5' has no attribute 'show_weights'script
Not a bug — show_* returns an IPython.display.HTML object, so it's gated behind the IPython import.
expl = eli5.explain_weights(clf, feature_names=cols) html = eli5.format_as_html(expl) open('expl.html', 'w').write(html)★
The portable pattern. Works everywhere — scripts, web apps, CI. This is what show_weights does internally anyway.
print(eli5.format_as_text(expl))
For terminals and logs. No IPython, no HTML, no browser.

03The Shared Argumentssame knobs everywhere

Both explain functions take these. feature_names and vec are the difference between a readable answer and x12, x87, x103.

Arg What it does

feature_names Names for tabular columns. Without it you get x0, x1, … — pass list(X.columns).

vec The vectorizer. Unlocks word/char highlighting for text — the killer feature. Card 08.

target_names Human class names instead of y=0, y=1.

targets Explain only these classes. top_targets=2 → only the 2 most probable.

top top=10 → 10 features. top=(5, 5) → 5 positive and 5 negative.

feature_re
feature_filter Regex / callable to keep only matching features. Invaluable on wide one-hot matrices.

show_feature_values On explain_prediction: also print the actual input value next to each contribution.

Arg	What it does
feature_names	Names for tabular columns. Without it you get `x0, x1, …` — pass `list(X.columns)`.
vec	The vectorizer. Unlocks word/char highlighting for text — the killer feature. Card 08.
target_names	Human class names instead of `y=0`, `y=1`.
targets	Explain only these classes. `top_targets=2` → only the 2 most probable.
top	`top=10` → 10 features. `top=(5, 5)` → 5 positive and 5 negative.
feature_re feature_filter	Regex / callable to keep only matching features. Invaluable on wide one-hot matrices.
show_feature_values	On `explain_prediction`: also print the actual input value next to each contribution.

Global & local explanations

Global tells you what the model learned in aggregate. Local tells you why one row got its answer — and for trees and linear models, the decomposition is exact, not approximate.

04explain_weightswhat did it learn?

eli5.show_weights(logreg, feature_names=cols, top=15)★
Linear models → the coefficients, sorted, signed, colour-coded green/red. Plus a <BIAS> row for the intercept.
eli5.show_weights(rf, feature_names=cols)★
Trees / forests → feature_importances_, with a ± standard deviation across trees. A large std means the trees disagree — treat that ranking with suspicion.
eli5.explain_weights_df(rf, feature_names=cols) # → columns: feature, weight, std
Same numbers, as a DataFrame. Sort it, plot it, ship it.
# tree feature_importances_ = mean impurity decreasebiased
It is systematically biased toward high-cardinality and continuous features — a random ID column can outrank a real signal. It's also computed on training data. Prefer PermutationImportance on held-out data (card 09) whenever the ranking actually matters.
eli5.show_weights(clf, vec=vectorizer, top=(10, 10))
For text: the top 10 words pushing toward each class and the top 10 pushing away. The fastest sanity check on any text classifier.

05explain_prediction & <BIAS>why THIS row?

The key insight: <BIAS> is not noise. It's the model's starting point — the training-set mean (trees) or the intercept (linear). Contributions are the deltas from there, and they sum to the prediction exactly.

eli5.show_prediction(model, X_test.iloc[0], feature_names=cols, show_feature_values=True)★
Per-feature contributions for one row, plus the input values that produced them.
eli5.explain_prediction_df(tree, row) # target feature weight value
Trees use the decision-path decomposition (Saabas): walk the path, attribute each node's change in the running mean to the feature that split there.
# verified on a real DecisionTreeRegressor: <BIAS> 223.80 # = mean(y_train), exactly rooms +82.73 dist_km +17.49 # sum = 324.02 == model.predict(row)exact
Not an approximation. Unlike LIME or SHAP sampling, this is an exact algebraic decomposition — see the diagram below.
top_targets=2 · targets=['spam']
On multiclass, explain only the most probable classes instead of all 20.
# features not on the decision path get weight 0
A tree only "uses" the features it actually split on for that row. A zero contribution means "not consulted for this row" — not "irrelevant to the model".

06Text Highlightingthe killer feature

Pass vec= and eli5 maps coefficients back onto the original string, colouring each word by its contribution. Nothing else does this as cleanly.

vec = TfidfVectorizer().fit(docs) clf = LogisticRegression().fit(vec.transform(docs), y) eli5.show_prediction(clf, "great but awful", vec=vec, target_names=['neg', 'pos'])★
Verified real output: great +0.208 (green), awful −0.160 (red), score 0.049, proba 0.512. The near-tie is visible — you can see the model was torn.
eli5.show_prediction(pipe, doc) # Pipeline directly★
Pass the whole Pipeline — eli5 finds the vectorizer itself. FeatureUnion works too.
expl.targets[0].weighted_spans
The character offsets behind the highlighting, if you want to render it yourself.
from eli5.sklearn import InvertableHashingVectorizer
Undoes the hashing trick. HashingVectorizer destroys feature names by design — this recovers likely candidates so your explanation isn't a list of integers.
eli5.show_prediction(clf, doc) # no vec=
You get x8231, x40122. Always pass vec= (or the whole pipeline) for text.

What the numbers actually mean

Every figure below is real output from eli5 0.16.0, not an illustration. The <BIAS> panel is the one worth internalising — it's why local explanations here are exact rather than sampled.

<BIAS> + contributions = the prediction, exactly

A depth-3 DecisionTreeRegressor on house prices. <BIAS> is literally mean(y_train) — the answer the tree would give with no information. Each split then nudges it. age contributes 0 because it wasn't on this row's decision path.

✗ permutation importance on TRAIN

Same fitted forest, importances computed on the training set. The two useless sepal features pick up fake importance — the model memorised them.

✓ permutation importance on TEST

Identical model, held-out data. The sepal features collapse to exactly 0.000 — the truth. This is why you permute on data the model has never seen.

Black-box models & supported libraries

When the model has no coefficients and no decision path, you can't read it — you have to probe it. Two probes: permute the inputs (global) or fit a local surrogate (LIME, local).

07PermutationImportanceworks on anything

Shuffle one column, see how much the score drops. Big drop → the model relied on it. Model-agnostic, and it measures what the model actually uses — not what impurity suggests.

from eli5.sklearn import PermutationImportance perm = PermutationImportance(model, scoring='accuracy', n_iter=10, random_state=0).fit(X_test, y_test) eli5.show_weights(perm, feature_names=cols)★
Note what's fitted where: model is already trained; perm.fit() is called on the test set.
cv='prefit' # ← the DEFAULTread this
The default assumes you pass an already-fitted model and does not refit. So .fit(X, y) here means "score against this data", not "train on it". Pass cv=5 instead and it clones and refits per fold — a different, slower, more robust estimate.
perm.fit(X_train, y_train) # ✗inflates
Verified above: irrelevant features scored 0.020 / 0.009 on train and 0.000 on test. Permuting on training data measures memorisation. Always use held-out data.
# correlated features hide each othercare
If A and B are duplicates, shuffling A does nothing (the model reads B instead) and vice-versa. Both look unimportant. This is a limitation of the method, not of eli5 — cluster correlated features and permute them as a group.
from sklearn.inspection import permutation_importancesklearn has this
For plain tabular models, sklearn's built-in is the maintained choice. eli5's edge is the rendering — and that it drops straight into show_weights alongside everything else.

08TextExplainer (LIME)explain any text pipeline

Your text model is a black box (SVM, MLP, a whole pipeline). LIME generates thousands of perturbed copies of the document, sees how predictions change, and fits a local white-box model to that neighbourhood.

from eli5.lime import TextExplainer te = TextExplainer(random_state=42) te.fit(doc, pipe.predict_proba) te.show_prediction(target_names=names)★
You hand it one document and a predict_proba callable. That's the whole contract — it never touches your model's internals.
te.metrics_ # {'score': …, 'mean_KL_divergence': …}check this
Always inspect it before believing the output. score is how well the local surrogate fits (want high, near 1.0); mean_KL_divergence is how far its probabilities drift (want low). A bad fit means the explanation is fiction — LIME approximated a neighbourhood it couldn't model.
te.show_weights()
The local surrogate's coefficients — i.e. what the black box looks like near this one document, not globally.
# LIME is stochastic
Different random_state → different explanation. Set the seed, and re-run to check stability. If the story changes between seeds, don't trust either.

09Beyond scikit-learnsame two functions

The dispatch is automatic — explain_weights and explain_prediction just work on these too.

eli5.show_weights(xgb_clf) # XGBoost eli5.show_prediction(xgb_clf, row)★
XGBClassifier, XGBRegressor and raw xgboost.Booster. Same for LightGBM and CatBoost.
eli5.show_prediction(keras_model, img, image=pil_img) # Grad-CAM heatmap
Keras image classifiers → a Grad-CAM overlay showing which pixels drove the class. Render it with format_as_image.
eli5.show_weights(crf) # sklearn-crfsuite
Transition and state weights for CRF sequence models. Also supports lightning.
from eli5.llm import explain_prediction # needs `pip install openai`new
The newest addition: explain an LLM classification via its token log-probabilities — highlighting how confident the model was in the label it emitted. Requires the openai client; it is not installed with eli5.
eli5.transform_feature_names(transformer, in_names)
Propagates feature names through a pipeline's transformers — so names survive StandardScaler, MinMaxScaler and friends.

Decision map

Two forks decide everything: global or local, and can I read the model or must I probe it.

flowchart LR
  A["I need to explain
a model"] --> B{"Global or
local?"}

  B -->|"GLOBAL —
what did it learn?"| C{"Model type?"}
  C -->|"linear"| C1["explain_weights
→ coefficients"]
  C -->|"tree / forest / GBM"| C2["explain_weights
→ importances ± std"]
  C2 --> C3["…but impurity is BIASED.
Prefer PermutationImportance
on HELD-OUT data"]
  C -->|"black box"| C4["PermutationImportance
fit on X_test!"]

  B -->|"LOCAL —
why this row?"| D{"Data kind?"}
  D -->|"tabular,
white box"| D1["explain_prediction
<BIAS> + contribs
= prediction EXACTLY"]
  D -->|"text,
white box"| D2["explain_prediction
vec=vectorizer
→ word highlighting"]
  D -->|"text,
black box"| D3["TextExplainer (LIME)
CHECK te.metrics_"]
  D -->|"image (Keras)"| D4["explain_prediction
→ Grad-CAM"]

  C1 --> F["Explanation object"]
  C3 --> F
  C4 --> F
  D1 --> F
  D2 --> F
  D3 --> F
  D4 --> F
  F --> G{"Where does it
need to go?"}
  G -->|notebook| G1["show_weights /
show_prediction"]
  G -->|"script / API"| G2["format_as_html
format_as_text
format_as_dataframe"]
  G1 --> Z(["Ship it"])
  G2 --> Z

  classDef glob fill:#ecf7f2,stroke:#059669,color:#065f46,stroke-width:2px;
  classDef loc  fill:#fdf6ec,stroke:#d97706,color:#92400e,stroke-width:2px;
  classDef bb   fill:#eef0fd,stroke:#4f46e5,color:#3730a3,stroke-width:2px;
  classDef gate fill:#ecf6fa,stroke:#0891b2,color:#155e75,stroke-width:2px;
  classDef warn fill:#fdf0ef,stroke:#dc2626,color:#991b1b,stroke-width:2px;
  classDef ship fill:#1a1d24,stroke:#1a1d24,color:#fbbf24,stroke-width:2px;
  class B,C,D,G gate;
  class C1,C2 glob;
  class D1,D2,D4 loc;
  class C4,D3,F bb;
  class C3 warn;
  class G1,G2 glob;
  class Z ship;

Traps

The first three produce confidently wrong explanations — the most dangerous failure mode in explainability, because the output still looks authoritative.

10Confidently Wrongthe output still looks fine

PermutationImportance(m).fit(X_train, y_train)inflates
Measures memorisation. Irrelevant features get non-zero scores. Fit on held-out data.
trusting tree feature_importances_
Mean impurity decrease is biased toward high-cardinality / continuous features and computed on train. A random ID column can top the chart.
TextExplainer without checking te.metrics_
If the local surrogate fits badly, the explanation is fiction — and it renders just as prettily as a good one. Check score and mean_KL_divergence.
permutation importance on correlated features
Duplicated signal → both features look unimportant, because either can cover for the other.
reading a 0 contribution as "irrelevant"
In a tree it means "not on this row's decision path". The feature may matter enormously for other rows.

11Frictionwhat the traceback means

AttributeError: module 'eli5' has no attribute 'show_weights'
You're in a .py script without IPython. Use explain_weights + format_as_html. Card 02.
# explanation shows x0, x1, x2…
You forgot feature_names=list(X.columns) — or, for text, vec=.
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'openai'
eli5.llm needs the OpenAI client installed separately.
# HashingVectorizer → unreadable feature names
Hashing is one-way by design. Wrap it in InvertableHashingVectorizer to recover candidates.
# "eli5 is unmaintained / broken on new sklearn"
Out of date. The original repo stalled at 0.13, but eli5-org picked it up — 0.16.0 runs on scikit-learn 1.8. Verified.

12eli5 vs SHAPwhen to use which

They answer the same question with different guarantees. Neither is strictly better — but people reach for SHAP reflexively when eli5 is often the right call.

Reach for eli5 Reach for SHAP

Text models — the word-level highlighting is unmatched. You need additive, axiomatic attributions (Shapley values) for audit or compliance.

Fast debugging — one line, no sampling, exact for linear/tree. You want beeswarm / dependence / interaction plots across the whole dataset.

Linear models — you just want the coefficients rendered nicely. Correlated features — SHAP handles them more principledly.

You want the explanation as a DataFrame or JSON for a dashboard. Deep nets — DeepExplainer / GradientExplainer.

Reach for eli5	Reach for SHAP
Text models — the word-level highlighting is unmatched.	You need additive, axiomatic attributions (Shapley values) for audit or compliance.
Fast debugging — one line, no sampling, exact for linear/tree.	You want beeswarm / dependence / interaction plots across the whole dataset.
Linear models — you just want the coefficients rendered nicely.	Correlated features — SHAP handles them more principledly.
You want the explanation as a DataFrame or JSON for a dashboard.	Deep nets — `DeepExplainer` / `GradientExplainer`.

The honest summary: eli5 is the debugger — fast, exact where it can be, and unbeatable on text. SHAP is the audit tool — slower, theoretically grounded, better plots. Use eli5 while building; reach for SHAP when someone needs to sign off.

Worth memorizing

two functions, that's itexplain_weights = global · explain_prediction = local

explain ≠ formatexplain_* → Explanation object → format_as_html/text/dict/dataframe/image

show_* needs IPythonplain script → AttributeError. Use explain_* + format_as_*

<BIAS> = the starting pointtraining mean (trees) / intercept (linear) — not noise

BIAS + contribs == predict()exactly — an algebraic decomposition, not a sampled estimate

pass vec= for textunlocks word highlighting · without it you get x8231

Pipelines work directlyhand explain_prediction the whole pipeline — it finds the vectorizer

cv='prefit' is the DEFAULTPermutationImportance won't refit — pass an already-fitted model

perm.fit(X_test, y_test)never on train — verified: fake importances on train, 0.000 on test

impurity importance is biasedfavours high-cardinality features · prefer permutation on held-out data

check te.metrics_bad LIME surrogate fit → the explanation is fiction, rendered beautifully

correlated features hidepermutation makes duplicated signal look unimportant on both features

weight 0 ≠ irrelevantin a tree it means "not on this row's decision path"

explain_weights_dfskip HTML entirely — straight to a pandas DataFrame

eli5 is NOT deadeli5-org/eli5 0.16.0 runs on sklearn 1.8 · old TeamHG-Memex stalled at 0.13

eli5 debugs, SHAP auditseli5 for text + fast exact checks · SHAP for axiomatic attributions