Path: blob/master/cpd4.5/notebooks/python_sdk/deployments/spark/Use Spark and batch deployment to predict customer churn.ipynb
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Use Spark and batch deployment to predict customer churn with ibm-watson-machine-learning
This notebook contains steps and code to develop a predictive model, and start scoring new data. This notebook introduces commands for getting data and for basic data cleaning and exploration, pipeline creation, model training, model persistance to Watson Machine Learning repository, model deployment, and scoring.
Some familiarity with Python is helpful. This notebook uses Python 3.9 and Apache® Spark 3.0.
You will use a data set, Telco Customer Churn, which details anonymous customer data from a telecommunication company. Use the details of this data set to predict customer churn which is very critical to business as it's easier to retain existing customers rather than acquiring new ones.
Learning goals
The learning goals of this notebook are:
Load a CSV file into an Apache® Spark DataFrame.
Explore data.
Prepare data for training and evaluation.
Create an Apache® Spark machine learning pipeline.
Train and evaluate a model.
Persist a pipeline and model in Watson Machine Learning repository.
Explore and visualize prediction results using the plotly package.
Deploy a model for batch scoring using Wastson Machine Learning API.
Contents
This notebook contains the following parts:
Connection to WML
Authenticate the Watson Machine Learning service on IBM Cloud Pack for Data. You need to provide platform url
, your username
and api_key
.
Alternatively you can use username
and password
to authenticate WML services.
Install and import the ibm-watson-machine-learning
package
Note: ibm-watson-machine-learning
documentation can be found here.
Working with spaces
First of all, you need to create a space that will be used for your work. If you do not have space already created, you can use {PLATFORM_URL}/ml-runtime/spaces?context=icp4data
to create one.
Click New Deployment Space
Create an empty space
Go to space
Settings
tabCopy
space_id
and paste it below
Tip: You can also use SDK to prepare the space for your work. More information can be found here.
Action: Assign space ID below
You can use list
method to print all existing spaces.
To be able to interact with all resources available in Watson Machine Learning, you need to set space which you will be using.
Test Spark
In this section you will load the data as an Apache® Spark DataFrame and perform a basic exploration.
Explore the loaded data by using the following Apache® Spark DataFrame methods:
print schema
count all records
show distribution of label classes
As you can see, the data contains 21 fields. "Churn" field is the one we would like to predict (label).
Data set contains 7043 records.
Now you will check if all records have complete data.
You can see that there are some missing values you can investigate that all missing values are present in TotalCharges
feature. We will use dataset with missing values removed for model training and evaluation.
Now you will inspect distribution of classes in label column.
3.1: Prepare data
In this subsection you will split your data into: train, test and predict datasets.
As you can see our data has been successfully split into three datasets:
The train data set, which is the largest group, is used for training.
The test data set will be used for model evaluation and is used to test the assumptions of the model.
The predict data set will be used for prediction.
3.2: Create pipeline and train a model
In this section you will create an Apache® Spark machine learning pipeline and then train the model.
In the first step you need to import the Apache® Spark machine learning packages that will be needed in the subsequent steps.
In the following step, convert all the predictors to features vector and label feature convert to numeric.
Next, define estimators you want to use for classification. Logistic Regression is used in the following example.
Let's build the pipeline now. A pipeline consists of transformers and an estimator.
Now, you can train your Logistic Regression model using the previously defined pipeline and train data."
You can check your model accuracy now. To evaluate the model, use test data.
You can tune your model now to achieve better accuracy. For simplicity of this example tuning section is omitted.
In this section you will learn how to store your pipeline and model in Watson Machine Learning repository using Python client libraries.
Note: Apache® Spark 3.0 is required.
4.1: Save pipeline and model
In this subsection you will learn how to save pipeline and model artifacts to your Watson Machine Learning instance.
Get saved model metadata from Watson Machine Learning.
Model Id can be used to retrive latest model version from Watson Machine Learning instance.
4.2: Load model
In this subsection you will learn how to load back saved model from specified instance of Watson Machine Learning.
As you can see the name is correct. You have already learned how save and load the model from Watson Machine Learning repository.
In this section you will learn how to load data from batch scoring and visualize the prediction results with plotly package.
5.1: Make local prediction using previously loaded model and test data
In this subsection you will score predict_data data set.
Preview the results by calling the show() method on the predictions DataFrame.
By tabulating a count, you can see the split between labels.
In this section you will learn how to create batch deployment and to score a new data record by using the Watson Machine Learning REST API. For more information about REST APIs, see the Swagger Documentation.
6.1 Prepare scoring data for batch job
Get data for prediction
First, download scoring data into notebook's filesystem
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6.2: Create batch deployment
Now you can create a batch scoring endpoint. Execute the following sample code that uses the published_model_ID value to create the scoring endpoint for predictions.
Create batch deployment for published model
Batch deployment has been created.
You can retrieve now your deployment ID.
You can also list all deployments in your space.
If you want to get additional information on your deployment, you can do it as below.
Tip: To install pandas execute !pip install pandas
Now, your job has been submitted to Spark runtime.
You can retrieve now your job ID.
You can also list all jobs in your space.
If you want to get additional information on your job, you can do it as below.
Monitor job execution
Here you can check status of your batch scoring. When status of Spark job is completed
the results will be written to scoring_output file in Object Storage.
Get scored data
If you want to clean up all created assets:
experiments
trainings
pipelines
model definitions
models
functions
deployments
please follow up this sample notebook.
You successfully completed this notebook! You learned how to use Apache Spark machine learning as well as Watson Machine Learning for model creation and deployment.
Check out our Online Documentation for more samples, tutorials, documentation, how-tos, and blog posts.
Author
Amadeusz Masny, Python Software Developer in Watson Machine Learning at IBM
Copyright © 2020-2025 IBM. This notebook and its source code are released under the terms of the MIT License.