Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
PyTorch vs TensorFlow vs scikit-learn: What are the differences?
Introduction
Below are the key differences between PyTorch, TensorFlow, and scikit-learn.
Ease of Use: PyTorch and scikit-learn are known for their simplicity and ease of use. They provide intuitive APIs and are beginner-friendly. TensorFlow, on the other hand, has a steeper learning curve and can be more complex due to its computational graph concept.
Dynamic vs Static Graphs: PyTorch and scikit-learn use dynamic computational graphs, where the graph is constructed on-the-fly during execution. This allows for easier debugging and flexibility. In contrast, TensorFlow uses a static computational graph, where the graph needs to be defined and optimized before execution. This makes TensorFlow more efficient for large-scale deployments and optimizations.
Community and Ecosystem: TensorFlow has a larger community and a broader ecosystem compared to PyTorch and scikit-learn. It has been around for longer and is backed by Google, which has led to extensive support, numerous libraries, and a wealth of online resources. PyTorch and scikit-learn, although growing rapidly, have a smaller community and ecosystem in comparison.
Deep Learning Focus: PyTorch and TensorFlow are primarily focused on deep learning, with extensive support for neural networks. They provide a wide range of pre-built neural network architectures and optimization techniques. On the other hand, scikit-learn is a general-purpose machine learning library that covers a broader range of traditional machine learning algorithms.
Hardware and Deployment Support: TensorFlow has better support for deployment on a wide range of platforms, including mobile devices (via TensorFlow Lite) and distributed systems (via TensorFlow Distributed). It also has better integration with specialized hardware like GPUs and TPUs. PyTorch and scikit-learn, while not lacking in deployment options, do not have the same level of support as TensorFlow.
Data Preprocessing Capabilities: scikit-learn stands out in terms of its comprehensive data preprocessing capabilities. It provides various preprocessing techniques such as scaling, encoding, and feature selection in a user-friendly manner. While PyTorch and TensorFlow have some data preprocessing functionality, scikit-learn offers more diversity and ease of use in this domain.
In summary, PyTorch and TensorFlow are widely used deep learning frameworks with different graph computation approaches and ecosystem sizes. TensorFlow is more popular, has extensive deployment support, and is focused on deep learning. On the other hand, PyTorch is known for its simplicity and dynamic graph, while scikit-learn covers a broader range of machine learning algorithms with excellent data preprocessing capabilities.
Pytorch is a famous tool in the realm of machine learning and it has already set up its own ecosystem. Tutorial documentation is really detailed on the official website. It can help us to create our deep learning model and allowed us to use GPU as the hardware support.
I have plenty of projects based on Pytorch and I am familiar with building deep learning models with this tool. I have used TensorFlow too but it is not dynamic. Tensorflow works on a static graph concept that means the user first has to define the computation graph of the model and then run the ML model, whereas PyTorch believes in a dynamic graph that allows defining/manipulating the graph on the go. PyTorch offers an advantage with its dynamic nature of creating graphs.
For my company, we may need to classify image data. Keras provides a high-level Machine Learning framework to achieve this. Specifically, CNN models can be compactly created with little code. Furthermore, already well-proven classifiers are available in Keras, which could be used as Transfer Learning for our use case.
We chose Keras over PyTorch, another Machine Learning framework, as our preliminary research showed that Keras is more compatible with .js. You can also convert a PyTorch model into TensorFlow.js, but it seems that Keras needs to be a middle step in between, which makes Keras a better choice.
For data analysis, we choose a Python-based framework because of Python's simplicity as well as its large community and available supporting tools. We choose PyTorch over TensorFlow for our machine learning library because it has a flatter learning curve and it is easy to debug, in addition to the fact that our team has some existing experience with PyTorch. Numpy is used for data processing because of its user-friendliness, efficiency, and integration with other tools we have chosen. Finally, we decide to include Anaconda in our dev process because of its simple setup process to provide sufficient data science environment for our purposes. The trained model then gets deployed to the back end as a pickle.
A large part of our product is training and using a machine learning model. As such, we chose one of the best coding languages, Python, for machine learning. This coding language has many packages which help build and integrate ML models. For the main portion of the machine learning, we chose PyTorch as it is one of the highest quality ML packages for Python. PyTorch allows for extreme creativity with your models while not being too complex. Also, we chose to include scikit-learn as it contains many useful functions and models which can be quickly deployed. Scikit-learn is perfect for testing models, but it does not have as much flexibility as PyTorch. We also include NumPy and Pandas as these are wonderful Python packages for data manipulation. Also for testing models and depicting data, we have chosen to use Matplotlib and seaborn, a package which creates very good looking plots. Matplotlib is the standard for displaying data in Python and ML. Whereas, seaborn is a package built on top of Matplotlib which creates very visually pleasing plots.
Pros of PyTorch
- Easy to use15
- Developer Friendly11
- Easy to debug10
- Sometimes faster than TensorFlow7
Pros of scikit-learn
- Scientific computing26
- Easy19
Pros of TensorFlow
- High Performance32
- Connect Research and Production19
- Deep Flexibility16
- Auto-Differentiation12
- True Portability11
- Easy to use6
- High level abstraction5
- Powerful5
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of PyTorch
- Lots of code3
- It eats poop1
Cons of scikit-learn
- Limited2
Cons of TensorFlow
- Hard9
- Hard to debug6
- Documentation not very helpful2