Author: Christophe Regouby
Date: 2026-07-22

# Training a Tabnet model from missing-values dataset

#### Christophe Regouby

#### 2026-07-22

# Motivation

Real-life training dataset usually contains missing data. The vast majority of deep-learning networks do not handle missing data and thus either stop or crash when values are missing in the predictors.

But Tabnet use a masking mechanism that we can reuse to cover the missing data in the training set.

As we enter the world of missing-data, we have to question the type of missing-data we deal with. We could have missing data at random (MAR), like for example some transmission errors on a sensor data dataset, or missing not at random (MNAR) when some interactions exists between the missing data and other predictors values for the same sample. The later is a more complex topic to cover, and we will try to investigate it here through the `ames` dataset.

# Missing-data dataset creation

## Ames missings understanding

The `ames` dataset from `{modeldata}` contains a lot of null values that the human analysis clearly understand as an implicit “missing object” described by that value. We have for example pool surface of 0 square meters means “no pool”, basement surface of 0 square meters means “no basement”, …
Many of those variables can be detected visually by inspecting the distribution of the values like, for example, the `Masonry veneer area` predictor :

    library(tidymodels, quietly = TRUE)
    library(tabnet)
    data("ames", package = "modeldata")
    qplot(ames$Mas_Vnr_Area)

We know that it will be extremely difficult for a model to capture an internal representation of such distribution, and thus we want to avoid the null values to penalize the model internal representation.

## While keeping some room for freedom

Many of those variables come as a pair in the `ames` dataset, one for the qualitative aspect, the other for the quantitative aspect. We have for example `Pool_QC` for pool condition, that has a “no_pool” level with `Pool_Area=0` in that case.
As human, we have the intuition that knowing if a pool is present is important for the modeling task. So we want the model to get an internal representation of the implicit `has_pool=FALSE` without having it explicit in the dataset. In order to do so, we have to let the model some freedom to infer the “no_pool” state and thus we should not mutate both variables in the pair `Pool_Area=NA` and `Pool_QC=NA` at the same time.

## Ames with missing data

Let’s turn those missing objects data explicitly into `NAs` in an new `ames_missing` dataset :

A quick and dirty way to achieve this on numerical predictors is to `na_if()` zeros on any column which name is related to surface and area.
Then, according to the keep room for freedom rule, do it carefully on the matching categorical predictors

    col_with_zero_as_na <- ames %>%
      select(where(is.numeric)) %>%
      select(matches("_SF|Area|Misc_Val|[Pp]orch$")) %>%
      summarise_each(min) %>%
      select_if(~.x==0) %>%
      names()
    ames_missing <- ames %>% mutate_at(col_with_zero_as_na, na_if, 0) %>%
      mutate_at("Alley", na_if, "No_Alley_Access") %>%
      mutate_at("Fence", na_if, "No_Fence") %>%
      mutate_at(c("Garage_Cond", "Garage_Finish"), na_if, "No_Garage") %>%
      mutate_at(c("Bsmt_Exposure", "BsmtFin_Type_1", "BsmtFin_Type_2"), na_if, "No_Basement")

    visdat::vis_miss(ames_missing)

ames missing values visualization showing few variables with more than 90% missingness with a global 13% missing

We can see here that variable are not missing at random, and thus we can expect the model to capture the missingness relation during the pretraining phase.

Note: A better way to achieve proper value mutation to explicit NAs would be to also check if the qualitative column in the pair refers to `none` or to zero occurrence of the equipment. But this is beyond the scope of this vignette.

# Model pretraining

Let’s pretrain one model for each of those dataset, and analyze variable importance that emerge after the unsupervised representation learning step:

## Variable importance with raw `ames` dataset

    ames_rec <- recipe(Sale_Price ~ ., data=ames) %>%
      step_normalize(all_numeric())

    cat_emb_dim <- map_dbl(ames %>% select_if(is.factor), ~log2(nlevels(.x)) %>% round)

    ames_pretrain <- tabnet_pretrain(ames_rec, data=ames,  epoch=50, cat_emb_dim = cat_emb_dim,
                                valid_split = 0.2, verbose=TRUE, batch=2930,
                                early_stopping_patience = 3L, early_stopping_tolerance = 1e-4)
    autoplot(ames_pretrain)

    [Epoch 001] Loss: 43.708794 Valid loss: 8066126.500000
    [Epoch 002] Loss: 31.463089 Valid loss: 5631984.000000
    [Epoch 003] Loss: 23.396217 Valid loss: 3901085.500000
    [Epoch 004] Loss: 19.241619 Valid loss: 2947481.750000
    [Epoch 005] Loss: 15.032537 Valid loss: 2250338.000000
    [Epoch 006] Loss: 12.991020 Valid loss: 1815583.125000
    [Epoch 007] Loss: 11.044646 Valid loss: 1533597.875000
    [Epoch 008] Loss: 9.114124 Valid loss: 1395840.000000
    [Epoch 009] Loss: 8.362211 Valid loss: 1258169.375000
    [Epoch 010] Loss: 7.549719 Valid loss: 1064599.500000
    [Epoch 011] Loss: 6.808529 Valid loss: 998335.625000
    [Epoch 012] Loss: 6.569450 Valid loss: 1047418.500000
    [Epoch 013] Loss: 6.606429 Valid loss: 1048583.625000
    [Epoch 014] Loss: 6.742617 Valid loss: 993241.312500
    [Epoch 015] Loss: 6.806847 Valid loss: 995705.875000
    [Epoch 016] Loss: 6.618536 Valid loss: 1026789.625000
    [Epoch 017] Loss: 6.593469 Valid loss: 1033726.437500
    Early stopping at epoch 017

ames_fit model training diagnostic plot

Now we capture the columns with missings, and create a convenience function to color the `vip::vip()` plot output according to the missingness quality of the column

    col_with_missings <- ames_missing %>%
      summarise_all(~sum(is.na(.)) > 0) %>%
      t %>% enframe(name = "Variable") %>%
      rename(has_missing = "value")

    vip_color <- function(object, col_has_missing) {
      vip_data <- vip::vi(object) %>% arrange(Importance)
      vis_miss_plus <- left_join(vip_data, col_has_missing , by = "Variable") %>%
        mutate(Variable = factor(Variable, levels = vip_data$Variable))
      vis_miss_plus
      ggplot(vis_miss_plus, aes(x = Variable, y = Importance, fill = has_missing)) +
        geom_col() + coord_flip() + scale_fill_grey()
    }
    vip_color(ames_pretrain, col_with_missings)

ames_fit model variable importance plot

We get `BsmtFin_Type_1`, `BsmtFin_SF_1` and `Bsmt_Exposure` variables in the top ten important variables according to this run of pretraining the model. Those variables has been screened as having few missing values.

Note that this result varies a lot from run to run. The captured result here depends a lot on your initialization conditions.

## Variable importance with `ames_missing` dataset

Let’s pretrain a new model with the same hyperparameter, but now using the `ames_missing` dataset.
In order to compensate the 13% missingness already present in the `ames_missing` dataset, we adjust the `pretraining_ratio` parameter to `0.5 - 0.13 = 0.37`

    ames_missing_rec <- recipe(Sale_Price ~ ., data = ames_missing) %>%
      step_normalize(all_numeric())
    ames_missing_pretrain <- tabnet_pretrain(ames_missing_rec, data = ames_missing, epoch = 50,
                                        cat_emb_dim = cat_emb_dim,
                                        valid_split = 0.2, verbose = TRUE, batch = 2930,
                                        pretraining_ratio = 0.37,
                                        early_stopping_patience = 3L, early_stopping_tolerance = 1e-4)
    autoplot(ames_missing_pretrain)
    vip_color(ames_missing_pretrain, col_with_missings)

    [Epoch 001] Loss: 56.250610 Valid loss: 40321308.000000
    [Epoch 002] Loss: 44.254524 Valid loss: 39138240.000000
    [Epoch 003] Loss: 33.992207 Valid loss: 38648800.000000
    [Epoch 004] Loss: 26.421488 Valid loss: 37445656.000000
    [Epoch 005] Loss: 22.290133 Valid loss: 35814052.000000
    ...
    [Epoch 021] Loss: 10.877335 Valid loss: 20903176.000000
    [Epoch 022] Loss: 11.023649 Valid loss: 20772972.000000
    [Epoch 023] Loss: 10.819239 Valid loss: 20642806.000000
    [Epoch 024] Loss: 10.994371 Valid loss: 20575458.000000
    [Epoch 025] Loss: 10.700000 Valid loss: 20449918.000000
    [Epoch 026] Loss: 10.902529 Valid loss: 20680102.000000
    [Epoch 027] Loss: 10.791571 Valid loss: 20849496.000000
    [Epoch 028] Loss: 11.102308 Valid loss: 20995910.000000
    Early stopping at epoch 028

We can see here no variables with high missingness is present in the top 10 important variables. This seems to be a good sign of the model having captured proper interactions between variables.

# Model training

## Variable importance with raw `ames` dataset

    ames_fit <- tabnet_fit(ames_rec, data = ames,  tabnet_model = ames_pretrain,
                                epoch = 50, cat_emb_dim = cat_emb_dim,
                                valid_split = 0.2, verbose = TRUE, batch = 2930,
                                early_stopping_patience = 5L, early_stopping_tolerance = 1e-4)
    autoplot(ames_fit)
    vip_color(ames_fit, col_with_missings)

ames_fit model training diagnostic plot

Here again, the model uses two predictors `BasmFin_SF_2` and `Garage_Finish` that have respectively 88 % and 5 % missingness.

## Variable importance with `ames_missing` dataset

    ames_missing_fit <- tabnet_fit(ames_rec, data = ames_missing,  tabnet_model = ames_missing_pretrain,
                                epoch = 50, cat_emb_dim = cat_emb_dim,
                                valid_split = 0.2, verbose = TRUE, batch = 2930,
                                early_stopping_patience = 5L, early_stopping_tolerance = 1e-4)
    autoplot(ames_missing_fit)
    vip_color(ames_missing_fit, col_with_missings)

ames_fit model training diagnostic plot

Here we can see one predictors `Garage_Area` with 5 % missingness in the top 10.

# Conclusion

Even if the models have a huge variability in the variable importance among different training, we have the intuition that model trained with explicit missing data will provide better result than its counterpart trained with zero-imputed variables.

In any case, having the capability to pretrain and fit TabNet models with MAR dataset or MNAR dataset is of high convenience for the real-life use-cases.