# LandscapeSHAP: Which Persistent Homology Class Gets the Credit?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31469 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31469/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [Learning Important Features Through Propagating Activation Differences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02685/) (2017)
- [The Mythos of Model Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03490/) (2016)
- [Persistence Images: A Stable Vector Representation of Persistent Homology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.06217/) (2015)
- [PersLay: A Neural Network Layer for Persistence Diagrams and New Graph Topological Signatures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09378/) (2019)
- [Ripser: efficient computation of Vietoris-Rips persistence barcodes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02518/) (2019)
- [Bounding the Estimation Error of Sampling-based Shapley Value Approximation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.4265/) (2013)
- [Explaining Predictive Uncertainty with Information Theoretic Shapley Values](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05724/) (2023)
- [Persistent homology detects curvature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13196/) (2019)
- [Persformer: A Transformer Architecture for Topological Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.15210/) (2021)
- [Embeddings of Persistence Diagrams into Hilbert Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05604/) (2019)
- [Stable Topological Summaries for Analyzing the Organization of Cells in a Packed Tissue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06467/) (2019)
- [Shapley Homology: Topological Analysis of Sample Influence for Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06509/) (2019)
- [Visualizing Topological Importance: A Class-Driven Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13185/) (2023)
- [A Pipeline for Data-Driven Learning of Topological Features with Applications to Protein Stability Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04847/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Shapley values, a solution concept from cooperative game theory, have recently become a standard tool for feature credit allocation in machine learning. They provide an axiomatically justified method to fairly distribute a model's prediction among the data features. Shapley values have not yet been applied to explain machine learning models trained on features from topological data analysis. We develop what we believe is the first such approach, focusing on the persistence landscape featurization of persistence diagrams. Because each landscape coordinate is a rank statistic, crediting a model's prediction back to individual persistent homology classes (persistence diagram points) is nontrivial. We introduce LandscapeSHAP, a method for fair credit allocation to persistence diagram points based on a model's prediction. For linear models on persistence landscapes, LandscapeSHAP has a closed form expression that gives the exact Shapley value of every persistence diagram point. In particular, there is no coalition sampling required. We further prove that the four Shapley "fairness" axioms uniquely characterize this credit allocation for any model, not only linear ones. For a general nonlinear model, this unique value can only be calculated exactly from its defining coalition averaging formula, which requires considering all 2N many coalitions, where N is the number of points in the persistence diagram. This is computationally intractable for persistence diagrams of realistic size. We complement the exact linear model result with an efficient Monte Carlo sampling of persistence diagram coalitions. We give convergence rates in terms of number of samples needed to approximate to a desired degree of accuracy. We also prove stability results for the LandscapeSHAP credit allocation, for any model.