Abstract: Computational systems and methods are provided to automatically assess residual characteristics of an existing machine learning model to identify and determine suboptimal pockets and augmentation strategies. A computing system, device and method for optimizing a machine learning model for performing predictions is provided. The computing device performs sub-optimal pocket identification on an existing machine learning algorithm by residual analysis to calculate an error. The computing device utilizes the residual as a target for an ensemble tree model and automatically generates a set of interpretable rules from the tree based ensemble model that contribute to the suboptimal pockets. The rules indicating relationships between features and interactions as well as values for the sub-optimal pockets. The computing device determines optimizations for improving the machine learning model based on the interpretable computer-implemented rules.