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Decision Tree

This document provides an abstract and introduction to Chapter 9 on decision trees. It discusses decision trees as classifiers that use recursive partitioning to divide an instance space into subsets based on discrete functions of attribute values. Internal nodes split the space into sub-spaces and leaves assign a class. Decision trees are popular in machine learning, statistics, pattern recognition and data mining. The chapter will provide an updated survey of methods for constructing decision trees in a top-down manner and discuss splitting criteria and pruning methodologies.

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12 views

Decision Tree

This document provides an abstract and introduction to Chapter 9 on decision trees. It discusses decision trees as classifiers that use recursive partitioning to divide an instance space into subsets based on discrete functions of attribute values. Internal nodes split the space into sub-spaces and leaves assign a class. Decision trees are popular in machine learning, statistics, pattern recognition and data mining. The chapter will provide an updated survey of methods for constructing decision trees in a top-down manner and discuss splitting criteria and pruning methodologies.

Uploaded by

2021838448
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chapter 9

DECISION TREES

Lior Rokach
Department of lndustrial Engineering
Tel-Aviv University

Oded Maimon
DepaHment of Industrial Engineering
Tel-Aviv University
maimon@eng.tau.ac.il

Abstract Decision Trees are considered to be one of the most popular approaches for rep-
resenting classifiers. Researchers from various disciplines such as statistics, ma-
chine learning, pattern recognition, and Data Mining have dealt with the issue of
growing a decision tree from available data. This paper presents an updated sur-
vey of current methods for constructing decision tree classifiers in a top-down
manner. The chapter suggests a unified algorithmic framework for
these algorithms and describes various splitting criteria and pruning methodolo-
gies.

Keywords: Decision tree, Information Gain, Gini Index, Gain Ratio, Pruning, Minimum
Description Length, C4.5, CART, Oblivious Decision Trees

1. Decision Trees
A decision tree is a classifier expressed as a recursive partition of the in-
stance space. The decision tree consists of nodes that form a rooted tree,
meaning it is a directed tree with a node called "root" that has no incoming
edges. All other nodes have exactly one incoming edge. A node with outgoing
edges is called an internal or test node. All other nodes are called leaves (also
known as terminal or decision nodes). In a decision tree, each internal node
splits the instance space into two or more sub-spaces according to a certain
discrete function of the input attributes values. In the simplest and most fre-
166 DATA MINING AND KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY HANDBOOK

quent case, each test considers a single attribute, such that the instance space is
partitioned according to the attribute's value. In the case of numeric attributes,
the condition refers to a range.
Each leaf is assigned to one class representing the most appropriate target
value. Alternatively, the leaf may hold a probability vector indicating the prob-
ability of the target attribute having a certain value. Instances are classified by
navigating them from the root of the tree down to a leaf, according to the
outcome of the tests along the path. Figure 9.1 describes a decision tree that
reasons whether or not a potential customer will respond to a direct mailing.
Internal nodes are represented as circles, whereas leaves are denoted as tri-
angles. Note that this decision tree incorporates both nominal and numeric at-
tributes. Given this classifier, the analyst can predict the response of a potential
customer (by sorting it down the tree), and understand the behavioral charac-
teristics of the entire potential customers population regarding direct mailing.
Each node is labeled with the attribute it tests, and its branches are labeled with
its corresponding values.

Figure 9.1. Decision Tree Presenting Response to Direct Mailing.

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