Classification: Basic Concepts and

Decision Trees
Classification: Definition
 Given a collection of records (training
set )
 Each record contains a set of attributes, one of the
attributes is the class.
 Find a model for class attribute as a
function of the values of other
attributes.
 Goal: previously unseen records should
be assigned a class as accurately as
possible.
 A test set is used to determine the accuracy of the
model. Usually, the given data set is divided into
training and test sets, with training set used to build
the model and test set used to validate it.
Illustrating Classification Task
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class
1 Yes Large 125K No
2 No Medium 100K No
3 No Small 70K No
4 Yes Medium 120K No
5 No Large 95K Yes
6 No Medium 60K No
7 Yes Large 220K No Learn
8 No Small 85K Yes Model
9 No Medium 75K No
10 No Small 90K Yes
10

Apply
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class Model
11 No Small 55K ?
12 Yes Medium 80K ?
13 Yes Large 110K ?
14 No Small 95K ?
15 No Large 67K ?
10
Examples of Classification Task
 Predicting tumor cells as benign or malignant

 Classifying credit card transactions

as legitimate or fraudulent

 Classifying secondary structures of protein

as alpha-helix, beta-sheet, or random
coil

 Categorizing news stories as finance,

weather, entertainment, sports, etc
Classification Techniques
 Decision Tree based Methods
 Rule-based Methods
 Memory based reasoning
 Neural Networks
 Naïve Bayes and Bayesian Belief Networks
 Support Vector Machines
 Example of a Decision Tree

Splitting Attributes
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

1 Yes Single 125K No

2 No Married 100K No Refund
Yes No
3 No Single 70K No
4 Yes Married 120K No NO MarSt
5 No Divorced 95K Yes Single, Divorced Married
6 No Married 60K No
7 Yes Divorced 220K No TaxInc NO
8 No Single 85K Yes < 80K > 80K
9 No Married 75K No
NO YES
10 No Single 90K Yes
10

Training Data Model: Decision Tree

 Another Example of Decision Tree

MarSt Single,
Married Divorced
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat
NO Refund
1 Yes Single 125K No
Yes No
2 No Married 100K No
3 No Single 70K No NO TaxInc
4 Yes Married 120K No < 80K > 80K
5 No Divorced 95K Yes
NO YES
6 No Married 60K No
7 Yes Divorced 220K No
8 No Single 85K Yes
9 No Married 75K No There could be more than one tree that
10 No Single 90K Yes fits the same data!
10
Decision Tree Classification Task
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class
1 Yes Large 125K No
2 No Medium 100K No
3 No Small 70K No
4 Yes Medium 120K No
5 No Large 95K Yes
6 No Medium 60K No
7 Yes Large 220K No Learn
8 No Small 85K Yes Model
9 No Medium 75K No
10 No Small 90K Yes
10

Apply Decision
Model Tree
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class
11 No Small 55K ?
12 Yes Medium 80K ?
13 Yes Large 110K ?
14 No Small 95K ?
15 No Large 67K ?
10
Apply Model to Test Data
Test Data
Start from the root of tree. Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

No Married 80K ?
Refund 10

Yes No

NO MarSt
Single, Divorced Married

TaxInc NO
< 80K > 80K

NO YES
Apply Model to Test Data
Test Data
Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

No Married 80K ?
Refund 10

Yes No

NO MarSt
Single, Divorced Married

TaxInc NO
< 80K > 80K

NO YES
Apply Model to Test Data
Test Data
Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

No Married 80K ?
Refund 10

Yes No

NO MarSt
Single, Divorced Married

TaxInc NO
< 80K > 80K

NO YES
Apply Model to Test Data
Test Data
Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

No Married 80K ?
Refund 10

Yes No

NO MarSt
Single, Divorced Married

TaxInc NO
< 80K > 80K

NO YES
Apply Model to Test Data
Test Data
Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

No Married 80K ?
Refund 10

Yes No

NO MarSt
Single, Divorced Married

TaxInc NO
< 80K > 80K

NO YES
Apply Model to Test Data
Test Data
Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

No Married 80K ?
Refund 10

Yes No

NO MarSt
Single, Divorced Married Assign Cheat to “No”

TaxInc NO
< 80K > 80K

NO YES
Decision Tree Classification Task
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class
1 Yes Large 125K No
2 No Medium 100K No
3 No Small 70K No
4 Yes Medium 120K No
5 No Large 95K Yes
6 No Medium 60K No
7 Yes Large 220K No Learn
8 No Small 85K Yes Model
9 No Medium 75K No
10 No Small 90K Yes
10

Apply Decision
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class
Model Tree
11 No Small 55K ?
12 Yes Medium 80K ?
13 Yes Large 110K ?
14 No Small 95K ?
15 No Large 67K ?
10
Decision Tree Induction
 Many Algorithms:
 Hunt’s Algorithm (one of the earliest)
 CART
 ID3, C4.5
 SLIQ,SPRINT
Tree Induction
 Greedy strategy.
 Split the records based on an attribute test
that optimizes certain criterion.

 Issues
 Determine how to split the records
 How to specify the attribute test condition?
 How to determine the best split?
 Determine when to stop splitting
Tree Induction
 Greedy strategy.
 Split the records based on an attribute test
that optimizes certain criterion.

 Issues
 Determine how to split the records
 How to specify the attribute test condition?
 How to determine the best split?
 Determine when to stop splitting
How to Specify Test Condition?
 Depends on attribute types
 Nominal
 Ordinal
 Continuous

 Depends on number of ways to split

 2-way split
 Multi-way split
Splitting Based on Nominal Attributes
 Multi-way split: Use as many partitions as distinct
values.
CarType
Family Luxury
Sports

 Binary split: Divides values into two subsets.

Need to find optimal partitioning.

CarType OR CarType
{Sports, {Family,
Luxury} {Family} Luxury} {Sports}
Splitting Based on Ordinal
Attributes
 Multi-way split: Use as many partitions as distinct
values.
Size
Small Large
Medium

 Binary split: Divides values into two subsets.

Need to find optimal partitioning.
Size Size
{Small,
{Large}
OR {Medium,
{Small}
Medium} Large}

 What about this split? Size

{Small,
Large} {Medium}
Splitting Based on Continuous
Attributes
 Different ways of handling
 Discretization to form an ordinal categorical
attribute
 Static – discretize once at the beginning
 Dynamic – ranges can be found by equal interval
bucketing, equal frequency bucketing
(percentiles), or clustering.

 Binary Decision: (A < v) or (A  v)

 consider all possible splits and finds the best cut
 can be more compute intensive
Splitting Based on Continuous
Attributes
Tree Induction
 Greedy strategy.
 Split the records based on an attribute test
that optimizes certain criterion.

 Issues
 Determine how to split the records
 How to specify the attribute test condition?
 How to determine the best split?
 Determine when to stop splitting
How to determine the Best Split
Before Splitting: 10 records of class 0,
10 records of class 1

Which test condition is the best?

How to determine the Best Split
 Greedy approach:
 Nodes with homogeneous class distribution are
preferred
 Need a measure of node impurity:

Non-homogeneous, Homogeneous,
High degree of impurity Low degree of impurity
Measures of Node Impurity
 Gini Index

 Entropy

 Misclassification error
How to Find the Best Split
Before Splitting: C0 N00 M0
C1 N01

A? B?
Yes No Yes No

Node N1 Node N2 Node N3 Node N4

C0 N10 C0 N20 C0 N30 C0 N40

C1 N11 C1 N21 C1 N31 C1 N41

M1 M2 M3 M4

M12 M34
Gain = M0 – M12 vs M0 – M34
Measure of Impurity: GINI
 Gini Index for a given node t :
GINI (t )  1   [ p ( j | t )]2
j

(NOTE: p( j | t) is the relative frequency of class j at node t).

 Maximum (1 - 1/nc) when records are equally
distributed among all classes, implying least interesting
information
 Minimum (0.0) when all records belong to one class,
implying most interesting information

C1 0 C1 1 C1 2 C1 3
C2 6 C2 5 C2 4 C2 3
Gini=0.000 Gini=0.278 Gini=0.444 Gini=0.500
Examples for computing GINI
GINI (t )  1   [ p ( j | t )]2
j

C1 0 P(C1) = 0/6 = 0 P(C2) = 6/6 = 1

C2 6 Gini = 1 – P(C1)2 – P(C2)2 = 1 – 0 – 1 = 0

C1 1 P(C1) = 1/6 P(C2) = 5/6

C2 5 Gini = 1 – (1/6)2 – (5/6)2 = 0.278

C1 2 P(C1) = 2/6 P(C2) = 4/6

C2 4 Gini = 1 – (2/6)2 – (4/6)2 = 0.444
Splitting Based on GINI
 Used in CART, SLIQ, SPRINT.
 When a node p is split into k partitions (children),
the quality of split is computed as,
k
ni
GINI split   GINI (i )
i 1 n

where, ni = number of records at child i,

n = number of records at node p.
Binary Attributes: Computing GINI
Index
 Splits into two partitions
 Effect of Weighting partitions:
 Larger and Purer Partitions are sought for.

Parent
B? C1 6
Yes No C2 6
Gini = 0.500
Node N1 Node N2
Gini(N1)
= 1 – (5/7)2 – (2/7)2 N1 N2 Gini(Children)
= 0.41
C1 5 1 = 7/12 * 0.41 +
Gini(N2) C2 2 4 5/12 * 0.32
= 1 – (1/5)2 – (4/5)2 Gini=0.373 = 0.373
= 0.32
Categorical Attributes: Computing Gini
Index
 For each distinct value, gather counts for each
class in the dataset
 Use the count matrix to make decisions
Multi-way split Two-way split
(find best partition of values)

CarType CarType CarType

Family Sports Luxury {Sports, {Family,
{Family} {Sports}
Luxury} Luxury}
C1 1 2 1 C1 3 1 C1 2 2
C2 4 1 1 C2 2 4 C2 1 5
Gini 0.393 Gini 0.400 Gini 0.419
Continuous Attributes: Computing Gini
Index
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
 Use Binary Decisions based on Status Income Cheat
one value
1 Yes Single 125K No
 Several Choices for the splitting 2 No Married 100K No
value 3 No Single 70K No
 Number of possible splitting 4 Yes Married 120K No
values 5 No Divorced 95K Yes
= Number of distinct values
6 No Married 60K No
 Each splitting value has a count 7 Yes Divorced 220K No
matrix associated with it 8 No Single 85K Yes
 Class counts in each of the 9 No Married 75K No
partitions, A < v and A  v
10 No Single 90K Yes
 Simple method to choose best v 10

 For each v, scan the database to

gather count matrix and compute
its Gini index
 Computationally Inefficient!
Repetition of work.
 Continuous Attributes: Computing Gini
Index...
 For efficient computation: for each attribute,
 Sort the attribute on values
 Linearly scan these values, each time updating the count
matrix and computing gini index
 Choose the split position that has the least gini index

Cheat No No No Yes Yes Yes No No No No

Taxable Income

Sorted Values 60 70 75 85 90 95 100 120 125 220

55 65 72 80 87 92 97 110 122 172 230
Split Positions
<= > <= > <= > <= > <= > <= > <= > <= > <= > <= > <= >
Yes 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 1 2 2 1 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0

No 0 7 1 6 2 5 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 4 3 5 2 6 1 7 0

Gini 0.420 0.400 0.375 0.343 0.417 0.400 0.300 0.343 0.375 0.400 0.420
 Alternative Splitting Criteria based on
INFO
 Entropy at a given node t:
Entropy (t )    p ( j | t ) log p ( j | t )
j

(NOTE: p( j | t) is the relative frequency of class j at node t).

 Measures homogeneity of a node.
 Maximum (log nc) when records are equally distributed
among all classes implying least information
 Minimum (0.0) when all records belong to one class,
implying most information
 Entropy based computations are similar to the
GINI index computations
Examples for computing Entropy
Entropy (t )    p ( j | t ) log p ( j | t )
j 2

C1 0 P(C1) = 0/6 = 0 P(C2) = 6/6 = 1

C2 6 Entropy = – 0 log 0 – 1 log 1 = – 0 – 0 = 0

C1 1 P(C1) = 1/6 P(C2) = 5/6

C2 5 Entropy = – (1/6) log2 (1/6) – (5/6) log2 (1/6) = 0.65

C1 2 P(C1) = 2/6 P(C2) = 4/6

C2 4 Entropy = – (2/6) log2 (2/6) – (4/6) log2 (4/6) = 0.92
Splitting Based on INFO...
 Information Gain:

GAIN  Entropy ( p )    Entropy (i ) 

 n k
i

 n 
split i 1

Parent Node, p is split into k partitions;

ni is number of records in partition i
 Measures Reduction in Entropy achieved because of the
split. Choose the split that achieves most reduction
(maximizes GAIN)
 Used in ID3 and C4.5
 Disadvantage: Tends to prefer splits that result in large
number of partitions, each being small but pure.
Splitting Criteria based on Classification
Error
 Classification error at a node t :

Error (t )  1  max P (i | t )
i

 Measures misclassification error made by a node.

 Maximum (1 - 1/nc) when records are equally distributed
among all classes, implying least interesting information
 Minimum (0.0) when all records belong to one class,
implying most interesting information
Examples for Computing Error
Error (t )  1  max P (i | t )
i

C1 0 P(C1) = 0/6 = 0 P(C2) = 6/6 = 1

C2 6 Error = 1 – max (0, 1) = 1 – 1 = 0

C1 1 P(C1) = 1/6 P(C2) = 5/6

C2 5 Error = 1 – max (1/6, 5/6) = 1 – 5/6 = 1/6

C1 2 P(C1) = 2/6 P(C2) = 4/6

C2 4 Error = 1 – max (2/6, 4/6) = 1 – 4/6 = 1/3
Comparison among Splitting Criteria
For a 2-class problem:
Stopping Criteria for Tree Induction
 Stop expanding a node when all the
records belong to the same class

 Stop expanding a node when all the

records have similar attribute values
Decision Tree Based Classification
 Advantages:
 Inexpensive to construct
 Extremely fast at classifying unknown records
 Easy to interpret for small-sized trees
 Accuracy is comparable to other classification
techniques for many simple data sets