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Decision Trees Notes

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Decision Trees Notes

Uploaded by

rayachotiusa
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Decision Trees

Decision Trees are divided into Classification and Regression Trees. Regression trees are
needed when the response variable is numeric or continuous. Classification trees, as the
name implies are used to separate the dataset into classes belonging to the response variable.
Terminology related to Decision Trees:
Basic terminology used with Decision trees:
ROOT Node: It represents entire population or sample and this further gets divided into two or
more homogeneous sets.
SPLITTING: It is a process of dividing a node into two or more sub-nodes.
Decision Node: When a sub-node splits into further sub-nodes, then it is called decision node.
Leaf/ Terminal Node: Nodes do not split is called Leaf or Terminal node.

Pruning: When we remove sub-nodes of a decision node, this process is called pruning. You
can say opposite process of splitting.
Branch / Sub-Tree: A sub section of entire tree is called branch or sub-tree
Parent and Child Node: A node, which is divided into sub-nodes is called parent node of sub-
nodes whereas sub-nodes are the child of parent node.

Decision Tree Regression:


Decision Tree Classifications:

Advantages:
 Are simple to understand and interpret. People are able to understand decision tree
models after a brief explanation.
 Have value even with little hard data. Important insights can be generated based on
experts describing a situation (its alternatives, probabilities, and costs) and their
preferences for outcomes.
 Help determine worst, best and expected values for different scenarios.
 Use a white box model. If a given result is provided by a model.
 Can be combined with other decision techniques.
Disadvantage:
 They are unstable, meaning that a small change in the data can lead to a large change
in the structure of the optimal decision tree.
 They are often relatively inaccurate. Many other predictors perform better with similar
data. This can be remedied by replacing a single decision tree with a random forest of
decision trees, but a random forest is not as easy to interpret as a single decision tree.
 For data including categorical variables with different number of levels, information gain
in decision trees is biased in favor of those attributes with more levels.[7]
 Calculations can get very complex, particularly if many values are uncertain and/or if
many outcomes are linked.
Decision tree classifier parameters:
https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.tree.DecisionTreeClassifier.html
Decision tree regressor parameters:

https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.tree.DecisionTreeRegressor.html

Applications of Decision Trees


1. Assessing prospective growth opportunities:
One of the applications of decision trees involves evaluating prospective growth opportunities
for businesses based on historical data. Historical data on sales can be used in decision trees
that may lead to making radical changes in the strategy of a business to help aid expansion and
growth.
2. Using demographic data to find prospective clients:
Another application of decision trees is in the use of demographic data to find prospective
clients. They can help in streamlining a marketing budget and in making informed decisions on
the target market that the business is focused on. In the absence of decision trees, the business
may spend its marketing market without a specific demographic in mind, which will affect its
overall revenues.
3. Serving as a support tool in several fields:
Lenders also use decision trees to predict the probability of a customer defaulting on a loan, by
applying predictive model generation using the client’s past data. The use of a decision tree
support tool can help lenders in evaluating the creditworthiness of a customer to prevent losses.
Decision trees can also be used in operations research in planning logistics and strategic
management. They can help in determining appropriate strategies that will help a company
achieve its intended goals. Other fields where decision trees can be applied include
engineering, education, law, business, healthcare, and finance.

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