Introduction to Data Mining

Lab 1: Introduction to Weka

1.1. Introduction
Weka is an open-source software available at www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka. Weka stands for the
Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis. It offers clean, spare implementation of the simplest
techniques, designed to aid understanding of the data mining techniques. It also provides a work-bench
that includes full, working, state-of-the-art implementations of many popular learning schemes that can
be used for practical data mining or for research.

In the first class, we are going to get started with Weka: exploring the “Explorer” interface, exploring
some datasets, building a classifier, using filters, and visualizing your dataset. (See the lecture of class 1
by Ian H. Witten, [1])

Task: Taking notes how you find the Explorer, and answering questions in the following sections

1.2. Exploring the Explorer

Follow the instructions in [1]

1.3. Exploring datasets

Follow the instructions in [1]

In dataset weather.nominal.arff, how many attributes are there in the relation? What are their values?
What is the class and its values? Counting instances for each attribute value.

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Dataset Attributes Values #Instances
outlook sunny 5
Relation:weather.symbolic overcast 4
#Instances:14 rainy 5
#Attributes:5 distinct: 3
temperature hot 4
mild 6
cold 4
distinct: 3
humidity high 7
normal 7
distinct: 2
TRUE 6
windy FALSE 8
distinct: 2
Class play yes 9
no 5
distinct: 2

Similarly, examine datasets: weather.numeric.arff and glass.arff.

Dataset Attributes Values #Instances

outlook sunny 5
Relation: weather overcast 4
#Instances: 14 rainy 5
#Attributes: 5 distinct: 3
temperature Minimum: 64 distinct :12
Maximum: 85
Mean: 73.571
StdDev: 6.572

humidity Minimum: 65 Distinct: 10

Maximum: 96
Mean: 81.643
StdDev: 10.285
True 6
windy False 8
distinct: 2

Class play Yes 9

No 5
Distinct:2

Dataset Attributes Values #Instances

RI Minimum:1.511 Distinct:178

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Relation: Glass Maximum:1.534
#Instances: 214 Mean:1.518
#Attributes: 10 StdDev: 0.003
Minimum:10.73 Distinct:142
Na Maximum:17.38
Mean:13.408
StdDev: 0.817
Minimum:0 Distinct:94
Mg Maximum:4.49
Mean:2.685
StdDev: 1.441
Minimum:0.29 Distinct:118
Al Maximum:3.5
Mean:1.445
StdDev: 0.499
Si Minimum:69.81 Distinct:133
Maximum:75.41
Mean:72.651
StdDev: 0.775
K Minimum:0 Distinct:65
Maximum:6.21
Mean:0.497
StdDev: 0.652
Ca Minimum:5.43 Distinct:143
Maximum:16.19
Mean:8.957
StdDev: 1.423
Ba Minimum:0 Distinct:34
Maximum:3.15
Mean:0.175
StdDev: 0.497
Fe Minimum:0 Distinct:32
Maximum:0.51
Mean:0.057
StdDev: 0.097
Class Type build wind float 70
build wind non-float 76
vehic wind float 17
vehic wind non-float 0
containers 13
tableware 9
headlamps 29
distinct: 6

Create a file of ARFF format and examine it.

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Dataset Attributes Values #Instances
Sex Minimum:0 distinct : 2
Relation: gameandgrade Maximum: 1
#Instances: 770 Mean: 0.499
#Attributes: 10 StdDev: 0.5
School Code Minimum: 1 distinct: 11
Maximum: 11
Mean: 4.944
StdDev: 3
Minimum: 0 distinct : 5
Playing Years Maximum: 4
Mean: 1.584
StdDev: 1.407
Minimum: 0 distinct: 6
Playing Often Maximum: 5
Mean: 2.243
StdDev: 1.924
Playing Hours Minimum: 0 distinct: 6
Maximum: 5
Mean: 1.488
StdDev: 1.338
Playing Games Minimum: 0 Distinct 3
Maximum: 2
mean : 0.706
StdDev: 0.459
Parent Revenue Minimum: 0 distinct: 5
maximum: 4
mean: 1.838
stddev: 1.064
Father Education minimum: 0 distinct: 7
maximum: 6
mean: 3.718
stddev: 1.172
Mother Education minimum: 0 distinct: 7
maximum: 6
mean : 3.41
std dev: 1.176
Class Grade distinct : 105

1.4. Building a classifier

Follow the instructions in [1]

Examine the output of J48 vs. RandomTree applied to dataset glass.arff

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Algorith Pruned/unpruned minNu No. Corre
m mObj of ctly
Lea Classi
ves fied
Insta
nces
J48 Pruned: 2 30 143

Unpruned 2 30 144

5
Random 150
Tree

Evaluate the confusion matrix every time running an algorithm.

J48 Pruned Tree

J48 Unpruned Tree

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Random Tree

1.5. Using a filter

Follow the instructions in [1], and remark

_Use a filter to remove an attribute 

- What are attributeIndices? –

- A filter parameter that specifies the column numbers (indices) of attributes you wish to remove.

_Remove instances where humidity is high 

- What are nominalIndices? –

- A filter parameter that designates which attributes are nominal (categorical) so that filters can
correctly handle their values (e.g., removing instances where a nominal attribute like humidity is
“high”).

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_Fewer attributes, better classification:

Follow the instructions in [1], review the outputs of J48 applied to glass.arff:

Filter Leaf size Correctly Classified Remark

Instances
30 143 Baseline using all 10
Original attributes; accuracy of
68.8224%

Remove Fe 26 144 removing the Fe attribute

reduced the tree size and
slightly improve accuracy
to 67.2897%

Remove all 21 147 retaining only RI and Mg

attributes yielded the simplest tree
except RI and and the high accuracy at
MG 68.6916%

1.6. Visualizing your data

Follow the instructions in [1], how do you find “Visualize classifier errors”?

After running J48 for iris.arff, determine:

- How many instances are predicted wrong? –

- 6 (given J48 classifier – unpruned- minNumObj=15)

- What are they?

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-

Instance Predicted class Actual class

Iris-virginica Iris-versicolor

15
Iris-virginica Iris-versicolor
73

Iris-virginica Iris-versicolor
119

Iris-versicolor Iris-virginica
92

Iris-versicolor Iris-virginica
109

98 Iris-versicolor Iris-setosa