Classification: Basic Concepts and

Decision Trees
A programming task
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 Learning
No
1 Yes Large 125K
algorithm
2 No Medium 100K No
3 No Small 70K No
4 Yes Medium 120K No
Induction
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
Model
10

Training Set
Apply
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class Model
11 No Small 55K ?
12 Yes Medium 80K ?
13 Yes Large 110K ? Deduction
14 No Small 95K ?
15 No Large 67K ?
10

Test Set
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 Using Distance
 Place items in class to which they are
“closest”.
 Must determine distance between an
item and a class.
 Classes represented by
 Centroid: Central value.
 Medoid: Representative point.
 Individual points
 Algorithm: KNN
K Nearest Neighbor (KNN):
 Training set includes classes.
 Examine K items near item to be
classified.
 New item placed in class with the most
number of close items.
 O(q) for each tuple to be classified.
(Here q is the size of the training set.)
KNN
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
cal cal u s
ri ri uo
o o n
t eg t eg nti
ass
ca ca co cl
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Splitting Attributes
Status Income Cheat

1 Yes Single 125K No

2 No Married 100K No Refund
3 No Single 70K No
Yes No

4 Yes Married 120K No NO MarSt

5 No Divorced 95K Yes Married
Single, Divorced
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
cal cal us
i i o
or or nu
t eg
t eg
nti
ass Single,
l MarSt
ca ca co c
Married
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Divorced
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
Tree
1 Yes Large 125K No Induction
2 No Medium 100K No algorithm
3 No Small 70K No
4 Yes Medium 120K No
Induction
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
Model
10

Training Set
Apply Decision
Model Tree
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class
11 No Small 55K ?

12 Yes Medium 80K ?

13 Yes Large 110K ?
Deduction
14 No Small 95K ?

15 No Large 67K ?
10

Test Set
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
Tree
1 Yes Large 125K No Induction
2 No Medium 100K No algorithm
3 No Small 70K No
No
4 Yes Medium 120K
Induction
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
Model
10

Training Set
Apply Decision
Tid Attrib1 Attrib2 Attrib3 Class
Model Tree
11 No Small 55K ?
12 Yes Medium 80K ?
13 Yes Large 110K ?
Deduction
14 No Small 95K ?

15 No Large 67K ?
10

Test Set
Decision Tree Induction
 Many Algorithms:
 Hunt’s Algorithm (one of the earliest)
 CART
 ID3, C4.5
 SLIQ,SPRINT
General Structure of Hunt’s
Algorithm
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
 Let Dt be the set of training Status Income Cheat

records that reach a node t 1 Yes Single 125K No

 General Procedure: 2 No Married 100K No

3 No Single 70K No
 If Dt contains records that 4 Yes Married 120K No
belong the same class yt, then 5 No Divorced 95K Yes
t is a leaf node labeled as yt 6 No Married 60K No
 If Dt is an empty set, then t is 7 Yes Divorced 220K No
a leaf node labeled by the 8 No Single 85K Yes
default class, yd 9 No Married 75K No
 If Dt contains records that 10 No Single 90K Yes
belong to more than one class,
10

use an attribute test to split Dt

the data into smaller subsets.
Recursively apply the
procedure to each subset. ?
 Hunt’s Algorithm
Refund
Don’t
Yes No
Cheat
Don’t Don’t
Cheat Cheat

Refund Refund
Yes No Yes No

Don’t Don’t Marital

Marital Cheat
Cheat Status Status
Single, Single,
Married Married
Divorced Divorced

Don’t Taxable Don’t

Cheat Cheat
Cheat Income
< 80K >= 80K

Don’t Cheat
Cheat
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

Taxable Taxable
Income Income?
> 80K?
< 10K > 80K
Yes No

[10K,25K) [25K,50K) [50K,80K)

(i) Binary split (ii) Multi-way split

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

Own Car Student

Car? Type? ID?

Yes No Family Luxury c1 c20

c10 c11
Sports
C0: 6 C0: 4 C0: 1 C0: 8 C0: 1 C0: 1 ... C0: 1 C0: 0 ... C0: 0
C1: 4 C1: 6 C1: 3 C1: 0 C1: 7 C1: 0 C1: 0 C1: 1 C1: 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:

C0: 5 C0: 9
C1: 5 C1: 1

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 Weighing 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 – (5/6)2 – (2/6)2 N1 N2 Gini(Children)
= 0.194
C1 5 1 = 7/12 * 0.194 +
Gini(N2) C2 2 4 5/12 * 0.528
= 1 – (1/6)2 – (4/6)2 Gini=0.333 = 0.333
= 0.528
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
 Use Binary Decisions based on one
value
 Several Choices for the splitting
value
 Number of possible splitting values
= Number of distinct values
 Each splitting value has a count
matrix associated with it
 Class counts in each of the
partitions, A < v and A  v
 Simple method to choose best v
 For each v, scan the database to
gather count matrix and compute Taxable
its Gini index Income
 Computationally Inefficient! > 80K?
Repetition of work.
Yes No
 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
60 70 75 85 90 95 100 120 125 220
Sorted Values
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:
n
GAIN  Entropy ( p )    Entropy (i ) 
 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 Based on INFO...
 Gain Ratio:
GAIN n n
 SplitINFO    log
k
GainRATIO Split i i

SplitINFO
split

n n
i 1

Parent Node, p is split into k partitions

ni is the number of records in partition i
 Adjusts Information Gain by the entropy of the
partitioning (SplitINFO). Higher entropy partitioning
(large number of small partitions) is penalized!
 Used in C4.5
 Designed to overcome the disadvantage of Information
Gain
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:
 Misclassification Error vs Gini
A? Parent
C1 7
Yes No
C2 3
Node N1 Node N2 Gini = 0.42

Gini(N1) N1 N2
= 1 – (3/3)2 – (0/3)2 Gini(Children)
C1 3 4 = 3/10 * 0
=0
C2 0 3 + 7/10 * 0.489
Gini(N2) = 0.342
= 1 – (4/7)2 – (3/7)2
= 0.489
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
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

 Early termination (to be discussed later)

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
Example: C4.5
 Simple depth-first construction.
 Uses Information Gain
 Sorts Continuous Attributes at each node.
 Needs entire data to fit in memory.
 Unsuitable for Large Datasets.
 Needs out-of-core sorting.

 You can download the software from:

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~quinlan/c4.5r8.tar
.gz
Practical Issues of Classification
 Underfitting and Overfitting

 Missing Values

 Costs of Classification
Underfitting and Overfitting
(Example)

500 circular and 500

triangular data points.

Circular points:
0.5  sqrt(x12+x22)  1

Triangular points:
sqrt(x12+x22) > 0.5 or
sqrt(x12+x22) < 1
Underfitting and Overfitting
Overfitting

Underfitting: when model is too simple, both training and test errors are large
Overfitting due to Noise

Decision boundary is distorted by noise point

Overfitting due to Insufficient
Examples

Lack of data points in the lower half of the diagram makes it difficult
to predict correctly the class labels of that region
- Insufficient number of training records in the region causes the
decision tree to predict the test examples using other training
records that are irrelevant to the classification task
Notes on Overfitting
 Overfitting results in decision trees that
are more complex than necessary

 Training error no longer provides a good

estimate of how well the tree will perform
on previously unseen records

 Need new ways for estimating errors

Estimating Generalization Errors
 Re-substitution errors: error on training ( e(t) )
 Generalization errors: error on testing ( e’(t))
 Methods for estimating generalization errors:
 Optimistic approach: e’(t) = e(t)
 Pessimistic approach:
 For each leaf node: e’(t) = (e(t)+0.5)
 Total errors: e’(T) = e(T) + N  0.5 (N: number of leaf
nodes)
 For a tree with 30 leaf nodes and 10 errors on training
(out of 1000 instances):
Training error = 10/1000 = 1%
Generalization error = (10 + 300.5)/1000 = 2.5%
 Reduced error pruning (REP):
 uses validation data set to estimate generalization
error
Occam’s Razor
 Given two models of similar generalization
errors, one should prefer the simpler model
over the more complex model

 For complex models, there is a greater

chance that it was fitted accidentally by
errors in data

 Therefore, one should include model

complexity when evaluating a model
Minimum Description Length
(MDL)
A?
X y Yes No
X y
X1 1 0 B? X1 ?
X2 0 B1 B2
X2 ?
X3 0 C? 1
A C1 C2 B X3 ?
X4 1
0 1 X4 ?
… …
Xn
… …
1
Xn ?

 Cost(Model,Data) = Cost(Data|Model) + Cost(Model)

 Cost is the number of bits needed for encoding.
 Search for the least costly model.
 Cost(Data|Model) encodes the misclassification errors.
 Cost(Model) uses node encoding (number of children) plus
splitting condition encoding.
 How to Address Overfitting
 Pre-Pruning (Early Stopping Rule)
 Stop the algorithm before it becomes a fully-grown tree
 Typical stopping conditions for a node:
 Stop if all instances belong to the same class
 Stop if all the attribute values are the same
 More restrictive conditions:
 Stop if number of instances is less than some user-specified
threshold
 Stop if class distribution of instances are independent of the
available features (e.g., using  2 test)
 Stop if expanding the current node does not improve impurity
measures (e.g., Gini or information gain).
How to Address Overfitting…
 Post-pruning
 Grow decision tree to its entirety
 Trim the nodes of the decision tree in a
bottom-up fashion
 If generalization error improves after
trimming, replace sub-tree by a leaf node.
 Class label of leaf node is determined from
majority class of instances in the sub-tree
 Can use MDL for post-pruning
 Example of Post-Pruning
Training Error (Before splitting) = 10/30

Class = Yes 20 Pessimistic error = (10 + 0.5)/30 = 10.5/30

Class = No 10 Training Error (After splitting) = 9/30

Error = 10/30 Pessimistic error (After splitting)

= (9 + 4  0.5)/30 = 11/30
A?
PRUNE!

A1 A4
A2 A3

Class = 8 Class = 3 Class = 4 Class = 5

Yes Yes Yes Yes
Class = No 4 Class = No 4 Class = No 1 Class = No 1
Examples of Post-pruning
Case 1:
 Optimistic error?
Don’t prune for both cases
C0: 11 C0: 2
C1: 3 C1: 4
 Pessimistic error?
Don’t prune case 1, prune case 2

 Reduced error pruning?

Case 2:

Depends on validation set

C0: 14 C0: 2
C1: 3 C1: 2
Handling Missing Attribute Values
 Missing values affect decision tree
construction in three different ways:
 Affects how impurity measures are computed
 Affects how to distribute instance with missing
value to child nodes
 Affects how a test instance with missing value
is classified
 Computing Impurity Measure
Tid Refund Marital Taxable Before Splitting:
Status Income Class Entropy(Parent)
= -0.3 log(0.3)-(0.7)log(0.7) = 0.8813
1 Yes Single 125K No
2 No Married 100K No Class Class
3 No Single 70K No = Yes = No
Refund=Yes 0 3
4 Yes Married 120K No
Refund=No 2 4
5 No Divorced 95K Yes
Refund=? 1 0
6 No Married 60K No
7 Yes Divorced 220K No
Split on Refund:
8 No Single 85K Yes Entropy(Refund=Yes) = 0
9 No Married 75K No Entropy(Refund=No)
10 ? Single 90K Yes = -(2/6)log(2/6) – (4/6)log(4/6) = 0.9183
10

Entropy(Children)
Missing = 0.3 (0) + 0.6 (0.9183) = 0.551
value
Gain = 0.9  (0.8813 – 0.551) = 0.3303
Distribute Instances
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Class
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
1 Yes Single 125K No Status Income Class
2 No Married 100K No
10 ? Single 90K Yes
3 No Single 70K No 10

4 Yes Married 120K No

Refund
5 No Divorced 95K Yes Yes No
6 No Married 60K No
Class=Yes 2 + 6/9
7 Yes Divorced 220K No Class=Yes 0 + 3/9
Class=No 4
8 No Single 85K Yes Class=No 3

9 No Married 75K No
10

Probability that Refund=Yes is 3/9

Refund
Yes No Probability that Refund=No is 6/9
Assign record to the left child with
Class=Yes 0 Cheat=Yes 2 weight = 3/9 and to the right child
Class=No 3 Cheat=No 4 with weight = 6/9
 Classify Instances
New record: Married Single Divorce Total
d
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Class Class=No 3 1 0 4

11 No ? 85K ? Class=Yes 6/9 1 1 2.67

10

Total 3.67 2 1 6.67

Refund
Yes
No
NO MarSt
Single,
Married Probability that Marital Status
Divorced
= Married is 3.67/6.67
TaxInc NO
< 80K > 80K Probability that Marital Status
={Single,Divorced} is 3/6.67
NO YES
Scalable Decision Tree Induction Methods

 SLIQ (EDBT’96 — Mehta et al.)

 Builds an index for each attribute and only class list and the
current attribute list reside in memory
 SPRINT (VLDB’96 — J. Shafer et al.)
 Constructs an attribute list data structure
 PUBLIC (VLDB’98 — Rastogi & Shim)
 Integrates tree splitting and tree pruning: stop growing the
tree earlier
 RainForest (VLDB’98 — Gehrke, Ramakrishnan &
Ganti)
 Builds an AVC-list (attribute, value, class label)
 BOAT (PODS’99 — Gehrke, Ganti, Ramakrishnan &
Loh)
 Uses bootstrapping to create several small samples