Decision Trees

Lecture outline
• Decision-tree classification
Decision Trees
• Decision tree
– A flow-chart-like tree structure
– Internal node denotes a test on an attribute
– Branch represents an outcome of the test
– Leaf nodes represent class labels or class distribution
• Decision tree generation consists of two phases
– Tree construction
• At start, all the training examples are at the root
• Partition examples recursively based on selected attributes
– Tree pruning
• Identify and remove branches that reflect noise or outliers
• Use of decision tree: Classifying an unknown sample
– Test the attribute values of the sample against the decision tree
Training
Output: A Decision Tree for
age?
<=30 overcast
30..40 >40
student? yes credit rating?
no yes excellent fair
no yes no yes
Constructing decision trees
• Exponentially many decision trees can be
constructed from a given set of attributes
• Finding the most accurate tree is NP-hard
• In practice: greedy algorithms

• Grow a decision tree by making a series of locally
optimum decisions on which attributes to use for
partitioning the data
Constructing decision trees:
the Hunt’s algorithm
• Xt: the set of training records for node t
• y={y1,…,yc}: class labels
• Step 1: If all records in Xt belong to the same class
yt, then t is a leaf node labeled as yt
• Step 2: If Xt contains records that belong to more
than one class,
– select attribute test condition to partition the
records into smaller subsets
– Create a child node for each outcome of test
condition
– Apply algorithm recursively for each child
Decision-tree construction
(Example)
Design issues
• How should the training records be
split?
• How should the splitting procedure

stop?
Splitting methods
• Binary attributes
Splitting methods
• Nominal attributes
Splitting methods
• Ordinal attributes
Splitting methods
• Continuous attributes
Selecting the best split
• p(i|t): fraction of records belonging to class i
• Best split is selected based on the degree of
impurity of the child nodes
– Class distribution (0,1) has high purity
– Class distribution (0.5,0.5) has the
smallest purity (highest impurity)
• Intuition: high purity  small value of

impurity measures  better split
Selecting the best split
Selecting the best split:
Impurity measures
• p(i|t): fraction of records associated
with node t belonging to class i
X c
Entropy(t) = p(i|t) log p(i|t)
i=1
c
X
2
Gini(t) = 1 [p(i|t)]
i=1
Classification-Error(t) = 1 max[p(i|t)]
i
Range of impurity measures
Impurity measures
• In general the different impurity measures are
consistent
• Gain of a test condition: compare the impurity
of the parent node with the impurity of the child
nodes k
X N (vj )
= I(parent) I(vj )
j=1
N
• Maximizing the gain == minimizing the
weighted average impurity measure of children
nodes
• If I() = Entropy(), then Δinfo is called
information gain
Computing gain: example
Is minimizing impurity/
maximizing Δ enough?
Is minimizing impurity/
maximizing Δ enough?
• Impurity measures favor attributes with
large number of values
• A test condition with large number of

outcomes may not be desirable
– # of records in each partition is too small
to make predictions
Gain ratio
• Gain ratio = Δinfo/Splitinfo
• SplitInfo = -Σi=1…kp(vi)log(p(vi))
• k: total number of splits
• If each attribute has the same number
of records, SplitInfo = logk
• Large number of splits  large
SplitInfo  small gain ratio
Constructing decision-trees
(pseudocode)
GenDecTree(Sample S, Features F)
1. If stopping_condition(S,F) = true then
a. leaf = createNode()
b. leaf.label= Classify(S)
c. return leaf
2. root = createNode()
3. root.test_condition = findBestSplit(S,F)
4. V = {v| v a possible outcome of root.test_condition}
5. for each value vєV:
a. Sv: = {s | root.test_condition(s) = v and s є S};
b. child = TreeGrowth(Sv ,F) ;
c. Add child as a descent of root and label the edge (rootchild)
as v
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
Advantages of decision trees
• 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 algorithm
• Simple depth-first construction.
• Uses Information Gain
• Sorts Continuous Attributes at each
node.
• Needs entire data to fit in memory.
• Unsuitable for Large Datasets.
• You can download the software from:

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~quinlan/c4.5r8.tar.gz
Practical problems with
classification
• Underfitting and overfitting
• Missing values
• Cost of classification
Overfitting and underfitting
Underfitting: when model is too simple, both training and test

errors are large
Overfitting due to noise
Decision boundary is distorted by

Underfitting due to insufficient
samples
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
Overfitting: course of action
• Overfitting results lead to 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

Methods for estimating the
error
• Re-substitution errors: error on training (Σ e(t) )
• Generalization errors: error on testing (Σ 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
Addressing overfitting:
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
postprunning
– 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
preprunning
• 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 expanding the current node does not improve
impurity
measures (e.g., Gini or information gain).
Decision boundary for decision
trees
• Border line between two neighboring regions of different classes is

known as decision boundary
• Decision boundary in decision trees is parallel to axes because test
condition involves a single attribute at-a-time
Oblique Decision Trees
x+y<1
Class = + Class =
• Test condition may involve multiple attributes

• More expressive representation
Not all datasets can be partitioned optimally
• Finding optimal test condition is computationally expensive
using test conditions involving single attributes!
Oblique Decision Trees
Circular points:
0.5 ≤ sqrt(x12+x22) ≤ 1
Triangular points:
sqrt(x12+x22) >1 or
sqrt(x12+x22) < 0.5

Decision Trees

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Lecture outline

student? yes credit rating?

no yes excellent fair

• Finding the most accurate tree is NP-hard

• In practice: greedy algorithms

• How should the splitting procedure

• Intuition: high purity  small value of

• A test condition with large number of

• Stop expanding a node when all the

• You can download the software from:

Underfitting: when model is too simple, both training and test

Decision boundary is distorted by

Lack of data points in the lower half of the diagram makes it

• Training error no longer provides a

• Need new ways for estimating errors

• For complex models, there is a greater

• Therefore, one should include model

• Border line between two neighboring regions of different classes is

• Test condition may involve multiple attributes

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