Decision Tree

Dr. Naveen Saini

Assistant Professor

Department of Information Technology

Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad
Uttar Pardesh

[email protected] https://sites.google.com/view/nsaini1
Supervised Learning
▪ When an algorithm learns from example data and associated

target responses that can consist of numeric values or string

labels, such as classes or tags, in order to later predict the

correct response when posed with new examples comes under

the category of Supervised learning.

▪ This approach is indeed similar to human learning under the

supervision of a teacher.

▪ The teacher provides good examples for the student to

memorize, and the student then derives general rules from

these specific examples.

Supervised Learning: An Example
Supervised Learning
▪ A majority of practical machine learning uses supervised learning.

▪ In supervised learning, the system tries to learn from the previous

examples that are given.

▪ (On the other hand, in unsupervised learning, the system attempts to find the patterns

directly from the example given.)

▪ Speaking mathematically, supervised learning is where you have both

input variables (x) and output variables(Y) and can use an algorithm to

derive the mapping function from the input to the output.

▪ The mapping function is expressed as Y = f(X).

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

1 Yes Large 125K No
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

Categorizing news stories as finance,

weather, entertainment, sports, etc
Classification Techniques

Support Vector Machines

Decision Tree based Methods
Rule-based Methods
Neural Networks
Naïve Bayes and Bayesian Belief Networks
 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
No
Yes No
3 No Single 70K
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

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
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
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

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
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 (Classification and Regression Tree)
– ID3, C4.5
– SLIQ (Fast scalable algorithm for large
application)
◆Can handle both numeric and categorical attributes
– SPRINT (scalable parallel classifier for
datamining)
General Structure of Hunt’s Algorithm
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Let Dt be the set of training records Status Income Cheat
that reach a node t 1 Yes Single 125K No

General Procedure: 2 No Married 100K No

– If Dt contains records that 3 No Single 70K No

4 Yes Married 120K No
belong the same class yt, then t
5 No Divorced 95K Yes
is a leaf node labeled as yt 6 No Married 60K No
– If Dt is an empty set, then t is a 7 Yes Divorced 220K No
leaf node labeled by the default 8 No Single 85K Yes
class, yd 9 No Married 75K No

– If Dt contains records that 10

10 No Single 90K Yes

belong to more than one class, Dt

use an attribute test to split the
data into smaller subsets.
Recursively apply the ?
procedure to each subset.
 Hunt’s Algorithm
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat
Refund 1 Yes Single 125K No
Don’t
Yes No 2 No Married 100K No
Cheat
Don’t Don’t 3 No Single 70K No
Cheat Cheat
4 Yes Married 120K No
5 No Divorced 95K Yes
6 No Married 60K No

Refund Refund 7 Yes Divorced 220K No

Yes No Yes No 8 No Single 85K Yes

9 No Married 75K No
Don’t Don’t Marital
Marital Cheat 10 No Single 90K Yes
Cheat Status Status 10

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
The values of a Nominal attribute are names of things, some kind of symbols. Also referred as categorical
attributes and there is no order (rank, position) among values of the nominal attribute.

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 CarType
{Sports, OR {Family,
Luxury} {Family} Luxury} {Sports}
Splitting Based on Ordinal Attributes
The Ordinal Attributes contains values that have a meaningful sequence or ranking(order) between them

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}

Size
{Small,
What about this split? Large} {Medium}
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
k
ni
Splits into two partitions GINI split =  GINI (i )
Effect of Weighing partitions: i =1 n

– 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)
= 0.428
C1 5 1 = 7/12 * 0.428 +
Gini(N2) C2 2 4 5/12 * 0.528
= 1 – (1/5)2 – (4/5)2 Gini=0.469 = 0.469
= 0.528
Lowest Gini index is preferred for the best 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

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
Metrics for Performance Evaluation

Focus on the predictive capability of a model

– Rather than how fast it takes to classify or build
models, scalability, etc.
Confusion Matrix:

PREDICTED CLASS

Class=Yes Class=No
a: TP (true positive)
b: FN (false negative)
Class=Yes a b
ACTUAL c: FP (false positive)
d: TN (true negative)
CLASS Class=No c d
Metrics for Performance Evaluation…

PREDICTED CLASS

Class=Yes Class=No

Class=Yes a b
ACTUAL (TP) (FN)
CLASS
Class=No c d
(FP) (TN)

Most widely-used metric:

a+d TP + TN
Accuracy = =
a + b + c + d TP + TN + FP + FN
Thank you!!

Any Queries??
[email protected]