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Programs for Machine Learning

TL;DR: In his new book, C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning, Quinlan has put together a definitive, much needed description of his complete system, including the latest developments, which will be a welcome addition to the library of many researchers and students.
Abstract: Algorithms for constructing decision trees are among the most well known and widely used of all machine learning methods. Among decision tree algorithms, J. Ross Quinlan's ID3 and its successor, C4.5, are probably the most popular in the machine learning community. These algorithms and variations on them have been the subject of numerous research papers since Quinlan introduced ID3. Until recently, most researchers looking for an introduction to decision trees turned to Quinlan's seminal 1986 Machine Learning journal article [Quinlan, 1986]. In his new book, C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning, Quinlan has put together a definitive, much needed description of his complete system, including the latest developments. As such, this book will be a welcome addition to the library of many researchers and students.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article gives an introduction to the subject of classification and regression trees by reviewing some widely available algorithms and comparing their capabilities, strengths, and weakness in two examples.
Abstract: Classification and regression trees are machine-learning methods for constructing prediction models from data. The models are obtained by recursively partitioning the data space and fitting a simple prediction model within each partition. As a result, the partitioning can be represented graphically as a decision tree. Classification trees are designed for dependent variables that take a finite number of unordered values, with prediction error measured in terms of misclassification cost. Regression trees are for dependent variables that take continuous or ordered discrete values, with prediction error typically measured by the squared difference between the observed and predicted values. This article gives an introduction to the subject by reviewing some widely available algorithms and comparing their capabilities, strengths, and weakness in two examples. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2011 1 14-23 DOI: 10.1002/widm.8 This article is categorized under: Technologies > Classification Technologies > Machine Learning Technologies > Prediction Technologies > Statistical Fundamentals

16,974 citations

Proceedings Article
01 Jul 1998
TL;DR: Two new algorithms for solving thii problem that are fundamentally different from the known algorithms are presented and empirical evaluation shows that these algorithms outperform theknown algorithms by factors ranging from three for small problems to more than an order of magnitude for large problems.
Abstract: We consider the problem of discovering association rules between items in a large database of sales transactions. We present two new algorithms for solving thii problem that are fundamentally different from the known algorithms. Empirical evaluation shows that these algorithms outperform the known algorithms by factors ranging from three for small problems to more than an order of magnitude for large problems. We also show how the best features of the two proposed algorithms can be combined into a hybrid algorithm, called AprioriHybrid. Scale-up experiments show that AprioriHybrid scales linearly with the number of transactions. AprioriHybrid also has excellent scale-up properties with respect to the transaction size and the number of items in the database.

10,863 citations

Book ChapterDOI
21 Apr 1998
TL;DR: This paper explores the use of Support Vector Machines for learning text classifiers from examples and analyzes the particular properties of learning with text data and identifies why SVMs are appropriate for this task.
Abstract: This paper explores the use of Support Vector Machines (SVMs) for learning text classifiers from examples. It analyzes the particular properties of learning with text data and identifies why SVMs are appropriate for this task. Empirical results support the theoretical findings. SVMs achieve substantial improvements over the currently best performing methods and behave robustly over a variety of different learning tasks. Furthermore they are fully automatic, eliminating the need for manual parameter tuning.

8,658 citations

Proceedings Article
Yoav Freund1, Robert E. Schapire1
03 Jul 1996
TL;DR: This paper describes experiments carried out to assess how well AdaBoost with and without pseudo-loss, performs on real learning problems and compared boosting to Breiman's "bagging" method when used to aggregate various classifiers.
Abstract: In an earlier paper, we introduced a new "boosting" algorithm called AdaBoost which, theoretically, can be used to significantly reduce the error of any learning algorithm that con- sistently generates classifiers whose performance is a little better than random guessing. We also introduced the related notion of a "pseudo-loss" which is a method for forcing a learning algorithm of multi-label concepts to concentrate on the labels that are hardest to discriminate. In this paper, we describe experiments we carried out to assess how well AdaBoost with and without pseudo-loss, performs on real learning problems. We performed two sets of experiments. The first set compared boosting to Breiman's "bagging" method when used to aggregate various classifiers (including decision trees and single attribute- value tests). We compared the performance of the two methods on a collection of machine-learning benchmarks. In the second set of experiments, we studied in more detail the performance of boosting using a nearest-neighbor classifier on an OCR problem.

7,601 citations

01 Jan 1996

7,386 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, an approach to synthesizing decision trees that has been used in a variety of systems, and it describes one such system, ID3, in detail, is described, and a reported shortcoming of the basic algorithm is discussed.
Abstract: The technology for building knowledge-based systems by inductive inference from examples has been demonstrated successfully in several practical applications. This paper summarizes an approach to synthesizing decision trees that has been used in a variety of systems, and it describes one such system, ID3, in detail. Results from recent studies show ways in which the methodology can be modified to deal with information that is noisy and/or incomplete. A reported shortcoming of the basic algorithm is discussed and two means of overcoming it are compared. The paper concludes with illustrations of current research directions.

17,177 citations

Book
01 Jan 1983
TL;DR: The methodology used to construct tree structured rules is the focus of a monograph as mentioned in this paper, covering the use of trees as a data analysis method, and in a more mathematical framework, proving some of their fundamental properties.
Abstract: The methodology used to construct tree structured rules is the focus of this monograph. Unlike many other statistical procedures, which moved from pencil and paper to calculators, this text's use of trees was unthinkable before computers. Both the practical and theoretical sides have been developed in the authors' study of tree methods. Classification and Regression Trees reflects these two sides, covering the use of trees as a data analysis method, and in a more mathematical framework, proving some of their fundamental properties.

14,825 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper compares five methods for pruning decision trees, developed from sets of examples, and shows that three methods—critical value, error complexity and reduced error—perform well, while the other two may cause problems.
Abstract: This paper compares five methods for pruning decision trees, developed from sets of examples. When used with uncertain rather than deterministic data, decision-tree induction involves three main stages—creating a complete tree able to classify all the training examples, pruning this tree to give statistical reliability, and processing the pruned tree to improve understandability. This paper concerns the second stage—pruning. It presents empirical comparisons of the five methods across several domains. The results show that three methods—critical value, error complexity and reduced error—perform well, while the other two may cause problems. They also show that there is no significant interaction between the creation and pruning methods.

635 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Dec 1989
TL;DR: This paper compares the effectiveness of several approaches to the development and use of decision tree classifiers as measured by their performance on a collection of datasets.
Abstract: Simple techniques for the development and use of decision tree classifiers assume that all attribute values of all cases are available. Numerous approaches have been proposed with the aim of extending these techniques to cover real-world situations in which unknown attribute values are not uncommon. This paper compares the effectiveness of several approaches as measured by their performance on a collection of datasets.

342 citations