Data Mining

Classification: Basic Concepts, Decision

Trees, and Model Evaluation

Lecture Notes for Chapter 4

Introduction to Data Mining

by
Tan, Steinbach, Kumar

(modified by Predrag Radivojac, 2017)

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

● Classifying secondary structures of protein

as alpha-helix, beta-sheet, or random
coil

● Categorizing news stories as finance,

weather, entertainment, sports, etc
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

Splitting Attributes
Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Cheat

1 Yes Single 125K No

2 No Married 100K No Refund
Yes No
3 No Single 70K No
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
– ID3, C4.5
– SLIQ, SPRINT
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

3 No Single 70K No
– If Dt contains records that
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
Status
Taxable
Income Cheat

1 Yes Single 125K No

2 No Married 100K No
Refund
Don’t 3 No Single 70K No
Yes No
Cheat 4 Yes Married 120K No
Don’t Don’t 5 No Divorced 95K Yes
Cheat Cheat
6 No Married 60K No
7 Yes Divorced 220K No
8 No Single 85K Yes

Refund Refund 9 No Married 75K No

Yes No Yes No 10 No Single 90K Yes
10

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
u How to specify the attribute test condition?
u 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
u How to specify the attribute test condition?
u 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 CarType
{Sports, OR {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}

Size
{Small,
● What about this split? Large} {Medium}
Splitting Based on Continuous Attributes

● Different ways of handling

– Discretization to form an ordinal categorical
attribute
u Static – discretize once at the beginning
u Dynamic – ranges can be found by equal interval
bucketing, equal frequency bucketing
(percentiles), or clustering.

– Binary Decision: (A < v) or (A ³ v)

u consider all possible splits and finds the best cut
u 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
u How to specify the attribute test condition?
u 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
C0 N00
Before Splitting: 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 - å[ 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 - å[ 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 = å 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
This calculation is not correct! Why?
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

Tid Refund Marital Taxable

● Use Binary Decisions based on one Status Income Cheat
value
1 Yes Single 125K No
● Several Choices for the splitting value 2 No Married 100K No
– Number of possible splitting values 3 No Single 70K No
= Number of distinct values 4 Yes Married 120K No

● Each splitting value has a count matrix 5 No Divorced 95K Yes

associated with it 6 No Married 60K No

7 Yes Divorced 220K No
– Class counts in each of the
partitions, A < v and A ³ v 8 No Single 85K Yes
9 No Married 75K No
● Simple method to choose best v 10 No Single 90K Yes
– For each v, scan the database to
10

gather count matrix and compute Taxable

its Gini index Income
> 80K?
– Computationally Inefficient!
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

Sorted Values 60 70 75 85 90 95 100 120 125 220

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 ) = -å 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.
u Maximum (log nc) when records are equally distributed
among all classes implying least information
u 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 ) = -å 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:
æå n ö
= Entropy ( p) - ç
k
GAIN Entropy (i ) ÷
i

è n ø
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
GainRATIO = SplitINFO = - å log
Split k
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.

u Maximum (1 - 1/nc) when records are equally distributed
among all classes, implying least interesting information
u 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) Gini=0.361 = 0.342
= 1 – (4/7)2 – (3/7)2
= 0.489 Gini improves !!
Tom Mitchell’s example
Day Outlook Temperature Humidity Wind Play Tennis?
1 Sunny Hot High Weak No
2 Sunny Hot High Strong No
3 Overcast Hot High Weak Yes
4 Rain Mild High Weak Yes
5 Rain Cool Normal Weak Yes
6 Rain Cool Normal Strong No
7 Overcast Cool Normal Strong Yes
8 Sunny Mild High Weak No
9 Sunny Cool Normal Weak Yes
10 Rain Mild Normal Weak Yes
11 Sunny Mild Normal Strong Yes
12 Overcast Mild High Strong Yes
13 Overcast Hot Normal Weak Yes
14 Rain Mild High Strong No
Tree Induction

● Greedy strategy.
– Split the records based on an attribute test
that optimizes certain criterion.

● Issues
– Determine how to split the records
u How to specify the attribute test condition?
u 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
– not there any longer, but you can Google it
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 (S e(t) )

● Generalization errors: error on testing (S e’(t))
● Methods for estimating generalization errors:
– Optimistic approach: e’(t) = e(t)
– Pessimistic approach:
u For each leaf node: e’(t) = (e(t)+0.5)
u Total errors: e’(T) = e(T) + N ´ 0.5 (N: number of leaf nodes)
u 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):
u 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:
u Stop if all instances belong to the same class
u Stop if all the attribute values are the same

– More restrictive conditions:

u Stop if number of instances is less than some user-specified
threshold
u Stop if class distribution of instances are independent of the
available features (e.g., using c 2 test)
u 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
PRUNE!
A?

A1 A4
A2 A3

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

Class = No 4 Class = No 4 Class = No 1 Class = No 1
Examples of Post-pruning

– Optimistic error? Case 1:

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
Split on Refund:
No
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 0 + 3/9 Class=Yes 2 + 6/9
7 Yes Divorced 220K No
Class=No 3 Class=No 4
8 No Single 85K Yes
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 Divorced Total

Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Class Class=No 3 1 0 4
11 No ? 85K ?
10

Class=Yes 6/9 1 1 2.67

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
 Classify Instances

New record: Married Single Divorced Total

Tid Refund Marital Taxable
Status Income Class Class=No 3 1 0 4
11 No ? 85K ?
10

Class=Yes 0 15/9 1 2.67

Total 3 24/9 1 6.67

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

Corrected table!
Other Issues

● Data Fragmentation
● Search Strategy
● Expressiveness
● Tree Replication
Data Fragmentation

● Number of instances gets smaller as you traverse

down the tree

● Number of instances at the leaf nodes could be

too small to make any statistically significant
decision
Search Strategy

● Finding an optimal decision tree is NP-hard

● The algorithm presented so far uses a greedy,

top-down, recursive partitioning strategy to
induce a reasonable solution

● Other strategies?
– Bottom-up
– Bi-directional
Expressiveness

● Decision tree provides expressive representation for

learning discrete-valued function
– But they do not generalize well to certain types of
Boolean functions
u Example: parity function:
– Class = 1 if there is an even number of Boolean attributes with truth
value = True
– Class = 0 if there is an odd number of Boolean attributes with truth
value = True
u For accurate modeling, must have a complete tree

● Not expressive enough for modeling continuous variables

– Particularly when test condition involves only a single
attribute at a time
Decision Boundary
1

0.9

0.8
x < 0.43?

0.7
Yes No
0.6

y < 0.33?
y

0.5 y < 0.47?

0.4

0.3
Yes No Yes No

0.2
:4 :0 :0 :4
0.1 :0 :4 :3 :0
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

x
• Border line between two neighboring regions of different classes is
known as decision boundary
• Decision boundary 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
• Finding optimal test condition is computationally expensive
Tree Replication
P

Q R

S 0 Q 1

0 1 S 0

0 1

• Same subtree appears in multiple branches

Model Evaluation

● Metrics for Performance Evaluation

– How to evaluate the performance of a model?

● Methods for Performance Evaluation

– How to obtain reliable estimates?

● Methods for Model Comparison

– How to compare the relative performance
among competing models?
Model Evaluation

● Metrics for Performance Evaluation

– How to evaluate the performance of a model?

● Methods for Performance Evaluation

– How to obtain reliable estimates?

● Methods for Model Comparison

– How to compare the relative performance
among competing models?
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)

CLASS Class=No c d
d: TN (true negative)
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
Limitation of Accuracy

● Consider a 2-class problem

– Number of Class 0 examples = 9990
– Number of Class 1 examples = 10

● If model predicts everything to be class 0,

accuracy is 9990/10000 = 99.9 %
– Accuracy is misleading because model does
not detect any class 1 example
Cost Matrix

PREDICTED CLASS

C(i|j) Class=Yes Class=No

Class=Yes C(Yes|Yes) C(No|Yes)

ACTUAL
CLASS Class=No C(Yes|No) C(No|No)

C(i|j): Cost of misclassifying class j example as class i

Computing Cost of Classification

Cost PREDICTED CLASS

Matrix
C(i|j) + -
ACTUAL
+ -1 100
CLASS
- 1 0

Model PREDICTED CLASS Model PREDICTED CLASS

M1 M2
+ - + -
ACTUAL ACTUAL
+ 150 40 + 250 45
CLASS CLASS
- 60 250 - 5 200

Accuracy = 80% Accuracy = 90%

Cost = 3910 Cost = 4255
Cost vs Accuracy

Count PREDICTED CLASS Accuracy is proportional to cost if

1. C(Yes|No)=C(No|Yes) = q
Class=Yes Class=No
2. C(Yes|Yes)=C(No|No) = p
Class=Yes a b
ACTUAL N=a+b+c+d
CLASS Class=No c d
Accuracy = (a + d)/N

Cost PREDICTED CLASS

Cost = p (a + d) + q (b + c)
Class=Yes Class=No
= p (a + d) + q (N – a – d)
Class=Yes p q = q N – (q – p)(a + d)
ACTUAL
CLASS Class=No
= N [q – (q-p) ´ Accuracy]
q p
 Cost-Sensitive Measures
a
Precision (p) =
a+c
a
Recall (r) =
a+b
2rp 2a
F - measure (F) = =
r + p 2a + b + c
● Precision is biased towards C(Yes|Yes) & C(Yes|No)
● Recall is biased towards C(Yes|Yes) & C(No|Yes)
● F-measure is biased towards all except C(No|No)
wa + w d
Weighted Accuracy = 1 4

wa + wb+ wc + w d
1 2 3 4
Model Evaluation

● Metrics for Performance Evaluation

– How to evaluate the performance of a model?

● Methods for Performance Evaluation

– How to obtain reliable estimates?

● Methods for Model Comparison

– How to compare the relative performance
among competing models?
Methods for Performance Evaluation

● How to obtain a reliable estimate of

performance?

● Performance of a model may depend on other

factors besides the learning algorithm:
– Class distribution
– Cost of misclassification
– Size of training and test sets
Learning Curve

● Learning curve shows

how accuracy changes
with varying sample size
● Requires a sampling
schedule for creating
learning curve:
● Arithmetic sampling
(Langley, et al)
● Geometric sampling
(Provost et al)

Effect of small sample size:

- Bias in the estimate
- Variance of estimate
Methods of Estimation
● Holdout
– Reserve 2/3 for training and 1/3 for testing
● Random subsampling
– Repeated holdout
● Cross validation
– Partition data into k disjoint subsets
– k-fold: train on k-1 partitions, test on the remaining one
– Leave-one-out: k=n
● Stratified sampling
– oversampling vs undersampling
● Bootstrap
– Sampling with replacement
Model Evaluation

● Metrics for Performance Evaluation

– How to evaluate the performance of a model?

● Methods for Performance Evaluation

– How to obtain reliable estimates?

● Methods for Model Comparison

– How to compare the relative performance
among competing models?
ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic)

● Developed in 1950s for signal detection theory to

analyze noisy signals
– Characterize the trade-off between positive
hits and false alarms
● ROC curve plots TP (on the y-axis) against FP
(on the x-axis)
● Performance of each classifier represented as a
point on the ROC curve
– changing the threshold of algorithm, sample
distribution or cost matrix changes the location
of the point
 ROC Curve
- 1-dimensional data set containing 2 classes (positive and negative)
- any points located at x > t is classified as positive
 ROC Curve
- 1-dimensional data set containing 2 classes (positive and negative)
- any points located at x > t is classified as positive

At threshold t:
TP=0.5, FN=0.5, FP=0.12, FN=0.88
ROC Curve

(TP,FP):
● (0,0): declare everything
to be negative class
● (1,1): declare everything
to be positive class
● (1,0): ideal

● Diagonal line:
– Random guessing
– Below diagonal line:
u prediction is opposite of
the true class
Using ROC for Model Comparison

● No model consistently
outperform the other
● M1 is better for
small FPR
● M2 is better for
large FPR

● Area Under the ROC

curve
● Ideal:
§ Area =1
● Random guess:
§ Area = 0.5
How to Construct an ROC curve

• Use classifier that produces

Instance P(+|A) True Class
posterior probability for each
1 0.95 +
test instance P(+|A)
2 0.93 +
3 0.87 - • Sort the instances according
4 0.85 - to P(+|A) in decreasing order
5 0.85 - • Apply threshold at each
6 0.85 + unique value of P(+|A)
7 0.76 -
8 0.53 + • Count the number of TP, FP,
9 0.43 - TN, FN at each threshold
10 0.25 + • TP rate, TPR = TP/(TP+FN)
• FP rate, FPR = FP/(FP + TN)
How to construct an ROC curve
Class + - + - - - + - + +
P
Threshold >= 0.25 0.43 0.53 0.76 0.85 0.85 0.85 0.87 0.93 0.95 1.00

TP 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 0

FP 5 5 4 4 3 2 1 1 0 0 0

TN 0 0 1 1 2 3 4 4 5 5 5

FN 0 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 4 5

TPR 1 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.2 0

FPR 1 1 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.2 0 0 0

ROC Curve: