Evolutionary algorithm for decision tree induction

Abstract

Decision trees are among the most popular classification algorithms due to their knowledge representation in form of decision rules which are easy for interpretation and analysis. Nonetheless, a majority of decision trees training algorithms base on greedy top-down induction strategy which has the tendency to develop too complex tree structures. Therefore, they are not able to effectively generalise knowledge gathered in learning set. In this paper we propose EVO-Tree hybrid algorithm for decision tree induction. EVO-Tree utilizes evolutionary algorithm based training procedure which processes population of possible tree structures decoded in the form of tree-like chromosomes. Training process aims at minimizing objective functions with two components: misclassification rate and tree size. We test the predictive performance of EVO-Tree using several public UCI data sets, and we compare the results with various state-of-the-art classification algorithms.