Intro to Decision Trees

Good general piece from KDNuggets,  in Basics of Decision Trees

Decision Tree Algorithm, Explained

All you need to know about decision trees and how to build and optimize decision tree classifier.

By Nagesh Singh Chauhan, Data Science Enthusiast on February 9, 2022 in Machine Learning

Introduction

Classification is a two-step process, learning step and prediction step, in machine learning. In the learning step, the model is developed based on given training data. In the prediction step, the model is used to predict the response for given data. Decision Tree is one of the easiest and popular classification algorithms to understand and interpret.

Decision Tree Algorithm

Decision Tree algorithm belongs to the family of supervised learning algorithms. Unlike other supervised learning algorithms, the decision tree algorithm can be used for solving regression and classification problems too.

The goal of using a Decision Tree is to create a training model that can use to predict the class or value of the target variable by learning simple decision rules inferred from prior data(training data).

In Decision Trees, for predicting a class label for a record we start from the root of the tree. We compare the values of the root attribute with the record’s attribute. On the basis of comparison, we follow the branch corresponding to that value and jump to the next node.

Types of Decision Trees

Types of decision trees are based on the type of target variable we have. It can be of two types:  .... See the complete docatthe link.