Decision Machines embeds decision trees into vector spaces for improved optimization.
problem Overfitting and difficulty in finding optimal decision tree structure.
method Embedding Boolean tests into a binary vector space and representing tree structure as matrices.
result Optimized decision trees with enhanced predictive power.
Boosting meta-trees improve decision tree performance.
problem Overfitting in decision trees.
method Boosting approach to construct multiple meta-trees.
result Ensembles of meta-trees prevent overfitting.
Decision tree learning is a popular classification technique most commonly used in machine learning applications. Recent work has shown that decision trees can be used to represent provably-correct controllers concisely. Compared to representations using lookup tables or binary decision diagrams, decision trees are sma…
The study analyzes when Bayesian averaging over decision trees is reliable.
problem When do Bayesian model averaging weights over decision trees provide reliable information?
method Closed-form solution for Bayesian decision trees with Catalan-exponential priors.
result Established a complete non-asymptotic theory of rational commitment thresholds.
Trinary decision tree improves handling of missing data in machine learning.
problem Improving accuracy in decision tree algorithms when dealing with missing data.
method Introduces Trinary decision tree, which does not assume missing values contain information about the response.
result Trinary decision tree outperforms other algorithms in Missing Completely at Random settings, especially when data is only missing out-of-sample.
Meta-learning interpretable decision trees with synthetic data.
problem Lack of efficient, scalable methods for generating synthetic data for decision tree meta-learning.
method Synthetic generation of near-optimal decision trees using the MetaTree transformer architecture.
result Meta-learning of decision trees achieves performance comparable to real-world data or optimal decision trees, with significant computational cost reduction.
The paper improves decision tree stability for health care applications.
problem Stability of decision trees in health care applications.
method Introducing a new distance metric to determine tree stability and proposing a novel training methodology.
result On average, a 4.6% decrease in predictive power yields a 38% increase in model stability.
Convex polytope trees expand decision trees with interpretable boundaries.
problem High accuracy often requires many nodes in decision trees, reducing interpretability.
method CPT uses logical disjunction of weighted linear decision-makers, geometrically a convex polytope.
result CPT achieves high accuracy with fewer nodes compared to existing methods.
FoLDTree improves oblique decision trees with ULDA, enhancing accuracy and feature selection.
problem Axis-orthogonal splits limit traditional decision trees' performance on oblique decision boundaries.
method Integrates ULDA into decision tree structure for efficient oblique splits, feature selection, and handling missing values.
result FoLDTree outperforms other methods in accuracy and feature selection, comparable to random forest.
Paper introduces algorithms for private decision tree learning.
problem Private decision tree learning in distributed settings.
method Proposes DP-TopDown, NoisyCounts, and LocalRNM.
result First utility guarantees for private decision tree learning.
Enhanced ODT with Feature Concatenation boosts learning efficiency.
problem Insufficient learning efficiency of ODT due to linear projections not being transmitted to child nodes.
method Feature Concatenation ( exttt{FC-ODT}) to transmit linear projections along decision paths.
result Experiments show exttt{FC-ODT} outperforms state-of-the-art decision trees with a limited tree depth.
Max-Cut decision tree improves classification accuracy and reduces computation time.
problem Improving decision tree accuracy and efficiency for complex classification tasks.
method Alternative splitting metric (max cut) and PCA-based feature selection at each node.
result 49% improvement in accuracy with 94% reduction in CPU time on CIFAR-100 data.
Transform ANNs into interpretable decision trees.
problem Lack of interpretability in ANNs.
method Developed two MDT algorithms: EC-DT and Extended C-Net.
result Extended C-Net generates the most compact and effective trees.
New techniques optimize decision trees for interpretable machine learning.
problem Optimizing decision trees for interpretable machine learning.
method General framework for decision tree optimization addressing imbalanced data and continuous variables.
result Proves optimal decision trees for various objectives.
This work presents an approach to automatically induction for non-greedy decision trees constructed from neural network architecture. This construction can be used to transfer weights when growing or pruning a decision tree, allowing non-greedy decision tree algorithms to automatically learn and adapt to the ideal arch…
This paper improves Bayesian decision tree learning using HMC.
problem Bayesian decision tree learning is challenging due to a large parameter space.
method Develops and compares HMC-based algorithms for exploring Bayesian decision tree posteriors.
result HMC-based methods outperform existing methods in predictive accuracy and tree complexity.
Decision trees are an extremely popular machine learning technique. Unfortunately, overfitting in decision trees still remains an open issue that sometimes prevents achieving good performance. In this work, we present a novel approach for the construction of decision trees that avoids the overfitting by design, without…
Decision trees improve performance in various fields.
problem Improving performance in machine learning and data mining.
method Introduce tree-based models and training techniques.
result Highlight probabilistic characteristics and practical benefits.
Decision trees can be biased towards minority class, contrary to belief.
problem Bias in decision trees towards minority class in imbalanced datasets.
method Critical evaluation of past literature, specific conditions analysis, tree-fitting adjustments, and post-hoc calibration methods.
result Decision trees can be biased towards minority class under specific conditions, not always towards majority.
We show how neural models can be used to realize piece-wise constant functions such as decision trees. The proposed architecture, which we call locally constant networks, builds on ReLU networks that are piece-wise linear and hence their associated gradients with respect to the inputs are locally constant. We formally …
We introduce a novel incremental decision tree learning algorithm, Hoeffding Anytime Tree, that is statistically more efficient than the current state-of-the-art, Hoeffding Tree. We demonstrate that an implementation of Hoeffding Anytime Tree---"Extremely Fast Decision Tree", a minor modification to the MOA implementat…
Decision trees are ubiquitous in machine learning for their ease of use and interpretability. Yet, these models are not typically employed in reinforcement learning as they cannot be updated online via stochastic gradient descent. We overcome this limitation by allowing for a gradient update over the entire tree that i…
Algorithm learns decision trees from noisy data.
problem Learning stochastic decision trees from corrupted samples.
method Quasipolynomial-time algorithm for adversarial noise.
result Returns a hypothesis with error within 2η+ε of optimal. Rectified decision trees improve machine learning interpretability and effectiveness.
problem Combining interpretability and effectiveness in machine learning models.
method Knowledge distillation and modified decision tree splitting criteria.
result Soft labels improve model performance and reduce model size.
Study explores loss design for decision trees to improve robustness against noisy labels.
problem Improving decision tree robustness to noisy labels.
method Investigated loss correction and symmetric losses, found ineffective.
result Other loss design directions need exploration for robust decision trees.
Develops a new method for decision trees using categorical variable structure.
problem Lack of structure in treating categorical variables as predictors.
method Introduces a mathematical framework to represent categorical structure and generalizes decision trees to utilize this structure.
result Improves prediction accuracy on weather data using the new method.
A novel gradient-based method optimizes decision trees for complex tasks.
problem Training decision trees with arbitrary differentiable loss functions.
method Gradient-based optimization using first and second derivatives of loss functions.
result Improves accuracy and flexibility in decision tree optimization.
Decision trees improve intraday trading strategies for NIFTY50 stocks.
problem Creating optimal trading rules for individual stocks.
method Using decision trees to generate unique trading rules for each stock based on technical indicators.
result Decision tree strategies outperform simple buy-and-hold for many stocks.
This paper solves the open problem of computing Bayes optimal prediction for decision trees using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method.
problem Computing the Bayes optimal prediction for decision trees is infeasible due to an infeasible summation over all division patterns of a feature space.
method Solved the open problem using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method with adaptively tuned step size.
result Computed the Bayes optimal prediction for decision trees using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method.
In this paper, we present a novel sequential paradigm for classification in crowdsourcing systems. Considering that workers are unreliable and they perform the tests with errors, we study the construction of decision trees so as to minimize the probability of mis-classification. By exploiting the connection between pro…
Optimal decision trees learned via dynamic programming and search.
problem Finding the best classification trees that are both accurate and compact.
method Dynamic programming and search techniques.
result Our algorithm learns optimal classification trees significantly faster and scales better than existing methods.
Decision tree algorithms have been among the most popular algorithms for interpretable (transparent) machine learning since the early 1980's. The problem that has plagued decision tree algorithms since their inception is their lack of optimality, or lack of guarantees of closeness to optimality: decision tree algorithm…
Decision tree learning heuristics fail even in smoothed analysis for complex targets.
problem Greedy decision tree learning heuristics fail for complex target functions in the smoothed analysis model.
method Construct counterexamples and analyze the behavior of heuristics in the smoothed setting and agnostic setting.
result Greedy decision tree learning heuristics can build trees of exponential depth before achieving high accuracy for certain complex target functions.
A new decision tree induction method using MIP for faster optimization.
problem Optimizing decision tree split rules for better classification performance.
method Mixed-integer programming (MIP) for Gini reduction maximization, efficient search algorithm.
result bsnsing trees outperform other tree models in new case discrimination.
In this paper we propose a method to build a neural network that is similar to an ensemble of decision trees. We first illustrate how to convert a learned ensemble of decision trees to a single neural network with one hidden layer and an input transformation. We then relax some properties of this network such as thresh…
While deep reinforcement learning has successfully solved many challenging control tasks, its real-world applicability has been limited by the inability to ensure the safety of learned policies. We propose an approach to verifiable reinforcement learning by training decision tree policies, which can represent complex p…
Decision tree classifiers are a widely used tool in data stream mining. The use of confidence intervals to estimate the gain associated with each split leads to very effective methods, like the popular Hoeffding tree algorithm. From a statistical viewpoint, the analysis of decision tree classifiers in a streaming setti…
Bayesian Decision Trees are known for their probabilistic interpretability. However, their construction can sometimes be costly. In this article we present a general Bayesian Decision Tree algorithm applicable to both regression and classification problems. The algorithm does not apply Markov Chain Monte Carlo and does…
Timber targets decision trees, outperforming existing attacks.
problem Poisoning decision trees to manipulate model predictions.
method Greedy attack strategy using sub-tree retraining for efficiency.
result Timber outperforms existing attacks in effectiveness and efficiency.
A new method for decision tree selection in recommendation systems.
problem Feature-based selection of a single tree from an ensemble for dynamic interpretation.
method A multi-armed contextual bandit recommendation framework that trains a system on top of Random Forests to identify the most relevant tree.
result The dynamic method outperforms an independent CART tree and is comparable to Random Forest in predictive performance.
In an attempt to gather a deeper understanding of how convolutional neural networks (CNNs) reason about human-understandable concepts, we present a method to infer labeled concept data from hidden layer activations and interpret the concepts through a shallow decision tree. The decision tree can provide information abo…
Paper proposes a probabilistic method to handle missing data in decision trees.
problem Handling missing data in decision trees.
method At deployment time, use density estimators to compute expected predictions. At learning time, fine-tune tree parameters to minimize expected prediction loss.
result Effective compared to baselines in experiments.
We consider the use of decision trees for decision-making problems under the predict-then-optimize framework. That is, we would like to first use a decision tree to predict unknown input parameters of an optimization problem, and then make decisions by solving the optimization problem using the predicted parameters. A …
SBAMDT uses adaptive soft splits to model complex decision boundaries.
problem Limited ability of standard decision trees to capture complex decision boundaries.
method Probabilistic additive decision tree model with adaptive soft multivariate splits.
result Demonstrated improved predictive performance on synthetic and real datasets.
A new randomized tree classifier outperforms traditional CARTs.
problem Traditional greedy CARTs are slow and inaccurate.
method Optimal decision trees using continuous optimization.
result Randomized tree classifier outperforms traditional CARTs.
Multistage Defer Trees improve model accuracy while maintaining interpretability.
problem Balancing model accuracy and interpretability, especially in noisy domains.
method A sequence of sparse decision trees that defer predictions to the next tree or a black box.
result Matches the performance of complex tree-based ensembles while using only one or a few sparse trees.
New tree splitting criteria improve probabilistic predictions.
problem Improving tree-based nonparametric predictive distributions.
method Using proper scoring rules for tree splitting criteria.
result Trees with new splitting criteria produce better predictive distributions.
Most decision tree induction algorithms are based on a greedy top-down recursive partitioning strategy for tree growth. In this paper, we propose several methods for induction of decision trees and their ensembles based on evolutionary algorithms. The main difference of our approach is using real-valued vector represen…