DM: RE: binary vs. multiway splits in classification trees

[Tom Dinsmore]

Multiway splits can produce a cleaner and neater looking tree than binary splits where key predictors are multinomials. But since multiway splits can be expressed as a series of binary splits, there should be no difference in predictive power. You should be aware, however, that the underlying differences between "cluster" and "exhaustive" in KnowledgeSeeker go well beyond the ability to do multiway splits.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tjen-Sien Lim [mailto:limt@stat.wisc.edu]
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 1999 2:04 AM
To: datamine-l@nautilus-sys.com
Subject: DM: binary vs. multiway splits in classification trees


I was wondering if anyone has an example where classification tree
with multiway splits provides a much better explanation about the data
than tree with binary splits does. Using KnowlegdeSEEKER ('cluster'
and 'exhaustive' methods), I haven't found data sets showing multiway
splits are better than binary. Thanks.

-- 
Tjen-Sien Lim                (608) 262-8181                        
Dept. of Statistics          limt@stat.wisc.edu
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison   http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~limt
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Madison, WI 53706