WEEK 13 MACHINE LEARNING
ID3 (Itera ve Dichotomiser 3) and CART (Classifica on and Regression Trees) are both
popular algorithms used for construc ng decision trees in machine learning. Although they
share the goal of crea ng decision trees, they differ in their methodology and applica on.
Here’s a detailed comparison and contrast of ID3 and CART:
ID3 (Itera ve Dichotomiser 3)
Concept: ID3 is an algorithm used to generate a decision tree by employing a top-down,
greedy approach. It uses informa on gain as the criterion to select the a ribute that best
separates the data into dis nct classes at each node.
Key Characteris cs:
Split Criterion: Informa on Gain
Output: Classifica on Trees
A ribute Selec on: Chooses the a ribute with the highest informa on gain to split
the data.
Handling Con nuous Data: Does not handle con nuous data directly; requires
discre za on.
Pruning: Does not have built-in pruning. Pruning needs to be implemented
separately to avoid overfi ng.
Tree Structure: Resul ng trees can some mes be unbalanced, as it focuses on
maximizing informa on gain.
Advantages:
Simple and easy to understand and implement.
Effec ve for small to medium-sized datasets.
Works well with categorical data.
Disadvantages:
Can lead to overfi ng, especially with noisy data, due to the lack of pruning.
Not suitable for con nuous data without preprocessing.
May produce biased trees if there are many dis nct a ribute values.
CART (Classifica on and Regression Trees)
Concept: CART is a decision tree algorithm that can be used for both classifica on and
regression tasks. It uses the Gini impurity or mean squared error as the criterion for
classifica on and regression, respec vely, to determine the best split at each node.
Key Characteris cs:
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Split Criterion: Gini Impurity (for classifica on) or Mean Squared Error (for
regression)
Output: Classifica on Trees and Regression Trees
A ribute Selec on: Chooses the a ribute that minimizes Gini impurity (for
classifica on) or mean squared error (for regression).
Handling Con nuous Data: Can handle both con nuous and categorical data directly.
Pruning: Includes built-in mechanisms for pruning (such as cost-complexity pruning)
to avoid overfi ng.
Tree Structure: Tends to produce more balanced trees due to the op miza on of
impurity measures.
Advantages:
Versa le, as it can handle both classifica on and regression tasks.
Handles con nuous and categorical data effec vely.
Includes pruning mechanisms to prevent overfi ng.
Disadvantages:
Computa onally intensive, especially for large datasets.
Trees can s ll become complex if not pruned correctly.
Can be sensi ve to small varia ons in the data (like all decision trees).
Comparison Summary
Feature ID3 CART
Primary Use Classifica on Classifica on and Regression
Split Criterion Informa on Gain Gini Impurity (classifica on), MSE
(regression)
Handling Requires discre za on Handles directly
Con nuous Data
Pruning No built-in pruning Includes pruning mechanisms
Bias in A ribute Prone to bias with many Less prone to bias
Selec on dis nct a ribute values
Versa lity Limited to classifica on Versa le for both tasks
Complexity Simpler, but can overfit More complex, but with built-in
without pruning mechanisms to control complexity
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Interpretability Easy to interpret Easy to interpret
Computa onal Generally more efficient Can be computa onally intensive
Efficiency
