Univariate Decision Tree Induction using Maximum Margin Classification

In many pattern recognition applications, first decision trees are used due to their simplicity and easily interpretable nature. In this paper, we propose a new decision tree learning algorithm called univariate margin tree where, for each continuous attribute, the best split is found using convex optimization. Our simulation results on 47 data sets show that the novel margin tree classifier performs at least as good as C4.5 and linear discriminant tree (LDT) with a similar time complexity. For two-class data sets, it generates significantly smaller trees than C4.5 and LDT without sacrificing from accuracy, and generates significantly more accurate trees than C4.5 and LDT for multiclass data sets with one-vs-rest methodology.