Optimization of Decision Tree for Classification Using a Particle Swarm

Decision tree as a classification tool is being used successfully in many areas such as medical diagnosis, customer churn prediction, signal detection and so on. The main advantage of decision tree classifiers is their capability to break down a complex structure into a collection of simpler structures, thus providing a solution that is easy to interpret. Since decision tree is a top-down algorithm using a divide and conquer induction process, there is a risk of reaching a local optimal solution. This paper proposes a procedure of optimally determining thresholds of the chosen variables for a decision tree using an adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO). The proposed algorithm consists of two phases. First, we construct a decision tree and choose the relevant variables. Second, we find the optimum thresholds simultaneously using an APSO for those selected variables. To validate the proposed algorithm, several artificial and real datasets are used. We compare our results with the original CART results and show that the proposed algorithm is promising for improving prediction accuracy.