o Decision Tree is a Supervised learning technique that can be

used for both classification and Regression problems, but mostly it

is preferred for solving Classification problems. It is a tree-structured
classifier, where internal nodes represent the features of a
dataset, branches represent the decision rules and each leaf
node represents the outcome.
o In a Decision tree, there are two nodes, which are the Decision
Node and Leaf Node. Decision nodes are used to make any
decision and have multiple branches, whereas Leaf nodes are the
output of those decisions and do not contain any further branches.
o The decisions or the test are performed on the basis of features of
the given dataset.
o It is a graphical representation for getting all the possible
solutions to a problem/decision based on given conditions.
o It is called a decision tree because, similar to a tree, it starts with
the root node, which expands on further branches and constructs a
tree-like structure.
o In order to build a tree, we use the CART algorithm, which stands
for Classification and Regression Tree algorithm.
o A decision tree simply asks a question, and based on the answer
(Yes/No), it further split the tree into subtrees.
o Below diagram explains the general structure of a decision tree:

Why use Decision Trees?

There are various algorithms in Machine learning, so choosing the best
algorithm for the given dataset and problem is the main point to
remember while creating a machine learning model. Below are the two
reasons for using the Decision tree:

o Decision Trees usually mimic human thinking ability while making a

decision, so it is easy to understand.
o The logic behind the decision tree can be easily understood because
it shows a tree-like structure.

Decision Tree Terminologies

 Root Node: Root node is from where the decision tree starts. It represents the entire
dataset, which further gets divided into two or more homogeneous sets.
 Leaf Node: Leaf nodes are the final output node, and the tree cannot be segregated
further after getting a leaf node.
 Splitting: Splitting is the process of dividing the decision node/root node into sub-
nodes according to the given conditions.
 Branch/Sub Tree: A tree formed by splitting the tree.
 Pruning: Pruning is the process of removing the unwanted branches from the tree.
 Parent/Child node: The root node of the tree is called the parent node, and other
nodes are called the child nodes.

How does the Decision Tree algorithm Work?

In a decision tree, for predicting the class of the given dataset, the
algorithm starts from the root node of the tree. This algorithm compares
the values of root attribute with the record (real dataset) attribute and,
based on the comparison, follows the branch and jumps to the next node.

For the next node, the algorithm again compares the attribute value with
the other sub-nodes and move further. It continues the process until it
reaches the leaf node of the tree. The complete process can be better
understood using the below algorithm:

o Step-1: Begin the tree with the root node, says S, which contains
the complete dataset.
o Step-2: Find the best attribute in the dataset using Attribute
Selection Measure (ASM).
o Step-3: Divide the S into subsets that contains possible values for
the best attributes.
o Step-4: Generate the decision tree node, which contains the best
attribute.
 o Step-5: Recursively make new decision trees using the subsets of
the dataset created in step -3. Continue this process until a stage is
reached where you cannot further classify the nodes and called the
final node as a leaf node.

Example: Suppose there is a candidate who has a job offer and wants to
decide whether he should accept the offer or Not. So, to solve this
problem, the decision tree starts with the root node (Salary attribute by
ASM). The root node splits further into the next decision node (distance
from the office) and one leaf node based on the corresponding labels. The
next decision node further gets split into one decision node (Cab facility)
and one leaf node. Finally, the decision node splits into two leaf nodes
(Accepted offers and Declined offer). Consider the below diagram:

Attribute Selection Measures

While implementing a Decision tree, the main issue arises that how to
select the best attribute for the root node and for sub-nodes. So, to solve
such problems there is a technique which is called as Attribute
selection measure or ASM. By this measurement, we can easily select
the best attribute for the nodes of the tree. There are two popular
techniques for ASM, which are:

o Information Gain
 o Gini Index

1. Information Gain:

o Information gain is the measurement of changes in entropy after the

segmentation of a dataset based on an attribute.
o It calculates how much information a feature provides us about a
class.
o According to the value of information gain, we split the node and
build the decision tree.
o A decision tree algorithm always tries to maximize the value of
information gain, and a node/attribute having the highest
information gain is split first. It can be calculated using the below
formula:

1. Information Gain= Entropy(S)- [(Weighted Avg) *Entropy(each feature)

Entropy: Entropy is a metric to measure the impurity in a given attribute.

It specifies randomness in data. Entropy can be calculated as:

Entropy(s)= -P(yes)log2 P(yes)- P(no) log2 P(no)

Where,

o S= Total number of samples

o P(yes)= probability of yes
o P(no)= probability of no

2. Gini Index:

o Gini index is a measure of impurity or purity used while creating a

decision tree in the CART(Classification and Regression Tree)
algorithm.
o An attribute with the low Gini index should be preferred as
compared to the high Gini index.
o It only creates binary splits, and the CART algorithm uses the Gini
index to create binary splits.
o Gini index can be calculated using the below formula:
 Gini Index= 1- ∑jPj2

Pruning: Getting an Optimal Decision tree

Pruning is a process of deleting the unnecessary nodes from a tree in
order to get the optimal decision tree.

A too-large tree increases the risk of overfitting, and a small tree may not
capture all the important features of the dataset. Therefore, a technique
that decreases the size of the learning tree without reducing accuracy is
known as Pruning. There are mainly two types of tree pruning technology
used:

o Cost Complexity Pruning

o Reduced Error Pruning.

Advantages of the Decision Tree

o It is simple to understand as it follows the same process which a
human follow while making any decision in real-life.
o It can be very useful for solving decision-related problems.
o It helps to think about all the possible outcomes for a problem.
o There is less requirement of data cleaning compared to other
algorithms.

Disadvantages of the Decision Tree

o The decision tree contains lots of layers, which makes it complex.
o It may have an overfitting issue, which can be resolved using
the Random Forest algorithm.
o For more class labels, the computational complexity of the decision
tree may increase.

Python Implementation of Decision Tree

Now we will implement the Decision tree using Python. For this, we will
use the dataset "user_data.csv," which we have used in previous
classification models. By using the same dataset, we can compare the
Decision tree classifier with other classification models such
as KNN SVM, LogisticRegression, etc.

Steps will also remain the same, which are given below:
 o Data Pre-processing step
o Fitting a Decision-Tree algorithm to the Training set
o Predicting the test result
o Test accuracy of the result(Creation of Confusion matrix)
o Visualizing the test set result.

1. Data Pre-Processing Step:

Below is the code for the pre-processing step:

1. # importing libraries
2. import numpy as nm
3. import matplotlib.pyplot as mtp
4. import pandas as pd
5.
6. #importing datasets
7. data_set= pd.read_csv('user_data.csv')
8.
9. #Extracting Independent and dependent Variable
10. x= data_set.iloc[:, [2,3]].values
11. y= data_set.iloc[:, 4].values
12.
13. # Splitting the dataset into training and test set.
14. from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
15. x_train, x_test, y_train, y_test= train_test_split(x, y, test_size= 0.25,
random_state=0)
16.
17. #feature Scaling
18. from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler
19. st_x= StandardScaler()
20. x_train= st_x.fit_transform(x_train)
21. x_test= st_x.transform(x_test)

In the above code, we have pre-processed the data. Where we have

loaded the dataset, which is given as:
 2. Fitting a Decision-Tree algorithm to the Training set
Now we will fit the model to the training set. For this, we will import
the DecisionTreeClassifier class from sklearn.tree library. Below is the
code for it:

1. #Fitting Decision Tree classifier to the training set

2. From sklearn.tree import DecisionTreeClassifier
3. classifier= DecisionTreeClassifier(criterion='entropy', random_state=0)
4. classifier.fit(x_train, y_train)

In the above code, we have created a classifier object, in which we have

passed two main parameters;

o "criterion='entropy': Criterion is used to measure the quality of

split, which is calculated by information gain given by entropy.
o random_state=0": For generating the random states.

Below is the output for this:

Out[8]:
DecisionTreeClassifier(class_weight=None, criterion='entropy',
max_depth=None,
max_features=None, max_leaf_nodes=None,
min_impurity_decrease=0.0, min_impurity_split=None,
min_samples_leaf=1, min_samples_split=2,
min_weight_fraction_leaf=0.0, presort=False,
random_state=0, splitter='best')
 3. Predicting the test result
Now we will predict the test set result. We will create a new prediction
vector y_pred. Below is the code for it:

1. #Predicting the test set result

2. y_pred= classifier.predict(x_test)

Output:

In the below output image, the predicted output and real test output are
given. We can clearly see that there are some values in the prediction
vector, which are different from the real vector values. These are
prediction errors.

4. Test accuracy of the result (Creation of Confusion matrix)

In the above output, we have seen that there were some incorrect
predictions, so if we want to know the number of correct and incorrect
predictions, we need to use the confusion matrix. Below is the code for it:

1. #Creating the Confusion matrix

2. from sklearn.metrics import confusion_matrix
3. cm= confusion_matrix(y_test, y_pred)

Output:
 In the above output image, we can see the confusion matrix, which
has 6+3= 9 incorrect predictions and62+29=91 correct
predictions. Therefore, we can say that compared to other
classification models, the Decision Tree classifier made a good
prediction.

5. Visualizing the training set result:

Here we will visualize the training set result. To visualize the training set
result we will plot a graph for the decision tree classifier. The classifier will
predict yes or No for the users who have either Purchased or Not
purchased the SUV car as we did in Logistic Regression. Below is the code
for it:

1. #Visulaizing the trianing set result

2. from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap
3. x_set, y_set = x_train, y_train
4. x1, x2 = nm.meshgrid(nm.arange(start = x_set[:, 0].min() - 1, stop = x_se
t[:, 0].max() + 1, step =0.01),
5. nm.arange(start = x_set[:, 1].min() - 1, stop = x_set[:, 1].max() + 1, step
= 0.01))
6. mtp.contourf(x1, x2, classifier.predict(nm.array([x1.ravel(), x2.ravel()]).T).
reshape(x1.shape),
7. alpha = 0.75, cmap = ListedColormap(('purple','green' )))
8. mtp.xlim(x1.min(), x1.max())
9. mtp.ylim(x2.min(), x2.max())
10. fori, j in enumerate(nm.unique(y_set)):
11. mtp.scatter(x_set[y_set == j, 0], x_set[y_set == j, 1],
12. c = ListedColormap(('purple', 'green'))(i), label = j)
13. mtp.title('Decision Tree Algorithm (Training set)')
14. mtp.xlabel('Age')
15. mtp.ylabel('Estimated Salary')
16. mtp.legend()
17. mtp.show()

Output:

The above output is completely different from the rest classification

models. It has both vertical and horizontal lines that are splitting the
dataset according to the age and estimated salary variable.

As we can see, the tree is trying to capture each dataset, which is the
case of overfitting.

6. Visualizing the test set result:

Visualization of test set result will be similar to the visualization of the
training set except that the training set will be replaced with the test set.

1. #Visulaizing the test set result

2. from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap
3. x_set, y_set = x_test, y_test
4. x1, x2 = nm.meshgrid(nm.arange(start = x_set[:, 0].min() - 1, stop = x_se
t[:, 0].max() + 1, step =0.01),
5. nm.arange(start = x_set[:, 1].min() - 1, stop = x_set[:, 1].max() + 1, step
= 0.01))
6. mtp.contourf(x1, x2, classifier.predict(nm.array([x1.ravel(), x2.ravel()]).T).
reshape(x1.shape),
7. alpha = 0.75, cmap = ListedColormap(('purple','green' )))
8. mtp.xlim(x1.min(), x1.max())
9. mtp.ylim(x2.min(), x2.max())
10. fori, j in enumerate(nm.unique(y_set)):
11. mtp.scatter(x_set[y_set == j, 0], x_set[y_set == j, 1],
12. c = ListedColormap(('purple', 'green'))(i), label = j)
13. mtp.title('Decision Tree Algorithm(Test set)')
14. mtp.xlabel('Age')
15. mtp.ylabel('Estimated Salary')
16. mtp.legend()
17. mtp.show()

Output:

As we can see in the above image that there are some green data points
within the purple region and vice versa. So, these are the incorrect
predictions which we have discussed in the confusion matrix.