Controlling Constructive Induction in CIPF: An MDL Approach

Bernhard Pfahringer

Abstract: We describe the propositional learning system CiPF, which tightly couples a simple concept learner with a sophisticated constructive induction component. It is described in terms of a generic architecture for constructive induction. We focus on the problem of controlling the abundance of opportunities for constructively adding new attributes. In CiPF the so-called Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle acts as a powerful control heuristic. This is also confirmed in the experiments reported.