Evolutionary model tree induction

Rodrigo C. Barros, Márcio P. Basgalupp, Duncan D. Ruiz, André Carlos Ponce de Leon Ferreira de Carvalho, Alex Alves Freitas

Abstract: Model trees are a particular case of decision trees employed to solve regression problems. They have the advantage of presenting an interpretable output with an acceptable level of predictive performance. Since generating optimal model trees is a NP-Complete problem, the traditional model tree induction algorithms make use of a greedy heuristic, which may not converge to the global optimal solution. We propose the use of the evolutionary algorithms paradigm (EA) as an alternate heuristic to generate model trees in order to improve the convergence to global optimal solutions. We test the predictive performance of this new approach using public UCI datasets, and compare the results with traditional greedy regression/model trees induction algorithms.