Chapter 17 Classification and Regression Trees

Question 1

WHAT IS THE USE OF ALPHA HYPER PARAMETER IN CART ALGORITHMS? P85

Answer 1

More sophisticated pruning methods can be used such as cost complexity pruning (also called weakest link pruning) where a learning parameter (alpha) is used to weigh whether nodes can be removed based on the size of the sub-tree.

Question 2

WHAT SORT OF DATA PREPARATION DO CART MODELS NEED? P85

Answer 2

CART does not require any special data preparation other than a good representation of the problem.