A new decision tree learning algorithm

In order to improve the generalization ability of binary decision trees, a new learning algorithm, the MMDT algorithm, is presented. Based on statistical learning theory the generalization performance of binary decision trees is analyzed, and the assessment rule is proposed. Under the direction of the assessment rule, the MMDT algorithm is implemented. The algorithm maps training examples from an original space to a high dimension featurespace, and constructs a decision tree in it. In the feature space, a new decision node splitting criterion, the max-min rule, is used, and the margin of each decision node is maximized using a support vector machine, to improve the generalization performance. Experimental results show that the new learning algorithm is much superior to others such as C4. 5 and OC1.