A clustering-based decision tree induction algorithm

Decision tree induction algorithms are well known techniques for assigning objects to predefined categories in a transparent fashion. Most decision tree induction algorithms rely on a greedy top-down recursive strategy for growing the tree, and pruning techniques to avoid overfitting. Even though such a strategy has been quite successful in many problems, it falls short in several others. For instance, there are cases in which the hyper-rectangular surfaces generated by these algorithms can only map the problem description after several sub-sequential partitions, which results in a large and incomprehensible tree. Hence, we propose a new decision tree induction algorithm based on clustering which seeks to provide more accurate models and/or shorter descriptions more comprehensible for the end-user. We do not base our performance analysis solely on the straightforward comparison of our proposed algorithm to baseline methods. Instead, we propose a data-dependent analysis in order to look for evidences which may explain in which situations our algorithm outperforms a well-known decision tree induction algorithm.