This is the first comprehensive book dedicated entirely to the field of decision trees in data mining and covers all aspects of this important technique.Decision trees have become one of the most powerful and popular approaches in knowledge discovery and data mining, the science and technology of exploring large and complex bodies of data in order to discover useful patterns. The area is of great importance because it enables modeling and knowledge extraction from the abundance of data available. Both theoreticians and practitioners are continually seeking techniques to make the process more efficient, cost-effective and accurate. Decision trees, originally implemented in decision theory and statistics, are highly effective tools in other areas such as data mining, text mining, information extraction, machine learning, and pattern recognition. This book invites readers to explore the many benefits in data mining that decision trees offer:

Decision trees have become one of the most powerful and popular approaches in knowledge discovery and data mining; it is the science of exploring large and complex bodies of data in order to discover useful patterns. Decision tree learning continues to evolve over time. Existing methods are constantly being improved and new methods introduced.This 2nd Edition is dedicated entirely to the field of decision trees in data mining; to cover all aspects of this important technique, as well as improved or new methods and techniques developed after the publication of our first edition. In this new edition, all chapters have been revised and new topics brought in. New topics include Cost-Sensitive Active Learning, Learning with Uncertain and Imbalanced Data, Using Decision Trees beyond Classification Tasks, Privacy Preserving Decision Tree Learning, Lessons Learned from Comparative Studies, and Learning Decision Trees for Big Data. A walk-through guide to existing open-source data mining software is also included in this edition.This book invites readers to explore the many benefits in data mining that decision trees offer:

Data Mining is the science and technology of exploring data in order to discover previously unknown patterns. It is a part of the overall process of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD). The accessibility and abundance of information today makes data mining a matter of considerable importance and necessity. This book provides an introduction to the field with an emphasis on advanced decomposition methods in general data mining tasks and for classification tasks in particular. The book presents a complete methodology for decomposing classification problems into smaller and more manageable sub-problems that are solvable by using existing tools. The various elements are then joined together to solve the initial problem.The benefits of decomposition methodology in data mining include: increased performance (classification accuracy); conceptual simplification of the problem; enhanced feasibility for huge databases; clearer and more comprehensible results; reduced runtime by solving smaller problems and by using parallel/distributed computation; and the opportunity of using different techniques for individual sub-problems.