A multivariate binary decision tree classifier based on shallow neural network

Abstract

In this paper, a novel decision tree classifier based on shallow neural networks with piecewise and nonlinear transformation activation functions are presented. A shallow neural network is recursively employed into linear and non-linear multivariate binary decision tree methods which generates splitting nodes and classifier nodes. Firstly, a linear multivariate binary decision tree with a shallow neural network is proposed which employs a rectified linear unit function. Secondly, there is presented a new activation function with non-linear property which has good generalization ability in learning process of neural networks. The presented method shows high generalization ability for linear and non-linear multivariate binary decision tree models which are called a Neural Network Decision Tree (NNDT). The proposed models with high generalization ability ensure the classification accuracy and performance. A novel split criterion of generating the nodes which focuses more on majority objects of classes on the current node is presented and employed in the new NNDT models. Furthermore, a shallow neural network based NNDT models are converted into a hyperplane based linear and non-linear multivariate decision trees which has high speed in the processing classification decisions. Numerical experiments on publicly available datasets have showed that the presented NNDT methods outperform the existing decision tree algorithms and other classifier methods.