package AI::DecisionTree; use strict; use AI::DecisionTree::Instance; use Carp; use vars qw($VERSION @ISA); $VERSION = '0.08'; sub new { my $package = shift; return bless { noise_mode => 'fatal', prune => 1, purge => 1, verbose => 0, max_depth => 0, @_, nodes => 0, instances => [], name_gen => 0, }, $package; } sub nodes { $_[0]->{nodes} } sub noise_mode { $_[0]->{noise_mode} } sub depth { $_[0]->{depth} } sub add_instance { my ($self, %args) = @_; croak "Missing 'attributes' parameter" unless $args{attributes}; croak "Missing 'result' parameter" unless defined $args{result}; $args{name} = $self->{name_gen}++ unless exists $args{name}; my @attributes; while (my ($k, $v) = each %{$args{attributes}}) { $attributes[ _hlookup($self->{attributes}, $k) ] = _hlookup($self->{attribute_values}{$k}, $v); } $_ ||= 0 foreach @attributes; push @{$self->{instances}}, AI::DecisionTree::Instance->new(\@attributes, _hlookup($self->{results}, $args{result}), $args{name}); } sub _hlookup { $_[0] ||= {}; # Autovivify as a hash my ($hash, $key) = @_; unless (exists $hash->{$key}) { $hash->{$key} = 1 + keys %$hash; } return $hash->{$key}; } sub _create_lookup_hashes { my $self = shift; my $h = $self->{results}; $self->{results_reverse} = [ undef, sort {$h->{$a} <=> $h->{$b}} keys %$h ]; foreach my $attr (keys %{$self->{attribute_values}}) { my $h = $self->{attribute_values}{$attr}; $self->{attribute_values_reverse}{$attr} = [ undef, sort {$h->{$a} <=> $h->{$b}} keys %$h ]; } } sub train { my ($self, %args) = @_; if (not @{ $self->{instances} }) { croak "Training data has been purged, can't re-train" if $self->{tree}; croak "Must add training instances before calling train()"; } $self->_create_lookup_hashes; local $self->{curr_depth} = 0; local $self->{max_depth} = $args{max_depth} if exists $args{max_depth}; $self->{depth} = 0; $self->{tree} = $self->_expand_node( instances => $self->{instances} ); $self->prune_tree if $self->{prune}; $self->do_purge if $self->purge; return 1; } sub do_purge { my $self = shift; delete @{$self}{qw(instances attribute_values attribute_values_reverse results results_reverse)}; } sub copy_instances { my ($self, %opt) = @_; croak "Missing 'from' parameter to copy_instances()" unless exists $opt{from}; my $other = $opt{from}; croak "'from' parameter is not a decision tree" unless UNIVERSAL::isa($other, __PACKAGE__); foreach (qw(instances attributes attribute_values results)) { $self->{$_} = $other->{$_}; } $self->_create_lookup_hashes; } sub set_results { my ($self, $hashref) = @_; foreach my $instance (@{$self->{instances}}) { my $name = $instance->name; croak "No result given for instance '$name'" unless exists $hashref->{$name}; $instance->set_result( $self->{results}{ $hashref->{$name} } ); } } sub instances { $_[0]->{instances} } sub purge { my $self = shift; $self->{purge} = shift if @_; return $self->{purge}; } # Each node contains: # { split_on => $attr_name, # children => { $attr_value1 => $node1, # $attr_value2 => $node2, ... } # } # or # { result => $result } sub _expand_node { my ($self, %args) = @_; my $instances = $args{instances}; print STDERR '.' if $self->{verbose}; $self->{depth} = $self->{curr_depth} if $self->{curr_depth} > $self->{depth}; local $self->{curr_depth} = $self->{curr_depth} + 1; $self->{nodes}++; my %results; $results{$self->_result($_)}++ foreach @$instances; my @results = map {$_,$results{$_}} sort {$results{$b} <=> $results{$a}} keys %results; my %node = ( distribution => \@results, instances => scalar @$instances ); if (keys(%results) == 1) { # All these instances have the same result - make this node a leaf $node{result} = $self->_result($instances->[0]); return \%node; } # Multiple values are present - find the best predictor attribute and split on it my $best_attr = $self->best_attr($instances); croak "Inconsistent data, can't build tree with noise_mode='fatal'" if $self->{noise_mode} eq 'fatal' and !defined $best_attr; if ( !defined($best_attr) or $self->{max_depth} && $self->{curr_depth} > $self->{max_depth} ) { # Pick the most frequent result for this leaf $node{result} = (sort {$results{$b} <=> $results{$a}} keys %results)[0]; return \%node; } $node{split_on} = $best_attr; my %split; foreach my $i (@$instances) { my $v = $self->_value($i, $best_attr); push @{$split{ defined($v) ? $v : '' }}, $i; } die ("Something's wrong: attribute '$best_attr' didn't split ", scalar @$instances, " instances into multiple buckets (@{[ keys %split ]})") unless keys %split > 1; foreach my $value (keys %split) { $node{children}{$value} = $self->_expand_node( instances => $split{$value} ); } return \%node; } sub best_attr { my ($self, $instances) = @_; # 0 is a perfect score, entropy(#instances) is the worst possible score my ($best_score, $best_attr) = (@$instances * $self->entropy( map $_->result_int, @$instances ), undef); my $all_attr = $self->{attributes}; foreach my $attr (keys %$all_attr) { # %tallies is correlation between each attr value and result # %total is number of instances with each attr value my (%totals, %tallies); my $num_undef = AI::DecisionTree::Instance::->tally($instances, \%tallies, \%totals, $all_attr->{$attr}); next unless keys %totals; # Make sure at least one instance defines this attribute my $score = 0; while (my ($opt, $vals) = each %tallies) { $score += $totals{$opt} * $self->entropy2( $vals, $totals{$opt} ); } ($best_attr, $best_score) = ($attr, $score) if $score < $best_score; } return $best_attr; } sub entropy2 { shift; my ($counts, $total) = @_; # Entropy is defined with log base 2 - we just divide by log(2) at the end to adjust. my $sum = 0; $sum += $_ * log($_) foreach values %$counts; return +(log($total) - $sum/$total)/log(2); } sub entropy { shift; my %count; $count{$_}++ foreach @_; # Entropy is defined with log base 2 - we just divide by log(2) at the end to adjust. my $sum = 0; $sum += $_ * log($_) foreach values %count; return +(log(@_) - $sum/@_)/log(2); } sub prune_tree { my $self = shift; # We use a minimum-description-length approach. We calculate the # score of each node: # n = number of nodes below # r = number of results (categories) in the entire tree # i = number of instances in the entire tree # e = number of errors below this node # Hypothesis description length (MML): # describe tree: number of nodes + number of edges # describe exceptions: num_exceptions * log2(total_num_instances) * log2(total_num_results) my $r = keys %{ $self->{results} }; my $i = $self->{tree}{instances}; my $exception_cost = log($r) * log($i) / log(2)**2; # Pruning can turn a branch into a leaf my $maybe_prune = sub { my ($self, $node) = @_; return unless $node->{children}; # Can't prune leaves my $nodes_below = $self->nodes_below($node); my $tree_cost = 2 * $nodes_below - 1; # $edges_below == $nodes_below - 1 my $exceptions = $self->exceptions( $node ); my $simple_rule_exceptions = $node->{instances} - $node->{distribution}[1]; my $score = -$nodes_below - ($exceptions - $simple_rule_exceptions) * $exception_cost; #warn "Score = $score = -$nodes_below - ($exceptions - $simple_rule_exceptions) * $exception_cost\n"; if ($score < 0) { delete @{$node}{'children', 'split_on', 'exceptions', 'nodes_below'}; $node->{result} = $node->{distribution}[0]; # XXX I'm not cleaning up 'exceptions' or 'nodes_below' keys up the tree } }; $self->_traverse($maybe_prune); } sub exceptions { my ($self, $node) = @_; return $node->{exceptions} if exists $node->{exeptions}; my $count = 0; if ( exists $node->{result} ) { $count = $node->{instances} - $node->{distribution}[1]; } else { foreach my $child ( values %{$node->{children}} ) { $count += $self->exceptions($child); } } return $node->{exceptions} = $count; } sub nodes_below { my ($self, $node) = @_; return $node->{nodes_below} if exists $node->{nodes_below}; my $count = 0; $self->_traverse( sub {$count++}, $node ); return $node->{nodes_below} = $count - 1; } # This is *not* for external use, I may change it. sub _traverse { my ($self, $callback, $node, $parent, $node_name) = @_; $node ||= $self->{tree}; ref($callback) ? $callback->($self, $node, $parent, $node_name) : $self->$callback($node, $parent, $node_name); return unless $node->{children}; foreach my $child ( keys %{$node->{children}} ) { $self->_traverse($callback, $node->{children}{$child}, $node, $child); } } sub get_result { my ($self, %args) = @_; croak "Missing 'attributes' parameter" unless $args{attributes}; my $a = $args{attributes}; $self->train unless $self->{tree}; my $tree = $self->{tree}; my $count = 0; while (1) { if (exists $tree->{result}) { my $r = $tree->{result}; return ($r, $tree->{distribution}[1] / $tree->{instances}, $count) if wantarray; return $r; } $count++; my $instance_val = exists $a->{$tree->{split_on}} ? $a->{$tree->{split_on}} : ''; $tree = $tree->{children}{ $instance_val } or return undef; } } sub as_graphviz { my ($self, %args) = @_; my $colors = delete $args{leaf_colors} || {}; require GraphViz; my $g = GraphViz->new(@_); my $id = 1; my $add_edge = sub { my ($self, $node, $parent, $node_name) = @_; # We use stringified reference names for node names, as a convenient hack. if ($node->{split_on}) { $g->add_node( "$node", label => $node->{split_on}, shape => 'ellipse', ); } else { my $i = 0; my $distr = join ',', grep {$i++ % 2} @{$node->{distribution}}; my %fill = (exists $colors->{$node->{result}} ? (fillcolor => $colors->{$node->{result}}, style => 'filled') : () ); $g->add_node( "$node", label => "$node->{result} ($distr)", shape => 'box', %fill, ); } $g->add_edge( "$parent" => "$node", label => $node_name, ) if $parent; }; $self->_traverse( $add_edge ); return $g; } sub rule_tree { my $self = shift; my ($tree) = @_ ? @_ : $self->{tree}; # build tree: # [ question, { results => [ question, { ... } ] } ] return $tree->{result} if exists $tree->{result}; return [ $tree->{split_on}, { map { $_ => $self->rule_tree($tree->{children}{$_}) } keys %{$tree->{children}}, } ]; } sub rule_statements { my $self = shift; my ($stmt, $tree) = @_ ? @_ : ('', $self->{tree}); return("$stmt -> '$tree->{result}'") if exists $tree->{result}; my @out; my $prefix = $stmt ? "$stmt and" : "if"; foreach my $val (keys %{$tree->{children}}) { push @out, $self->rule_statements("$prefix $tree->{split_on}='$val'", $tree->{children}{$val}); } return @out; } ### Some instance accessor stuff: sub _result { my ($self, $instance) = @_; my $int = $instance->result_int; return $self->{results_reverse}[$int]; } sub _delete_value { my ($self, $instance, $attr) = @_; my $val = $self->_value($instance, $attr); return unless defined $val; $instance->set_value($self->{attributes}{$attr}, 0); return $val; } sub _value { my ($self, $instance, $attr) = @_; return unless exists $self->{attributes}{$attr}; my $val_int = $instance->value_int($self->{attributes}{$attr}); return $self->{attribute_values_reverse}{$attr}[$val_int]; } 1; __END__ =head1 NAME AI::DecisionTree - Automatically Learns Decision Trees =head1 SYNOPSIS use AI::DecisionTree; my $dtree = new AI::DecisionTree; # A set of training data for deciding whether to play tennis $dtree->add_instance (attributes => {outlook => 'sunny', temperature => 'hot', humidity => 'high'}, result => 'no'); $dtree->add_instance (attributes => {outlook => 'overcast', temperature => 'hot', humidity => 'normal'}, result => 'yes'); ... repeat for several more instances, then: $dtree->train; # Find results for unseen instances my $result = $dtree->get_result (attributes => {outlook => 'sunny', temperature => 'hot', humidity => 'normal'}); =head1 DESCRIPTION The C module automatically creates so-called "decision trees" to explain a set of training data. A decision tree is a kind of categorizer that use a flowchart-like process for categorizing new instances. For instance, a learned decision tree might look like the following, which classifies for the concept "play tennis": OUTLOOK / | \ / | \ / | \ sunny/ overcast \rainy / | \ HUMIDITY | WIND / \ *no* / \ / \ / \ high/ \normal / \ / \ strong/ \weak *no* *yes* / \ *no* *yes* (This example, and the inspiration for the C module, come directly from Tom Mitchell's excellent book "Machine Learning", available from McGraw Hill.) A decision tree like this one can be learned from training data, and then applied to previously unseen data to obtain results that are consistent with the training data. The usual goal of a decision tree is to somehow encapsulate the training data in the smallest possible tree. This is motivated by an "Occam's Razor" philosophy, in which the simplest possible explanation for a set of phenomena should be preferred over other explanations. Also, small trees will make decisions faster than large trees, and they are much easier for a human to look at and understand. One of the biggest reasons for using a decision tree instead of many other machine learning techniques is that a decision tree is a much more scrutable decision maker than, say, a neural network. The current implementation of this module uses an extremely simple method for creating the decision tree based on the training instances. It uses an Information Gain metric (based on expected reduction in entropy) to select the "most informative" attribute at each node in the tree. This is essentially the ID3 algorithm, developed by J. R. Quinlan in 1986. The idea is that the attribute with the highest Information Gain will (probably) be the best attribute to split the tree on at each point if we're interested in making small trees. =head1 METHODS =head2 Building and Querying the Tree =over 4 =item new(...parameters...) Creates a new decision tree object and returns it. Accepts the following parameters: =over 4 =item noise_mode Controls the behavior of the C method when "noisy" data is encountered. Here "noisy" means that two or more training instances contradict each other, such that they have identical attributes but different results. If C is set to C (the default), the C method will throw an exception (die). If C is set to C, the most frequent result at each noisy node will be selected. =item prune A boolean C parameter which specifies whether the tree should be pruned after training. This is usually a good idea, so the default is to prune. Currently we prune using a simple minimum-description-length criterion. =item verbose If set to a true value, some status information will be output while training a decision tree. Default is false. =item purge If set to a true value, the C method will be invoked during C. The default is true. =item max_depth Controls the maximum depth of the tree that will be created during C. The default is 0, which means that trees of unlimited depth can be constructed. =back =item add_instance(attributes => \%hash, result => $string, name => $string) Adds a training instance to the set of instances which will be used to form the tree. An C parameter specifies a hash of attribute-value pairs for the instance, and a C parameter specifies the result. An optional C parameter lets you give a unique name to each training instance. This can be used in coordination with the C method below. =item train() Builds the decision tree from the list of training instances. If a numeric C parameter is supplied, the maximum tree depth can be controlled (see also the C method). =item get_result(attributes => \%hash) Returns the most likely result (from the set of all results given to C) for the set of attribute values given. An C parameter specifies a hash of attribute-value pairs for the instance. If the decision tree doesn't have enough information to find a result, it will return C. =item do_purge() Purges training instances and their associated information from the DecisionTree object. This can save memory after training, and since the training instances are implemented as C structs, this turns the DecisionTree object into a pure-perl data structure that can be more easily saved with C, for instance. =item purge() Returns true or false depending on the value of the tree's C property. An optional boolean argument sets the property. =item copy_instances(from =E $other_tree) Allows two trees to share the same set of training instances. More commonly, this lets you train one tree, then re-use its instances in another tree (possibly changing the instance C values using C), which is much faster than re-populating the second tree's instances from scratch. =item set_results(\%results) Given a hash that relates instance names to instance result values, change the result values as specified. =back =head2 Tree Introspection =over 4 =item instances() Returns a reference to an array of the training instances used to build this tree. =item nodes() Returns the number of nodes in the trained decision tree. =item depth() Returns the depth of the tree. This is the maximum number of decisions that would need to be made to classify an unseen instance, i.e. the length of the longest path from the tree's root to a leaf. A tree with a single node would have a depth of zero. =item rule_tree() Returns a data structure representing the decision tree. For instance, for the tree diagram above, the following data structure is returned: [ 'outlook', { 'rain' => [ 'wind', { 'strong' => 'no', 'weak' => 'yes', } ], 'sunny' => [ 'humidity', { 'normal' => 'yes', 'high' => 'no', } ], 'overcast' => 'yes', } ] This is slightly remniscent of how XML::Parser returns the parsed XML tree. Note that while the ordering in the hashes is unpredictable, the nesting is in the order in which the criteria will be checked at decision-making time. =item rule_statements() Returns a list of strings that describe the tree in rule-form. For instance, for the tree diagram above, the following list would be returned (though not necessarily in this order - the order is unpredictable): if outlook='rain' and wind='strong' -> 'no' if outlook='rain' and wind='weak' -> 'yes' if outlook='sunny' and humidity='normal' -> 'yes' if outlook='sunny' and humidity='high' -> 'no' if outlook='overcast' -> 'yes' This can be helpful for scrutinizing the structure of a tree. Note that while the order of the rules is unpredictable, the order of criteria within each rule reflects the order in which the criteria will be checked at decision-making time. =item as_graphviz() Returns a C object representing the tree. Requires that the GraphViz module is already installed, of course. The object returned will allow you to create PNGs, GIFs, image maps, or whatever graphical representation of your tree you might want. A C argument can specify a fill color for each leaf node in the tree. The keys of the hash should be the same as the strings appearing as the C parameters given to C, and the values should be any GraphViz-style color specification. Any additional arguments given to C will be passed on to GraphViz's C method. See the L docs for more info. =back =head1 LIMITATIONS A few limitations exist in the current version. All of them could be removed in future versions - especially with your help. =) =over 4 =item No continuous attributes In the current implementation, only discrete-valued attributes are supported. This means that an attribute like "temperature" can have values like "cool", "medium", and "hot", but using actual temperatures like 87 or 62.3 is not going to work. This is because the values would split the data too finely - the tree-building process would probably think that it could make all its decisions based on the exact temperature value alone, ignoring all other attributes, because each temperature would have only been seen once in the training data. The usual way to deal with this problem is for the tree-building process to figure out how to place the continuous attribute values into a set of bins (like "cool", "medium", and "hot") and then build the tree based on these bin values. Future versions of C may provide support for this. For now, you have to do it yourself. =back =head1 TO DO All the stuff in the LIMITATIONS section. Also, revisit the pruning algorithm to see how it can be improved. =head1 AUTHOR Ken Williams, ken@mathforum.org =head1 SEE ALSO Mitchell, Tom (1997). Machine Learning. McGraw-Hill. pp 52-80. Quinlan, J. R. (1986). Induction of decision trees. Machine Learning, 1(1), pp 81-106. L, L =cut