The paper introduces a moving-horizon approximate branch‑and‑reduce method for training deep classification trees on large datasets with continuous features. It combines a hierarchical root‑subtree optimization framework, branch‑and‑reduce at the root, greedy heuristics for subtrees, and a low‑cost moving‑horizon refinement to improve accuracy. Experiments show the approach surpasses heuristic baselines in test accuracy while scaling better in dataset size and tree depth than existing global optimal solvers.
By Chenxuanyin Zou, Jiayang Ren, Qiangqiang Mao, Jing Liu, Marcus Lai, Yankai Cao
arXiv:2503. 12902v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Model trees provide an appealing way to perform interpretable machine learning for both classification and regression problems.
By Sabino Francesco Roselli, Eibe Frank
arXiv:2608. 03111v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Double descent is commonly studied by scaling an explicit capacity parameter, such as neural-network width.
By Ryuichi Kanoh
arXiv:2606. 30995v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent work has shown that well-optimized individual decision trees can match complex black box models in some settings, primarily in noisy domains.
By Zakk Heile, Hayden McTavish, Margo Seltzer, Cynthia Rudin
Double descent is commonly studied by scaling an explicit capacity parameter, such as neural-network width. For gradient boosting decision trees (GBDTs), however, an analogous single-axis capacity parameter has not been established.
arXiv:2609.24741v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We develop an exact linear programming (LP) formulation for bounded-depth classification trees with binary features, using a junction-tree representati...
By Jiancheng TU, WenqiFan
The paper introduces a look‑ahead splitting rule for Classification and Regression Trees (CART) that evaluates candidate splits by the error reduction achieved after growing a conventional CART subtree beneath each split. To keep the method computationally feasible, a smart look‑ahead algorithm is proposed that learns downstream split values from node‑level features. Experiments on simulated data and two real datasets show that both full and smart look‑ahead methods outperform the standard greedy splitting strategy, especially in hierarchical or interaction‑driven scenarios.
By Andrew Gao, Tianlin Liu, Ruichen Han, Lu Tian
The paper investigates four ways to grow a classifier—adding a tree level, a hidden unit, a leaf split, and a statistically significant split—under a fixed protocol for tree‑structured and constructive models. It shows that the most natural method of deepening a soft decision tree by duplicating a leaf’s class distribution leaves the gradient of new gates identically zero, preventing learning, and proposes a small random perturbation as a fix. The other three growth decisions each provide a distinct benefit: fitting a new hidden unit to residual error yields a smaller network, splitting the leaf with the largest expected error adds sparsity, and requiring statistical significance before splitting adds no value and reduces accuracy.
By Cagri Temel
Classification and regression trees are typically constructed using a greedy splitting rule that maximizes the immediate reduction in prediction error at each node. Although this strategy is computati...
arXiv:2605. 22740v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Decision trees assign identical confidence to instances near and far from each split threshold.
By William Smits
arXiv:2607. 01417v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Conditional inference trees (CIT) and conditional inference forests (CIF) reduce split-selection bias by testing features before choosing split thresholds, but repeated permutation tests and threshold searches can make these methods computationally expensive.
By Robert Milletich, Justin Downes, Steve Goley, Newel Hirst
arXiv:2603.00326v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Sparse oblique (SPO), part of the top-ranked configuration of Google's Yggdrasil Decision Forests (YDF), improve the accuracy while maintaining int...
By Ariel Lubonja, Jungsang Yoon, Haoyin Xu, Yue Wan, Yilin Xu, Richard Stotz, Mathieu Guillame-Bert, Joshua T. Vogelstein, Randal Burns