On the Qualitative Behavior of Impurity-Based Splitting Rules I: The Minima-Free Property

Authors

Craig W. Codrington, Purdue University School of Electrical Engineering
Carla E. Brodley, Purdue University School of Electrical Engineering

Abstract

We show that all strictly convex n impurity measures lead to splits at boundary points, and furthermore show that certain rational splitting rules, notably the information gain ratio, also have this property. A slightly weaker result is shown to hold for impurity measures that are only convex n, such as Inaccuracy.

Date of this Version

3-1-1997