Methods and systems for automatic selection of classification and regression trees having preferred consistency and accuracy

Abstract

Methods and systems for automatically identifying and selecting preferred classification and regression trees are disclosed. Embodiments of the disclosed invention may be used to identify a specific decision tree or group of preferred trees that are predictively consistent across train and test samples evaluated against at least one node-specific constraint imposed by the decision-maker, while also having high predictive performance accuracy. Specifically, for a tree to be identified as preferred by embodiments of the disclosed invention, the train and test samples when evaluated node-by-node must agree on at least one key measure of predictive consistency. In addition to this node-by-node criterion, the decision-maker may adjust selection constraints to permit selection of a tree having a small number of node-by-node consistency disagreements, but with high overall tree predictive performance accuracy.