Using artificial neural networks to enhance CART

Accuracy is a critical factor in predictive modeling. A predictive model such as a decision tree must be accurate to draw conclusions about the system being modeled. This research aims at analyzing and improving the performance of classification and regression trees (CART), a decision tree algorithm, by evaluating and deriving a new methodology based on the performance of real-world data sets that were studied. This paper introduces a new approach to tree induction to improve the efficiency of the CART algorithm by combining the existing functionality of CART with the addition of artificial neural networks (ANNs). Trained ANNs are utilized by the tree induction algorithm by generating new, synthetic data, which have been shown to improve the overall accuracy of the decision tree model when actual training samples are limited. In this paper, traditional decision trees developed by the standard CART methodology are compared with the enhanced decision trees that utilize the ANN’s synthetic data generation, or CART+. This research demonstrates the improved accuracies that can be obtained with CART+, which can ultimately improve the knowledge that can be extracted by researchers about a system being modeled.