Comparison of three classification techniques: CART, C4.5 and Multi-Layer Perceptrons

In this paper, after some introductory remarks into the classification problem asconsidered in various research communities, and some discussions concerning some of the reasons for ascertaining the performances of the three chosen algorithms, viz., CART (Classification and Regression Tree), C4.5 (one of the more recent versions of a popular induction tree technique knownas ID3), and a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), it is proposed to compare the performances of these algorithms under two criteria: classification andgeneralisation. It is found that, in general, the MLP has better classification and generalisation accuracies compared with the other two algorithms. 1 Introduction Classification of data into categories has been pursued by a number of research communities, viz., applied statistics, knowledge acquisition, neural networks. In applied statistics, there are a number of techniques, e.g., clustering algorithms (see e.g., Hartigan), CART (Classification and Regression Trees, see e.g., Breiman et al). Clustering algorithms are used when the underlying data naturally fall into a number of groups, the distance among groups are measured by various metrics [Hartigan]. CART[Breiman, et all has been very popular among applied statisticians. It assumes that the underlying data can be separated into categories, the decision boundaries can either be parallel to the axis or they can be a linear combination of these axes!.