Decision Trees

Build your own decision tree that tells venomous snakes from harmless ones. Then compare it with a tree a computer builds from the same data.

• 1Study the data – look for the features that separate venomous snakes from harmless ones.
• 2Build your tree – decide which questions the tree should ask, and in what order.
• 3Test on new data – find out whether the tree also works on snakes it has not seen before.
• 4Compare with the computer – find out how an algorithm chooses its questions using concepts such as entropy and information gain.
• 5Draw conclusions – find out why more questions don't always make a better model.