Programming Snapshot – Decision Trees
Horses and Riders
© Lead Image © Outdoorsman, fotolia.com
Decision trees help machines emulate human behavior. Thanks to artificial intelligence, programs can autonomously build decision trees by learning from existing real-life data. Can an AI system determine who was operating a particular vehicle by analyzing driving style?
In the 1950s, TV stations were broadcasting howlers that probably wouldn't interest anyone today. One was "What's My Line?" with presenter John Daly, in which a blindfolded team of four panelists had to guess the identity of a star guest using only yes or no questions.
A popular strategy was to pose general questions first ("Are you male?"), in order to ask more specific questions in the final round, until the panelists began to close in on the guest star and their identity was finally revealed.
In machine learning, programmers employ similar techniques to teach computers to imitate learned behaviors. As a somewhat contrived example, take the behavior of an AND gate (Table 1), which always shows the value at output until a 1 is applied to both inputs. The gate is normally implemented by binary operators, but for the purpose of this investigation, I'll be using the decision tree in Figure 1.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
KDE Unleashes Plasma 6.5
The Plasma 6.5 desktop environment is now available with new features, improvements, and the usual bug fixes.
-
Xubuntu Site Possibly Hacked
It appears that the Xubuntu site was hacked and briefly served up a malicious ZIP file from its download page.
-
LMDE 7 Now Available
Linux Mint Debian Edition, version 7, has been officially released and is based on upstream Debian.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Reaches EOL
Linux kernel 6.16 has reached its end of life, which means you'll need to upgrade to the next stable release, Linux kernel 6.17.
-
Amazon Ditches Android for a Linux-Based OS
Amazon has migrated from Android to the Linux-based Vega OS for its Fire TV.
-
Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
-
System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.