Introducing decision trees
The concept of a decision tree is fairly simple. You are walking down the sidewalk and come to a corner. Here, you can go right, turn left, or go straight ahead. That is your decision. After making the decision – to turn left – you now have different decisions ahead of you than if you turned right. Each decision creates paths that lead to other decisions.
As we are walking down the sidewalk, we have a goal in mind. We are not just wandering around aimlessly; we are trying to get to some goal. One or more combinations of decisions will get us to the goal. Let’s say the goal is to get to the grocery store to buy bread. There may be four or five paths down sidewalks that will get you to the store, but each path may be different in length or may have different paths. If one path goes up a hill, that may be harder than taking the level path. Another path may have you wait at a traffic light, which costs time. We assign a value to each of...
