Dealing with nonlinear relationships using random forests
In this section, we are going to take a look at random forest regression, which is conceptually different from the previous regression models in this chapter. A random forest, which is an ensemble of multiple decision trees, can be understood as the sum of piecewise linear functions, in contrast to the global linear and polynomial regression models that we discussed previously. In other words, via the decision tree algorithm, we subdivide the input space into smaller regions that become more manageable.
Decision tree regression
An advantage of the decision tree algorithm is that it does not require any transformation of the features if we are dealing with nonlinear data, because decision trees analyze one feature at a time, rather than taking weighted combinations into account. (Likewise, normalizing or standardizing features is not required for decision trees.) You will remember from Chapter 3, A Tour of Machine Learning...
