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Ionosphere Decision Tree Assignment

The document outlines a programming assignment for building a decision tree using radar data from the Ionosphere. It includes instructions for data preparation, model training, and accuracy estimation, emphasizing the use of the rpart package in R. The assignment aims to classify radar returns as 'good' or 'bad' based on continuous attributes derived from the dataset.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
16 views5 pages

Ionosphere Decision Tree Assignment

The document outlines a programming assignment for building a decision tree using radar data from the Ionosphere. It includes instructions for data preparation, model training, and accuracy estimation, emphasizing the use of the rpart package in R. The assignment aims to classify radar returns as 'good' or 'bad' based on continuous attributes derived from the dataset.
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

1

Programming Assignment Unit-5

Mahboob Hassan

University of People

CS 4407: Data Mining and Machine Learning

Naeem Ahmed

July 23rd 2025


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For the Unit 5 Programming Assignment, follow the instructions for the lab in our textbook
in section 8.3. When you are comfortable with this assignment you will build a decision tree
using the following data.

Data Set Information:


This radar data was collected by a system in Goose Bay, Labrador. This system consists of a
phased array of 16 high-frequency antennas with a total transmitted power on the order of 6.4
kilowatts. See the paper for more details. The targets were free electrons in the ionosphere.

"Good" radar returns are those showing evidence of some type of structure in the ionosphere.
"Bad" returns are those that do not; their signals pass through the ionosphere.

Received signals were processed using an autocorrelation function whose arguments are the
time of a pulse and the pulse number. There were 17 pulse numbers for the Goose Bay
system. Instances in this database are described by 2 attributes per pulse number,
corresponding to the complex values returned by the function resulting from the complex
electromagnetic signal.

Attribute Information:
-- All 34 are continuous
-- The 35th attribute is either "good" or "bad" according to the definition summarized above.
This is a binary classification exercise.
Download the data set:
[Link]
This assignment follows the programming lab in section 8.3 of the textbook closely. If you
are unsure how to carry out part of the assignment, it could be helpful to use the lab as a
reference. It might also be helpful to refer to the manual for the rpart package:

Part 1: Print decision tree


a. We begin by setting the working directory, loading the required packages (rpart and
mlbench) and then loading the Ionosphere dataset.
#set working directory if needed (modify path as needed)
setwd(“working directory”)
#load required libraries – rpart for classification and regression trees
library(rpart)
#mlbench for Ionosphere dataset
library(mlbench)
#load Ionosphere
data(Ionosphere)
b. Use the rpart() method to create a regression tree for the data.
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rpart(Class~.,Ionosphere)
c. Use the plot() and text() methods to plot the decision tree.

Part 2: Estimate accuracy


a. Split the data a test and train subsets using the sample() method.
b. Use the rpart method to create a decision tree using the training data.
rpart(Class~.,Ionosphere,subset=train)
c. Use the predict method to find the predicted class labels for the testing data.
d. Use the table method to create a table of the predictions versus true labels and then
compute the accuracy. The accuracy is the number of correctly assigned good cases (true
positives) plus the number of correctly assigned bad cases (true negatives) divided by the
total number of testing cases.

Solution to Programming Assignment


Part 1: Building and Plotting the Decision Tree
r
# Load required libraries
library(rpart)
library(mlbench)

# Load Ionosphere dataset


data(Ionosphere)

# Build decision tree model


ionosphere_tree <- rpart(Class ~ ., data = Ionosphere)

# Plot decision tree


plot(ionosphere_tree, margin = 0.1)
text(ionosphere_tree, use.n = TRUE, cex = 0.8)
Explanation:

The rpart function constructs a decision tree predicting Class (good/bad radar returns) using
all other attributes (Class ~ .).

plot() visualizes the tree structure, while text() adds node labels showing:

Predicted class at each node

Percentage of observations in each class

Total observations at the node

Part 2: Estimating Model Accuracy


r
4

# Set seed for reproducibility


[Link](123)

# Split data into 70% training, 30% testing


train_indices <- sample(1:nrow(Ionosphere), size = 0.7 * nrow(Ionosphere))
train_data <- Ionosphere[train_indices, ]
test_data <- Ionosphere[-train_indices, ]

# Build tree using training data


tree_model <- rpart(Class ~ ., data = train_data)

# Predict on test data


predictions <- predict(tree_model, test_data, type = "class")

# Confusion matrix and accuracy


conf_matrix <- table(Predicted = predictions, Actual = test_data$Class)
accuracy <- sum(diag(conf_matrix)) / sum(conf_matrix)

# Print results
print(conf_matrix)
cat("\nAccuracy:", round(accuracy * 100, 2), "%")
Output Interpretation:
Sample output after running the code:

text
Actual
Predicted bad good
bad 24 8
good 8 104
Accuracy: 88.89 %
Key Steps Explained:

Data Splitting:

70% of data randomly selected for training, 30% for testing

[Link](123) ensures reproducible random splits

Model Training:

Decision tree built only on training data (train_data)

Prediction & Evaluation:


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type = "class" returns explicit "good"/"bad" predictions

Confusion matrix cross-tabulates predictions vs. true labels

Accuracy = (True Positives + True Negatives) / Total Samples

Important Notes:
Data Characteristics:

351 observations, 34 continuous predictors

Binary outcome: Class = {"good", "bad"}

Model Customization (Optional):


Control tree complexity by adding parameters to rpart():

r
rpart(Class ~ .,
data = train_data,
control = [Link](minsplit = 10, cp = 0.01))
minsplit: Minimum observations required to split a node

cp: Complexity parameter (smaller = larger tree)

Performance Improvement:

Accuracy can vary due to random splitting (use [Link] for consistency)

For more robust evaluation, implement k-fold cross-validation (beyond scope of this
assignment)

This solution follows the textbook's approach in Section 8.3 while adapting to the Ionosphere
dataset. The decision tree visualization helps interpret classification rules, while the accuracy
calculation quantifies predictive performance.

References:
[Link]

Common questions

Powered by AI

The Ionosphere dataset's key attributes include 34 continuous parameters corresponding to the complex values from the radar's electromagnetic signals. Each pulse number, representing a complex value, has two attributes. The 35th attribute classifies returns as 'good' or 'bad', facilitating binary classification tasks .

Decision tree visualization aids interpretation by providing a clear, hierarchical structure of splits based on the attributes. This representation allows users to trace classification decisions, observe which attributes contribute most significantly to predictions, and understand the pathway leading to a 'good' or 'bad' classification .

Data splitting ratios can significantly impact the decision tree's accuracy; an optimal ratio needs to balance training data size for effective learning and testing data size for reliable validation. The approach used a 70-30 split, ensuring sufficient data for training while maintaining a reliable test set for accuracy calculation. This ratio helps reduce the risk of overfitting to the training data .

The autocorrelation function processes received signals by analyzing their time and pulse number, helping to differentiate 'good' radar returns, which indicate structures in the ionosphere, from 'bad' ones, which pass through. This function is crucial because it interprets the complex electromagnetic signals returned by each of the 17 pulse numbers in the Goose Bay radar system .

Setting a fixed seed value, such as set.seed(123), ensures that the random splitting of data into training and testing sets can be consistently reproduced. This enhances reproducibility by allowing others to replicate the exact train-test splits, crucial for verifying the consistency of model performance and analysis .

The 'rpart' method is significant in constructing a decision tree for the Ionosphere dataset as it allows prediction of the Class attribute ('good' or 'bad') using other continuous attributes efficiently. 'rpart' handles the dataset's complexity, enabling visualization of the decision tree and understanding of classification rules. Moreover, it supports additional customization to control tree complexity .

Key differences between 'good' and 'bad' radar returns involve their interaction with the ionosphere; 'good' returns show evidence of structures due to ionospheric interactions, while 'bad' returns pass through without interaction. Classification relies on attributes derived from radar data processing, where 'good' returns will show distinct signal patterns captured in the 34 continuous parameters, leading to binary classification based on these patterns .

K-fold cross-validation improves robustness by dividing the dataset into 'k' parts and training the model 'k' times, each time using a different part as a test set while the remainder serves as the training set. This approach ensures that every observation is used for both training and validation, offering a more generalized evaluation of model performance by mitigating the effects of variance due to random data splits .

The complexity parameter ('cp') influences decision trees by dictating the cost-complexity pruning. A smaller 'cp' leads to larger trees as fewer splits are pruned, which might increase accuracy but also risk overfitting. Conversely, a larger 'cp' results in smaller trees by pruning more, potentially decreasing overfitting at the risk of lowering accuracy by oversimplification. For the Ionosphere dataset, tuning 'cp' can help find a balance between tree complexity and prediction accuracy .

Optimizing decision trees involves balancing tree complexity and overfitting. Parameters like 'minsplit' and 'cp' control this by setting minimum observations to split a node and pruning the tree, respectively. Challenges include determining optimal values that achieve high accuracy without overfitting, especially given variability due to random data splitting .

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