Attribute weight help

PP

Hi,
I'm working with decision trees, I’m trying to understand the factors must important that conducts to a sewer pipe failure, my records have attributes like diameter , length, etc. I have an attribute whit the number of failures in that pipe, I think this information can be use like a weight. Because the data is unbalanced most of the examples have a value 0. If I use “set rule” to set this attribute as weight, the tree becomes completely trained and useless, so I have to get out this attribute to get results. So my question is, is there a way to use this information without over training the tree.

Thanks for your attention,
Paulo Praça

MartinLiebig

Have you considered to put the role of that attribute to weight?

~Martin

PP

yes I put, but the tree get overtraining, when I did that the tree only have two leaves. The failure range frequency varies between 1 and 6, maximum i have 6 failures in one pipe but for almost every one I have only one failure. IF I put this attribute as ‘weight’ he shadows the others attributes.

MartinLiebig

I think we have a different understanding of overtraining. I guess your tree simply gets worse by this.

Have you tried to change the minimal gain?

JEdward

What if you discretized that field and used it as the label? 

For example:
Faults
0
1
2-3
4-5
6+

Or even more simply Faults: Low, Medium, High.