Ordinal Variable Selection in Decision Trees

The most important component in decision tree algorithm is the rule for split variable selection. Many earlier algorithms such as CART and C4.5 use greedy search algorithm for variable selection. Recently, many methods were developed to cope with the weakness of greedy search algorithm. Most algorithms have different selection criteria depending on the type of variables: continuous or nominal. However, ordinal type variables are usually treated as continuous ones. This approach did not cause any trouble for the methods using greedy search algorithm. However, it may cause problems for the newer algorithms because they use statistical methods valid for continuous or nominal types only. In this paper, we propose a ordinal variable selection method that uses Cramer-von Mises testing procedure. We performed comparisons among CART, C4.5, QUEST, CRUISE, and the new method. It was shown that the new method has a good variable selection power for ordinal type variables.