Putting the CART before the Horse-Race
Finally, from Amanda Cox at the Times, a decision tree students can believe in (click for full size):
Now, if I wanted to be a hobby-horse-riding pedant, I would compare this to a regression of vote-share on these covariates, and ask you rhetorically which one was easier to understand, and which gave more of a misleading impression of being more than a summary description; but I'll save that for the poor souls who take data mining in the fall. (This is from the 16th; it would be interesting to see how it changed after last Tuesday. Not that I'm bitter.)
Local interest note: Ms. Cox will be judging the final-project posters produced by the students in Prof. Nugent's graphics and visualization class (36-315), next Friday, 2 May, 12:30 to 1:20 pm in Porter Hall 125C. Friendly, non-psychotic visitors are welcome.
Via Flowing Data, via K. (Owing to the silly limits of the Times archives, I can't find the direct link to the story!)
Manual trackback: A Well, With Two Buckets
Posted at April 24, 2008 09:20 | permanent link