SAS/VA .4 Exploration section - "Decision Tree" and "Cluster"

[elkinsbe]

May I request someone point me to documentation of these two data analysis options under the Exploration section:

Decision Tree - is this a chi-square ruled tree as I would assume? How are the branch points defined? is there a way to adjust?

Cluster - is this a k-means clustering? what metric does it use? are there any adjustments?

I wish to use one of these -- depending on what I can learn here -- don't really want to use a "black box" ….

Thank you to all in advance for your support and assistance -- Ben

[PetriRoine · Accepted solution]

Hello @elkinsbe 

Here's a little information I was able to find for you.

Decision Tree

Implementation follows for the most part the standard C4.5 algorithm to build and prune decision tree. The primary difference between our implementation and C4.5 is the determination of the desired number of branches with the optimal variable for each splitting. 

Cluster

The default technique is k-means clustering. If you are using GUI you basically define inputs and number of clusters.
The default method for initializing K cluster centeroids is Forgy - you can change that to simple Random. Feature scaling is done default. 

Are you considering using DTree to provide clusters by giving it a target that has nothing to do with the final clusters? 

Best regards

Petri