Patent ID: 7558803

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for constructing decision trees to predict target values, comprising: executing instructions on a processor for receiving data containing descriptive data and target values; executing instructions on the processor for partitioning the target values into groups; wherein each group contains a subset of the target values; executing instructions on the processor for applying a rule induction engine to generate rules for each group based upon a subset of the descriptive data that is used for each group; wherein the rule induction engine generates decision trees by using a modeling approach that includes a decision tree model approach, a neural network model approach, or a logistic regression model approach; wherein the rules specify a relationship between the descriptive data and the target values in a group; wherein the rules are configured to predict target values; executing instructions on the processor for generating, in a bottom-up manner, a decision tree for each of the groups; wherein the generation in a bottom-up manner includes using the rule set of a group to generate leaf nodes of the decision tree for the group before generating the middle nodes and root node of the decision tree for the group; whereby the generated decision trees for each of the groups are used to output predicted target values for input data.