HDD: a hypercube division-based algorithm for discretisation

Abstract

Discretisation, as one of the basic data preparation techniques, has played an important role in data mining. This article introduces a new hypercube division-based (HDD) algorithm for supervised discretisation. The algorithm considers the distribution of both class and continuous attributes and the underlying correlation structure in the data set. It tries to find a minimal set of cut points, which divides the continuous attribute space into a finite number of hypercubes, and the objects within each hypercube belong to the same decision class. Finally, tests are performed on seven mix-mode data sets, and the C5.0 algorithm is used to generate classification rules from the discretised data. Compared with the other three well-known discretisation algorithms, the HDD algorithm can generate a better discretisation scheme, which improves the accuracy of classification and reduces the number of classification rules.