Using Decision Trees to Make a Medical Diagnosis

Now that we know how to handle data in all shapes and forms, be it numerical, categorical, text, or image data, it is time to put our newly gained knowledge to good use.

In this chapter, we will learn how to build a machine learning system that can make a medical diagnosis. We aren't all doctors, but we've probably all been to one at some point in our lives. Typically, a doctor would gain as much information as possible about a patient's history and symptoms in order to make an informed diagnosis. We will mimic a doctor's decision-making process with the help of what is known as decision trees.

A decision tree is a simple yet powerful supervised learning algorithm that resembles a flow chart; ...

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