Decision tree pruning

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 09:55:14 +0000

Definition

Pruning is a method used to prevent overfitting in decision tree models by removing branches that have weak predictive power. It can be performed pre-pruning, by stopping the tree growth early, or post-pruning, by removing nodes from a fully grown tree. By simplifying the model, pruning improves generalization performance on unseen data and reduces computational cost during inference, making the model more robust and efficient.

Summary

A technique to reduce the size of decision trees by removing sections that provide little power to classify instances.

Trees on English AI Terms Dictionary

Decision tree pruning

Definition

Summary