TY - JOUR
T1 - Tree-Based Models for Political Science Data
AU - Montgomery, Jacob M.
AU - Olivella, Santiago
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
©2018, Midwest Political Science Association
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - Political scientists often find themselves analyzing data sets with a large number of observations, a large number of variables, or both. Yet, traditional statistical techniques fail to take full advantage of the opportunities inherent in “big data,” as they are too rigid to recover nonlinearities and do not facilitate the easy exploration of interactions in high-dimensional data sets. In this article, we introduce a family of tree-based nonparametric techniques that may, in some circumstances, be more appropriate than traditional methods for confronting these data challenges. In particular, tree models are very effective for detecting nonlinearities and interactions, even in data sets with many (potentially irrelevant) covariates. We introduce the basic logic of tree-based models, provide an overview of the most prominent methods in the literature, and conduct three analyses that illustrate how the methods can be implemented while highlighting both their advantages and limitations.
AB - Political scientists often find themselves analyzing data sets with a large number of observations, a large number of variables, or both. Yet, traditional statistical techniques fail to take full advantage of the opportunities inherent in “big data,” as they are too rigid to recover nonlinearities and do not facilitate the easy exploration of interactions in high-dimensional data sets. In this article, we introduce a family of tree-based nonparametric techniques that may, in some circumstances, be more appropriate than traditional methods for confronting these data challenges. In particular, tree models are very effective for detecting nonlinearities and interactions, even in data sets with many (potentially irrelevant) covariates. We introduce the basic logic of tree-based models, provide an overview of the most prominent methods in the literature, and conduct three analyses that illustrate how the methods can be implemented while highlighting both their advantages and limitations.
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U2 - 10.1111/ajps.12361
DO - 10.1111/ajps.12361
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85050227036
VL - 62
SP - 729
EP - 744
JO - American Journal of Political Science
JF - American Journal of Political Science
SN - 0092-5853
IS - 3
ER -