title: Partitioning methods for classification and decision making in medicine.
abstract: The use of partitioning methods for classification is discussed. A brief outline of the method of recursive partitioning is given and a note is made of some of its potential drawbacks. An alternative approach is outlined in which a particular class of dichotomous partitions is considered. The class incorporates prior knowledge concerning the nature of an association. Strategies to choose a partition from this class are suggested. The method is illustrated by an analysis of data from patients with gastrointestinal cancer and benign disease. A partition to discriminate between cancer and benign disease is obtained using symptoms, age and tumour marker data.
mesh_terms: D002965:Classification; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005770:Gastrointestinal Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D012984:Software; D013223:Statistics as Topic