John Ross Quinlan is a

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

researcher in

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

and

decision theory Decision theory or the theory of rational choice is a branch of probability theory, probability, economics, and analytic philosophy that uses expected utility and probabilities, probability to model how individuals would behave Rationality, ratio ...

. He has contributed extensively to the development of

decision tree A decision tree is a decision support system, decision support recursive partitioning structure that uses a Tree (graph theory), tree-like Causal model, model of decisions and their possible consequences, including probability, chance event ou ...

algorithms, including inventing the canonical C4.5 and

ID3 ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself. ID3 is a '' ...

algorithms. He also contributed to early ILP literature with First Order Inductive Learner (FOIL). He is currently running the compan
RuleQuest Research
which he founded in 1997.

Education

He received his BSc degree in Physics and Computing from the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

in 1965 and his computer science doctorate at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

in 1968. He has held positions at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949. The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...

University of Technology Sydney The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public university, public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The university was founded in its current form in 1988, though its origins as a Institute of technology, ...

, and

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the ...

Artificial intelligence

Quinlan is a specialist in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, particularly in the aspect involving

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

and its application to

. He is a Founding Fellow of the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...

ID3

Ross Quinlan invented the Iterative Dichotomiser 3 (ID3) algorithm which is used to generate decision trees. ID3 follows the principle of

Occam's razor In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; ) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle o ...

in attempting to create the smallest decision tree possible.

C4.5

He then expanded upon the principles used in ID3 to create C4.5. C4.5 improved: discrete and continuous attributes, missing attribute values, attributes with differing costs, pruning trees (replacing irrelevant branches with leaf nodes).

C5.0

C5.0, which Quinlan is commercially selling (single-threaded version is distributed under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

), is an improvement on C4.5. The advantages are speed (several orders of magnitude faster), memory efficiency, smaller decision trees, boosting (more accuracy), ability to weight different attributes, and winnowing (reducing noise).

Selected works

Books

* 1993. ''C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning''. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. .

Articles

* Quinlan, J. R. (1982
Semi-autonomous acquisition of pattern-based knowledge
In Machine intelligence 10 (eds J. E. Hayes, D. Michie, and Y.-H. Pao). Ellis Norwood,Chichester. * Quinlan, J.R. (1985)
Decision trees and multi-valued attributes
In J.E. Hayes & D. Michie (Eds.), Machine intelligence 11. Oxford University Press. * Quinlan, J. R. (1986)
Induction of decision trees. Machine Learning, 1(1):81-106
* 2008. (with

Qiang Yang Qiang Yang () (born 1963) is the Chair Professor, Department Head of CSE, HKUST in Hong Kong and University New Bright Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor from 2015. He was the founding head of Noah's Ark Lab. He had taught at the Univ ...

Philip S. Yu Philip S. Yu (born 1952) is an American computer scientist and professor of information technology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He holds over 300 patents, and is known for his work in the field of data mining. Biography Yu receive ...

, Zhou Zhihua, and David Hand et al). ''Top 10 algorithms in data mining''
Knowledge and Information Systems 14.1: 1-37
* Quinlan, J. R. (1990). Learning logical definitions from relations. Machine Learning, 5:239-266.

References

External links

Ross Quinlan's personal homepage
Machine learning researchers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{compu-bio-stub Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence