[Chicago-talk] Decision tree code

[Richard Reina]

Alan, thank you for the insight. I will look into this.

Richard

El sáb, 6 feb 2021 a las 14:06, Alan Mead (<amead2 at alanmead.org>) escribió:

> Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but if you don't want to change the code,
> then you need to define the branching logic and questions/answers as data
> and write an "engine" that processes the data and decides what question is
> next based on the current state (e.g., the answer to the current question,
> and possibly other information relevant to your application). You should
> beware that this could become icky. For example, it may be possible to
> create bugs in the branching logic.
>
> I don't know what the context is, but I believe what you're describing is
> called "skip logic" and "branching" in the survey industry and it's
> implemented in packages like LimeSurvey:
> https://www.limesurvey.org/blog/20-blog/129-skip-logic-and-branching-equip-your-survey-structure-with-intelligent-paths
>
> Even if you cannot use Lime Survey, you might look at how they implement
> the rules and think about how you would build an engine to implement this
> yourself. *I think in essence*, each question has an ID and the survey
> has a sequence. Each item either has skip logic, or doesn't. If skip logic
> exists for a question, then each response to the question needs a ID to
> branch to. If not, the next question in the survey sequence is chosen. It
> wouldn't be a monumental task to write this kind of simple engine. I guess
> implicit in this is that you should be reading your questions and answers
> from some kind of human- and machine-readable format like YAML or JSON.
> This file is where you would insert the skip logic in a format you devise.
> I found references to XPDL in googling as described below. You should
> define as much complexity as you need. I had a student who couldn't use
> SurveyMonkey because he wanted to administer a six-item depression survey,
> score it, and then branch based on whether the score indicated depression
> or not. At the time, scoring survey questions and adding them up was beyond
> what SM could do. He found that Qualtrics did have a feature to do this.
>
> Implicit in my description above is that the main purpose is to collect
> and store survey responses. If your goal is more like reaching a decision
> (e.g., "Based on your responses, an adjustable-rate mortgage would best
> suit your needs...") then the questions AND the ending decisions have to be
> part of the data and perhaps the logic isn't as simple as above (maybe
> there is no sequence and every question needs a branch, or there are
> sections of questions that go together and branch between sections). It
> looks like XPDL is an industry standard (in the workflow industry)  for
> representing this.
>
> If you google "decision tree" you get a bunch of hits for machine
> learning. I googled "Perl decision process tree" and that lead me to
> potentially useful articles like the one below, in which someone wants to
> create flexible rules about "workflow" (how how tickets are routed in a
> ticketing app): https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=222257
>
> This is also similar to the way web frameworks work. But I think there
> you'd be writing code to perform each step, so that's probably not helpful.
>
> I am continually amazed by what's on CPAN but I doubt you will find a
> module for anything like skip logic/workflow in abstract. I think it's more
> likely to be embedded in a context, like the ticketing app, a survey, or a
> web frame work. But it looks like there are some Perl modules for
> implementing workfows.
>
> -Alan
>
>
> On 2/6/2021 8:53 AM, Richard Reina wrote:
>
> I am trying to write code that would guide a user through a series of
> questions and depending on their answers given ask them different
> questions. I can of course do this with procedural code but it has occured
> to me that it might begin to get messy especially when exceptions mount.
> For example, if the answer to the third question is no, then skip to
> question 8. So I am looking for a way to structure such code to make it
> cleaner and perhaps easier to maintain, Does anyone know of any examples of
> similar projects that I can reference?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Richard
>
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>
> --
>
> Alan D. Mead, Ph.D.
> President, Talent Algorithms Inc.
>
> science + technology = better workers
> http://www.alanmead.org
>
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