Random Forest

This chapter focuses on investigating random forest (RF). In addition to the Summary, there are four sections. Section 10.1 introduces RF and discusses the definition of RF, random selection of features, linear combinations of input variables, and exploring the RF mechanism. Section 10.2 illustrates the implementation of RF using the tidymodels framework using the randomForests and ranger packages, respectively. Section 10.3 illustrates the implementation of RF with the microbiomeMarker package. Section 10.4 provides some remarks on RF regarding ensembles of trees, comparisons of RF and decision trees, ranking feature importance, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of RF.