Abstract
We describe SLIPPER~ a new rule learner that generates
rulesets by repeatedly boosting a simple, greedy,
rule-builder. Like the rulesets built by other rule learners,
the ensemble of rules created by SLIPPER is compact
and comprehensible. This is made possible by
imposing appropriate constraints on the rule-builder,
and by use of a recently-proposed generalization of Adaboost
called confidence-rated boosting. In spite of its
relative simplicity, SLIPPER ishighly scalable, and an
effective learner. Experimentally, SLIPPER scales no
worse than O(n log n), where n is the number of examples,
and on a set of 32 benchmark problems, SLIPPER
achieves lower error rates than RIPPER 20 times, and
lower error rates than C4.5rules 22 times.