Several well-developed approaches to inductive learning now exist, but each has specific limitations
that are hard to overcome. Multi-strategy learning attempts to tackle this problem by combining multiple methods
in one algorithm. This article describes a unification of two widely-used empirical approaches: rule induction and
instance-based learning. In the new algorithm, instances are treated as maximally specific rules, and classification is
performed using a best-match strategy. Rules are learned by gradually generalizing instances until no improvement
in apparent accuracy is obtained. Theoretical analysis shows this approach to be efficient. It is implemented in
the RISE 3.1 system. In an extensive empirical study, RISE consistently achieves higher accuracies than state-ofthe-art
representatives of both its parent approaches (PEBLS and CN2), as well as a decision tree learner (C4.5).
Lesion studies show that each of RISE’s components is essential to this performance. Most significantly, in 14
of the 30 domains studied, RISE is more accurate than the best of PE