What is FastRandomForest?

FastRandomForest is a re-implementation of the Random Forest classifier (RF) for the Weka environment that brings speed and memory use improvements over the original Weka RF.

Speed gains depend on many factors, but a 2.5x increase over RF in Weka 3-7-10 is not uncommon.

For detailed tests of speed and classification accuracy, as well as description of optimizations in the code, please refer to the FastRandomForest wiki at http://code.google.com/p/fast-random-forest/w

or email the author at fran.supek\AT\irb.hr.

Unrelated to the FastRF project, an MPI-enabled version of the Random Forest algorithm written in Fortran 90 is available from http://parf.googlecode.com.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Using from own Java code

Just add FastRandomForest_0.99.jar to your Java VM classpath by using the -cp switch, or by changing project dependencies in NetBeans/Eclipse/whatever IDE you use. Then use hr.irb.fastRandomForest.FastRandomForest as you would use any other classifier, see instructions at the WekaWiki:

http://weka.wikispaces.com/Use+WEKA+in+your+Java+code

Using from Weka Explorer or Experimenter (versions 3.7.2 or newer are supported)

1. Add the FastRandomForest.jar to your Java classpath when starting Weka. This is normally done by editing the line beginning with “cp=” in “RunWeka.ini” If "cp=" doesn't exist, search for "cmd_default=" and add after "#wekajar#;".

2. You need to extract the “GenericPropertiesCreator.props” file from your weka.jar (jar files are ordinary zip archives, the GenericPropertiesCreator.props is under /weka/gui).

3. Place the file you've just extracted into the directory where you have installed Weka (on Windows this is commonly "C:\Program Files\Weka-3-7")

4. Under the # Lists the Classifiers-Packages I want to choose from heading, add the line hr.irb.fastRandomForest Do not forget to add a comma and a backslash to the previous line.

5. Use the “FastRandomForest” class is in the hr.irb.fastRandomForest package in the "Classify" tab. The other two classes cannot be used directly.