This page contains the complete material related to the
J48Consolidated classifier, an implementation of the CTC
algorithm for WEKA.
Below you can find all information related to the most recent update (v3.3, July 2025) done on this implementation.
To access to previous versions:
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We have updated the code to be compatible with the version 3.8.6 of Weka and to support the J48PartiallyConsolidated package (see "J48PartiallyConsolidated: An implementation of the PCTBagging algorithm for WEKA").
Technical information:
Class for generating a pruned or unpruned C4.5 consolidated tree. Uses the Consolidated Tree Construction (CTC) algorithm: a single tree is built based on a set of subsamples. New options are added to the J48 class to set the Resampling Method (RM) for the generation of samples to be used in the consolidation process. For more information, see:
Jesús M. Pérez, Javier Muguerza, Olatz Arbelaitz, Ibai Gurrutxaga and José I. Martín. "Combining multiple class distribution modified subsamples in a single tree". Pattern Recognition Letters (2007), 28(4), pp 414-422. doi:10.1016/j.patrec.2006.08.013
A new way has been added to determine the number of samples to be used in the consolidation process which guarantees the minimum percentage, the coverage value, of the examples of the original sample to be contained by the set of built subsamples. For more information, see:
Igor Ibarguren, Jesús M. Pérez, Javier Muguerza, Ibai Gurrutxaga and Olatz Arbelaitz. "Coverage-based resampling: Building robust consolidated decision trees". Knowledge Based Systems (2015), Vol. 79, pp 51-67. doi:10.1016/j.knosys.2014.12.023
In this new update (v3.3, July 2025) we have added the implementation of structural metrics to quantify the explanation capacity of the consolidated trees for a new work on the Partially Consolidated Tree-Bagging (PCTBagging) algorithm (see "J48PartiallyConsolidated: An implementation of the PCTBagging algorithm for WEKA").
Tree Structure Measures (Explainability Quantification): Beyond standard J48 metrics (TreeSize, NumLeaves), three new measures quantify explainability: NumInnerNodes counts decision nodes (direct explanatory components); ExplanationLength computes average root-to-leaf path length; and WeightedExplanationLength adjusts this by leaf instance counts. These evaluate the trade-off between model complexity and human interpretability in the consolidated tree.
Jesús M. Pérez and Olatz Arbelaitz. "Multi-Criteria Node Selection in Direct PCTBagging: Balancing Interpretability and Accuracy with Bootstrap Sampling and Unrestricted Pruning" Information Sciences (2025), submitted. doi:10.1016/j.ins.2025.XX.XXX
Additional documentation:
A technical report paying special attention to the introduction of the notion of coverage in the process of generation of samples can be found associated with the version 3.1 in: v3.1 February 2016
Weka package:
The Weka package containing the J48Consolidated classifier (tested for weka-3-8-6) to be installed from Weka's package manager, including compiled code, source code, javadocs and package description files, can be found in the official list of Weka packages:
or here:
Source code:
The implementation of the CTC algorithm for Weka consists on the J48Consolidated
class and the j48Consolidated package which includes other 5 classes, all of them
derived from its corresponding j48's original class.
The source code of the classes that implement the J48Consolidated classifier (on stable-3-8-6 version of Weka) can be found in:
In order to complete the whole source code of the implementation, download Weka source code from http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/downloading.html.
Executable file:
The executable file in Weka is a .jar file. A file with the current J48Consolidated implementation included in the stable-3-8-5 version of Weka can be found in:
To run Weka type:
java -Xmx1000M -jar Weka-CTC-v3.3.jar
(see https://waikato.github.io/weka-wiki/downloading_weka/ for more information)
Last modification: 2025/09/03