How to Visualize a Decision Tree from a Random Forest in Python using Scikit-Learn

This article was written by Will Koehrsen.

Here’s the complete code: just copy and paste into a Jupyter Notebook or Python script, replace with your data and run:

The final result is a complete decision tree as an image.

Explanation of code 

1. Create a model train and extract: we could use a single decision tree, but since I often employ the

   random forest for modeling it’s used in this example. (The trees will be slightly different from one another!).

2. Export Tree as .dot File: This makes use of the export_graphviz function in Scikit-Learn. There are many parameters here that control the look and information displayed. Take a look at the documentation for specifics.
3. Convert dot to png using a system command: running system commands in Python can be handy for carrying out simple tasks. This requires installation of graphviz which includes the dot utility. For the complete options for conversion, take a look at the documentation.
4. Visualize: the best visualizations appear in the Jupyter Notebook. (Equivalently you can use matplotlib to show images).

To read the rest of this article with code and illustrations, click here.

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