COSTS Subcommand (TREE command)

For categorical dependent variables, the COSTS subcommand allows you to specify penalties for misclassifying cases.

• Costs are used in node assignment and risk estimation for all trees.
• They also affect the tree-growing process for all trees except QUEST trees and CRT trees that use a twoing measure. To include cost information in the tree-growing process for such trees, use adjusted priors. See the topic PRIORS Subcommand (TREE command) for more information.
• The COST subcommand is ignored if the dependent variable is scale, and a warning is issued.

The subcommand name is followed by an equals sign (=) and one of the following alternatives:

EQUAL. Misclassification costs are equal across categories of the dependent variable. Cost is set to 1 for all possible misclassifications. This is the default.

CUSTOM. User-specified costs. Use this to specify costs for one or more combinations of actual and predicted categories. Any combination for which a cost is not specified defaults to 1.