Comparison of the use of binary decision trees and neural networks in top-quark detection

The use of neural networks for signal versus background discrimination in high-energy physics experiments has been investigated and has compared favorably with the efficiency of traditional kinematic cuts. Recent work in top-quark identification produced a neural network that, for a given top-quark mass, yielded a higher signal-to-background ratio in Monte Carlo simulation than a corresponding set of conventional cuts. In this article we discuss another pattern-recognition algorithm, the binary decision tree. We apply a binary decision tree to top-quark identification at the Fermilab Tevatron and find it to be comparable in performance to the neural network. Furthermore, reservations about the ''black box'' nature of neural network discriminators do not appy to binary decision trees; a binary decision tree may be reduced to a set of kinematic cuts subject to conventional error analysis