network analysis the acronym u201c cart u201d stands for classification and regression trees many other tree based algorithms can be grouped under the same heading cart is a flexible nonparametric algorithm for building either classification or regression trees that has proven to be a useful predictor in many different contexts alternatively quinlan 39 s c4 5 algorithm see e g quinlan j r programs for machine learning the morgan kaufman series in machine learning morgan kaufman publ san mateo calif 1993 or friedman 39 s multivariate adaptive regression splines mars or multivariate adaptive regression trees mart algorithms see e g hastie t tibsharani r and friedman j the elements of statistical learning data mining inference and prediction springer series in statistics springer publication new york n y 2001 u201c hastie et al u201d could be adapted for analysis of the implantable gastric stimulation trial data other machine learning methods not based on classification or regression trees could also be employed in place of cart examples of such methods include linear discriminant analysis nearest neighbor methods artificial neural networks and support vector machines see e g hastie et al decision tree based methods are only a modest subset of the data mining tools available for predictive modeling leading alternatives include k nearest neighbor methods see e g duda r et al pattern classification and scene analysis new york john wiley amp sons 1973 and neural network methods see.