When two variables have exactly the same figure of merit, they will be listed in the output in the same order in which they appeared in your model statement. Terry Therneau
-- begin inclusion --- I had a question regarding the rpart command in R. I used seven continuous predictor variables in the model and the variable called "TB122" was chosen for the first split. But in looking at the output, there are 4 variables that improve the predicted membership equally (TB122, TB139, TB144, and TB118) - output pasted below. Node number 1: 268 observations, complexity param=0.6 predicted class=0 expected loss=0.3 class counts: 197 71 probabilities: 0.735 0.265 left son=2 (188 obs) right son=3 (80 obs) Primary splits: TB122 < 80 to the left, improve=50, (0 missing) TB139 < 90 to the left, improve=50, (0 missing) TB144 < 90 to the left, improve=50, (0 missing) TB118 < 90 to the left, improve=50, (0 missing) TB129 < 100 to the left, improve=40, (0 missing) --- end inclusion --- ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.