can we get probabilities the same way that we get them in logistic regression through random forest?

Question

I have a data structure with binary 0-1 variable (click & Purchase; click & not-purchase) against a vector of the attributes. I used logistic regression to get the probabilities of the purchase. How can I use Random Forest to get the same probabilities? Is it by using Random Forest regression? or is it Random Forest classification with type='prob' in R which gives the probability of categorical variable?

Answer 1

It won't give you the same result since the structure of the two method are different. Logistic regression is given by a definitive linear specification, where RF is a collective vote from multiple independent/random trees. If specification and input feature are properly tuned for both, they can produce comparable results. Here is the major difference between the two:

1. RF will give more robust fit against noise, outliers, overfitting or multicollinearity etc which are common pitfalls in regression type of solution. Basically if you don't know or don't want to know much about whats going in with the input data, RF is a good start.

2. logistic regression will be good if you know expertly about the data and how to properly specify the equation. Or somehow want to engineer how the fit/prediction works. The explicit form of GLM specification will allow you to do that.