C5.0 decision tree - c50 code called exit with value 1

Question

I am getting the following error

c50 code called exit with value 1

I am doing this on the titanic data available from Kaggle

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Answer 1

For anyone interested, the data can be found here: http://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic-gettingStarted/data. I think you need to be registered in order to download it.

Regarding your problem, first of I think you meant to write

new_model <- C5.0(train[,-2],train$Survived)

Next, notice the structure of the Cabin and Embarked Columns. These two factors have an empty character as a level name (check with levels(train$Embarked)). This is the point where C50 falls over. If you modify your data such that

levels(train$Cabin)[1] = "missing"
levels(train$Embarked)[1] = "missing"

your algorithm will now run without an error.