Do I need to normalize (or scale) data for randomForest (R package)?

Question

I am doing regression task - do I need to normalize (or scale) data for randomForest (R package)? And is it neccessary to scale also target values? And if - I want to use sc

Answer 1

If you are going to add interactions to dataset - that is, new variable being some function of other variables (usually simple multiplication), and you dont feel what that new variable stands for (cant interprete it), then you should calculate this variable using scaled variables.