Decision trees, only binary branches?

Hello, I need do classification trees in Matlab. I have preprocess my dataset into intervals (because i don't want to have many branches). But after studiing Mathworks documentation I detected that:'Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox™ trees are binary'....What does it mean? Can I use only two branches when i want to do decision trees in Matlab? Thank you for your answer in advance...:)

Answer 1

[Tom Lane]

If you fit a classification tree to the famous Fisher iris data, you get this:

>> load fisheriris
>> f = fitctree(meas,species);
>> view(f)
Decision tree for classification
1  if x3<2.45 then node 2 elseif x3>=2.45 then node 3 else setosa
2  class = setosa
3  if x4<1.75 then node 4 elseif x4>=1.75 then node 5 else versicolor
4  if x3<4.95 then node 6 elseif x3>=4.95 then node 7 else versicolor
5  class = virginica
6  if x4<1.65 then node 8 elseif x4>=1.65 then node 9 else versicolor
7  class = virginica
8  class = versicolor
9  class = virginica

So you can see:

1. The tree has more than two branches
2. It can predict more than two classes (three in this case)
3. However, at each branch it makes a binary decision, X<s or X>=s

If X happens to be a categorical predictor, then it still makes a binary decision of the form "X is among this group of categories" or "X is among this other group."

[Radoslav Vandzura]

And, how should I preprocess my data before making classification trees? Is making intervals good way of preprocessing data? Are any steps before making trees? Thank you in advance :)