R help - Mar 2010 - Regarding variable importance in the randomForest package

For anyone who is knowledgeable about the randomForest package in R, I have
a question:

When I look at the variable importance for data, I see that my response
variable is included along with my predictor variables. That is, I am
getting a MeanDecreaseGini for my response variable, and therefore it seems
as though it is being treated as a predictor variable.

my code (just in case it helps) :
comm.RF<-randomForest(model.data,y=model.data$Comm_Heir,mtry=8,importance=T)

Apologies if it's a stupid question, but I'm new to randomForests.
Hopefully
that makes sense and if anyone can let me know how remedy this situation, I
would be so grateful.

Cheers!

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Seems like you're new to R as well?  The first argument should contain
only the predictor variables, but you used the entire data frame that
contains the response.

Andy 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Corinne Staley
> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 9:52 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Regarding variable importance in the randomForest package
> 
> For anyone who is knowledgeable about the randomForest 
> package in R, I have
> a question:
> 
> When I look at the variable importance for data, I see that 
> my response
> variable is included along with my predictor variables. That is, I am
> getting a MeanDecreaseGini for my response variable, and 
> therefore it seems
> as though it is being treated as a predictor variable.
> 
> my code (just in case it helps) :
> comm.RF<-randomForest(model.data,y=model.data$Comm_Heir,mtry=8
,importance=T)
> 
> Apologies if it's a stupid question, but I'm new to 
> randomForests. Hopefully
> that makes sense and if anyone can let me know how remedy 
> this situation, I
> would be so grateful.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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