11. The method of claim 8 , wherein the objects are feeders in an electrical power distribution system, and wherein the past behaviors are feeder failure events.
8. A machine learning method for predicting the behavior of objects, wherein past behaviors of the objects are known and wherein the objects are associated with a plurality of scores that are predictive of object behavior, the method having a multiple number of learning stages, each learning stage comprising: partitioning, using a computer processer, a list of objects into a number of sublists so that past behaviors of the objects are distributed substantially evenly across the number of sublists; for each sublist, choosing, using a computer processor, a predictive score from the plurality of predictive scores associated with the objects in the sublist; for each sublist, ranking, using a computer processor, objects in the sublist according to the chosen predictive score; and then recombining, using a computer processor, the sublists to generate a list in which the objects are ranked according to the predictive scores chosen for the respective sublists.