Definition
| transaction ID | milk | bread | butter | beer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Following the original definition by Agrawal et al. the problem of association rule mining is defined as: Let be a set of binary attributes called items. Let be a set of transactions called the database. Each transaction in has a unique transaction ID and contains a subset of the items in . A rule is defined as an implication of the form where and . The sets of items (for short itemsets) and are called antecedent (left-hand-side or LHS) and consequent (right-hand-side or RHS) of the rule respectively.
To illustrate the concepts, we use a small example from the supermarket domain. The set of items is and a small database containing the items (1 codes presence and 0 absence of an item in a transaction) is shown in the table to the right. An example rule for the supermarket could be meaning that if butter and bread are bought, customers also buy milk.
Note: this example is extremely small. In practical applications, a rule needs a support of several hundred transactions before it can be considered statistically significant, and datasets often contain thousands or millions of transactions.
Read more about this topic: Association Rule Learning
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)