What Is Association Mining?

1. What Is Association Mining? • Association rule mining: • Finding frequent patterns, associations, correlations, or causal structures among sets of items or objects in transaction databases, relational databases, and other information repositories. • Frequent pattern: pattern (set of items, sequence, etc.) that occurs frequently in a database [AIS93] • Motivation: finding regularities in data • What products were often purchased together? — Beer and diapers?! • What are the subsequent purchases after buying a PC? • What kinds of DNA are sensitive to this new drug? • Can we automatically classify web documents?

2. Why Is Frequent Pattern or Association Mining Important? • Foundation for many essential data mining tasks • Association, correlation, causality • Sequential patterns, temporal or cyclic association, partial periodicity, spatial and multimedia association • Associative classification, cluster analysis, iceberg cube, fascicles (semantic data compression) • Broad applications • Basket data analysis, cross-marketing, catalog design, sale campaign analysis • Web log (click stream) analysis, DNA sequence analysis, etc.

3. Association Rule Mining • Given a set of transactions, find rules that will predict the occurrence of an item based on the occurrences of other items in the transaction Market-Basket transactions Example of Association Rules {Diaper}  {Beer},{Milk, Bread}  {Eggs,Coke},{Beer, Bread}  {Milk}, Implication means co-occurrence, not causality!

4. Definition: Frequent Itemset • Itemset • A collection of one or more items • Example: {Milk, Bread, Diaper} • k-itemset • An itemset that contains k items • Support count () • Frequency of occurrence of an itemset • E.g. ({Milk, Bread,Diaper}) = 2 • Support • Fraction of transactions that contain an itemset • E.g. s({Milk, Bread, Diaper}) = 2/5 • Frequent Itemset • An itemset whose support is greater than or equal to a minsup threshold

5. Example: Definition: Association Rule • Association Rule • An implication expression of the form X  Y, where X and Y are itemsets • Example: {Milk, Diaper}  {Beer} • Rule Evaluation Metrics • Support (s) • Fraction of transactions that contain both X and Y • Confidence (c) • Measures how often items in Y appear in transactions thatcontain X

6. Customer buys both Customer buys diaper Customer buys beer Basic Concepts: Frequent Patterns and Association Rules • Itemset X={x1, …, xk} • Find all the rules XYwith min confidence and support • support, s, probability that a transaction contains XY • confidence, c,conditional probability that a transaction having X also contains Y. • Let min_support = 50%, min_conf = 50%: • A  C (50%, 66.7%) • C  A (50%, 100%)

7. Association Rule Mining Task • Given a set of transactions T, the goal of association rule mining is to find all rules having • support ≥ minsup threshold • confidence ≥ minconf threshold • Brute-force approach: • List all possible association rules • Compute the support and confidence for each rule • Prune rules that fail the minsup and minconf thresholds  Computationally prohibitive!

8. Frequent Itemset Generation Given d items, there are 2d possible candidate itemsets

9. Closed Patterns and Max-Patterns • A long pattern contains a combinatorial number of sub-patterns, e.g., {a1, …, a100} contains (1001) + (1002) + … + (110000) = 2100 – 1 = 1.27*1030 sub-patterns! • Solution: Mine closed patterns and max-patterns instead • An itemset Xis closed if X is frequent and there exists no super-pattern Y כ X, with the same support as X (proposed by Pasquier, et al. @ ICDT’99) • An itemset X is a max-pattern if X is frequent and there exists no frequent super-pattern Y כ X (proposed by Bayardo @ SIGMOD’98) • Closed pattern is a lossless compression of freq. patterns • Reducing the # of patterns and rules

10. Closed Patterns and Max-Patterns • Exercise. DB = {<a1, …, a100>, < a1, …, a50>} • Min_sup = 1. • What is the set of closed itemset? • <a1, …, a100>: 1 • < a1, …, a50>: 2 • What is the set of max-pattern? • <a1, …, a100>: 1 • What is the set of all patterns? • !!

11. Mining Association Rules Example of Rules: {Milk,Diaper}  {Beer} (s=0.4, c=0.67){Milk,Beer}  {Diaper} (s=0.4, c=1.0) {Diaper,Beer}  {Milk} (s=0.4, c=0.67) {Beer}  {Milk,Diaper} (s=0.4, c=0.67) {Diaper}  {Milk,Beer} (s=0.4, c=0.5) {Milk}  {Diaper,Beer} (s=0.4, c=0.5) • Observations: • All the above rules are binary partitions of the same itemset: {Milk, Diaper, Beer} • Rules originating from the same itemset have identical support but can have different confidence • Thus, we may decouple the support and confidence requirements

12. Mining Association Rules:What We Need to Know • Goal: Rules with high support/confidence • How to compute? • Support: Find sets of items that occur frequently • Confidence: Find frequency of subsets of supported itemsets • If we have all frequently occurring sets of items (frequent itemsets), we can compute support and confidence!

13. Mining Association Rules • Two-step approach: • Frequent Itemset Generation • Generate all itemsets whose support  minsup • Rule Generation • Generate high confidence rules from each frequent itemset, where each rule is a binary partitioning of a frequent itemset • Frequent itemset generation is still computationally expensive

14. Frequent Itemset Generation Given d items, there are 2d possible candidate itemsets

15. Frequent Itemset Generation • Brute-force approach: • Each itemset in the lattice is a candidate frequent itemset • Count the support of each candidate by scanning the database • Match each transaction against every candidate • Complexity ~ O(NMw) => Expensive since M = 2d!!!

16. Computational Complexity • Given d unique items: • Total number of itemsets = 2d • Total number of possible association rules: If d=6, R = 602 rules

17. Frequent Itemset Generation Strategies • Reduce the number of candidates (M) • Complete search: M=2d • Use pruning techniques to reduce M • Reduce the number of transactions (N) • Reduce size of N as the size of itemset increases • Used by DHP and vertical-based mining algorithms • Reduce the number of comparisons (NM) • Use efficient data structures to store the candidates or transactions • No need to match every candidate against every transaction

18. Reducing Number of Candidates • Apriori principle: • If an itemset is frequent, then all of its subsets must also be frequent • If {beer, diaper, nuts} is frequent, so is {beer, diaper} • i.e., every transaction having {beer, diaper, nuts} also contains {beer, diaper} • Apriori principle holds due to the following property of the support measure: • Support of an itemset never exceeds the support of its subsets • This is known as the anti-monotone property of support

19. Illustrating Apriori Principle Found to be Infrequent Pruned supersets

20. Illustrating Apriori Principle Items (1-itemsets) Pairs (2-itemsets) (No need to generatecandidates involving Cokeor Eggs) Minimum Support = 3 Triplets (3-itemsets) If every subset is considered, 6C1 + 6C2 + 6C3 = 41 With support-based pruning, 6 + 6 + 1 = 13

21. Apriori Algorithm • Method: • Let k=1 • Generate frequent itemsets of length 1 • Repeat until no new frequent itemsets are identified • Generate length (k+1) candidate itemsets from length k frequent itemsets • Prune candidate itemsets containing subsets of length k that are infrequent • Count the support of each candidate by scanning the DB • Eliminate candidates that are infrequent, leaving only those that are frequent

22. The Apriori Algorithm—An Example Supmin = 2 Database TDB L1 C1 1st scan C2 C2 L2 2nd scan L3 C3 3rd scan

23. The Apriori Algorithm • Pseudo-code: Ck: Candidate itemset of size k Lk : frequent itemset of size k L1 = {frequent items}; for(k = 1; Lk !=; k++) do begin Ck+1 = candidates generated from Lk; for each transaction t in database do increment the count of all candidates in Ck+1 that are contained in t Lk+1 = candidates in Ck+1 with min_support end returnkLk;

24. Important Details of Apriori • How to generate candidates? • Step 1: self-joining Lk • Step 2: pruning • How to count supports of candidates? • Example of Candidate-generation • L3={abc, abd, acd, ace, bcd} • Self-joining: L3*L3 • abcd from abc and abd • acde from acd and ace • Pruning: • acde is removed because ade is not in L3 • C4={abcd}

25. How to Generate Candidates? • Suppose the items in Lk-1 are listed in an order • Step 1: self-joining Lk-1 insert intoCk select p.item1, p.item2, …, p.itemk-1, q.itemk-1 from Lk-1 p, Lk-1 q where p.item1=q.item1, …, p.itemk-2=q.itemk-2, p.itemk-1 < q.itemk-1 • Step 2: pruning forall itemsets c in Ckdo forall (k-1)-subsets s of c do if (s is not in Lk-1) then delete c from Ck

26. Reducing Number of Comparisons • Candidate counting: • Scan the database of transactions to determine the support of each candidate itemset • To reduce the number of comparisons, store the candidates in a hash structure • Instead of matching each transaction against every candidate, match it against candidates contained in the hashed buckets

27. How to Count Supports of Candidates? • Why counting supports of candidates a problem? • The total number of candidates can be very huge • One transaction may contain many candidates • Method: • Candidate itemsets are stored in a hash-tree • Leaf node of hash-tree contains a list of itemsets and counts • Interior node contains a hash table • Subset function: finds all the candidates contained in a transaction

28. Generate Hash Tree Hash function 3,6,9 1,4,7 2,5,8 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 6 7 3 6 8 1 4 5 3 5 6 3 5 7 6 8 9 3 4 5 1 3 6 1 2 4 4 5 7 1 2 5 4 5 8 1 5 9 • Suppose you have 15 candidate itemsets of length 3: • {1 4 5}, {1 2 4}, {4 5 7}, {1 2 5}, {4 5 8}, {1 5 9}, {1 3 6}, {2 3 4}, {5 6 7}, {3 4 5}, {3 5 6}, {3 5 7}, {6 8 9}, {3 6 7}, {3 6 8} • You need: • Hash function • Max leaf size: max number of itemsets stored in a leaf node (if number of candidate itemsets exceeds max leaf size, split the node)

29. 2 3 4 1 2 5 4 5 7 1 2 4 5 6 7 6 8 9 3 5 7 4 5 8 3 6 8 3 6 7 3 4 5 1 3 6 14 5 1 5 9 3 5 6 Association Rule Discovery: Hash tree Hash Function Candidate Hash Tree 1,4,7 3,6,9 2,5,8 Hash on 1, 4 or 7

30. 2 3 4 1 25 4 5 7 1 2 4 5 6 7 6 8 9 3 5 7 4 58 3 6 8 3 6 7 3 4 5 1 3 6 1 4 5 1 5 9 3 5 6 Association Rule Discovery: Hash tree Hash Function Candidate Hash Tree 1,4,7 3,6,9 2,5,8 Hash on 2, 5 or 8

31. 2 3 4 1 2 5 4 5 7 1 2 4 5 6 7 6 8 9 3 5 7 4 5 8 36 8 36 7 3 4 5 1 3 6 1 4 5 1 5 9 3 5 6 Association Rule Discovery: Hash tree Hash Function Candidate Hash Tree 1,4,7 3,6,9 2,5,8 Hash on 3, 6 or 9

32. Subset Operation Given a transaction t, what are the possible subsets of size 3?

33. Hash Function 3 + 2 + 1 + 5 6 3 5 6 1 2 3 5 6 2 3 5 6 1,4,7 3,6,9 2,5,8 1 4 5 1 3 6 3 4 5 4 5 8 1 2 4 2 3 4 3 6 8 3 6 7 1 2 5 6 8 9 3 5 7 3 5 6 5 6 7 4 5 7 1 5 9 Subset Operation Using Hash Tree transaction

34. Hash Function 2 + 1 + 1 5 + 3 + 1 3 + 1 2 + 6 5 6 5 6 1 2 3 5 6 3 5 6 3 5 6 2 3 5 6 1,4,7 3,6,9 2,5,8 1 4 5 4 5 8 1 2 4 2 3 4 3 6 8 3 6 7 1 2 5 3 5 6 3 5 7 6 8 9 5 6 7 4 5 7 Subset Operation Using Hash Tree transaction 1 3 6 3 4 5 1 5 9

35. Hash Function 2 + 1 5 + 1 + 3 + 1 3 + 1 2 + 6 3 5 6 5 6 5 6 1 2 3 5 6 2 3 5 6 3 5 6 1,4,7 3,6,9 2,5,8 1 4 5 4 5 8 1 2 4 2 3 4 3 6 8 3 6 7 1 2 5 3 5 7 3 5 6 6 8 9 4 5 7 5 6 7 Subset Operation Using Hash Tree transaction 1 3 6 3 4 5 1 5 9 Match transaction against 11 out of 15 candidates

36. Factors Affecting Complexity • Choice of minimum support threshold • lowering support threshold results in more frequent itemsets • this may increase number of candidates and max length of frequent itemsets • Dimensionality (number of items) of the data set • more space is needed to store support count of each item • if number of frequent items also increases, both computation and I/O costs may also increase • Size of database • since Apriori makes multiple passes, run time of algorithm may increase with number of transactions • Average transaction width • transaction width increases with denser data sets • This may increase max length of frequent itemsets and traversals of hash tree (number of subsets in a transaction increases with its width)

37. Compact Representation of Frequent Itemsets • Some itemsets are redundant because they have identical support as their supersets • Number of frequent itemsets • Need a compact representation

38. Maximal Frequent Itemset An itemset is maximal frequent if none of its immediate supersets is frequent Maximal Itemsets Infrequent Itemsets Border

39. Closed Itemset • An itemset is closed if none of its immediate supersets has the same support as the itemset

40. Maximal vs Closed Itemsets Transaction Ids Not supported by any transactions

41. Maximal vs Closed Frequent Itemsets Closed but not maximal Minimum support = 2 Closed and maximal # Closed = 9 # Maximal = 4

42. Maximal vs Closed Itemsets

43. Alternative Methods for Frequent Itemset Generation • Traversal of Itemset Lattice • General-to-specific vs Specific-to-general

44. Alternative Methods for Frequent Itemset Generation • Traversal of Itemset Lattice • Equivalent Classes

45. Alternative Methods for Frequent Itemset Generation • Traversal of Itemset Lattice • Breadth-first vs Depth-first

46. Alternative Methods for Frequent Itemset Generation • Representation of Database • horizontal vs vertical data layout

47. Efficient Implementation of Apriori in SQL • Hard to get good performance out of pure SQL (SQL-92) based approaches alone • Make use of object-relational extensions like UDFs, BLOBs, Table functions etc. • Get orders of magnitude improvement • S. Sarawagi, S. Thomas, and R. Agrawal. Integrating association rule mining with relational database systems: Alternatives and implications. In SIGMOD’98

48. Challenges of Frequent Pattern Mining • Challenges • Multiple scans of transaction database • Huge number of candidates • Tedious workload of support counting for candidates • Improving Apriori: general ideas • Reduce passes of transaction database scans • Shrink number of candidates • Facilitate support counting of candidates

49. Partition: Scan Database Only Twice • Any itemset that is potentially frequent in DB must be frequent in at least one of the partitions of DB • Scan 1: partition database and find local frequent patterns • Scan 2: consolidate global frequent patterns • A. Savasere, E. Omiecinski, and S. Navathe. An efficient algorithm for mining association in large databases. In VLDB’95

50. DHP: Reduce the Number of Candidates • A k-itemset whose corresponding hashing bucket count is below the threshold cannot be frequent • Candidates: a, b, c, d, e • Hash entries: {ab, ad, ae} {bd, be, de} … • Frequent 1-itemset: a, b, d, e • ab is not a candidate 2-itemset if the sum of count of {ab, ad, ae} is below support threshold • J. Park, M. Chen, and P. Yu. An effective hash-based algorithm for mining association rules. In SIGMOD’95