Data Mining

Chapter 5
Association Analysis: Basic Concepts

Introduction to Data Mining, 2nd Edition

by
Tan, Steinbach, Karpatne, Kumar

02/14/2018 Introduction to Data Mining, 2 nd Edition 1

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
TID Items
{Diaper}  {Beer},
1 Bread, Milk {Milk, Bread}  {Eggs,Coke},
2 Bread, Diaper, Beer, Eggs {Beer, Bread}  {Milk},
3 Milk, Diaper, Beer, Coke
4 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Beer Implication means co-occurrence,
5 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Coke not causality!

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Definition: Frequent Itemset
 Itemset
– A collection of one or more items
 Example: {Milk, Bread, Diaper}
– k-itemset TID Items
 An itemset that contains k items 1 Bread, Milk
 Support count () 2 Bread, Diaper, Beer, Eggs
– Frequency of occurrence of an itemset 3 Milk, Diaper, Beer, Coke
4 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Beer
– E.g. ({Milk, Bread,Diaper}) = 2
5 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Coke
 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

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Definition: Association Rule
 Association Rule
TID Items
– An implication expression of the form
X  Y, where X and Y are itemsets 1 Bread, Milk
2 Bread, Diaper, Beer, Eggs
– Example:
{Milk, Diaper}  {Beer} 3 Milk, Diaper, Beer, Coke
4 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Beer
 5 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Coke
Rule Evaluation Metrics
– Support (s)
 Fraction of transactions that contain Example:
both X and Y
{Milk , Diaper}  {Beer}
– Confidence (c)
 Measures how often items in Y  (Milk , Diaper, Beer ) 2
appear in transactions that s  0.4
contain X
|T| 5
 (Milk, Diaper, Beer ) 2
c  0.67
 (Milk , Diaper ) 3
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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!

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Mining Association Rules

TID Items Example of Rules:

1 Bread, Milk {Milk,Diaper}  {Beer} (s=0.4, c=0.67)
2 Bread, Diaper, Beer, Eggs {Milk,Beer}  {Diaper} (s=0.4, c=1.0)
3 Milk, Diaper, Beer, Coke {Diaper,Beer}  {Milk} (s=0.4, c=0.67)
4 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Beer {Beer}  {Milk,Diaper} (s=0.4, c=0.67)
5 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Coke {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

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Mining Association Rules

 Two-step approach:
1. Frequent Itemset Generation
– Generate all itemsets whose support  minsup

2. 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

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Frequent Itemset Generation
null

A B C D E

AB AC AD AE BC BD BE CD CE DE

ABC ABD ABE ACD ACE ADE BCD BCE BDE CDE

ABCD ABCE ABDE ACDE BCDE

Given d items, there
are 2d possible
ABCDE candidate itemsets
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 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
Transactions List of
Candidates
TID Items
1 Bread, Milk
2 Bread, Diaper, Beer, Eggs
N 3 Milk, Diaper, Beer, Coke M
4 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Beer
5 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Coke
w
– Match each transaction against every candidate
– Complexity ~ O(NMw) => Expensive since M = 2d !!!
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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

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Reducing Number of Candidates

 Apriori principle:
– If an itemset is frequent, then all of its subsets must also
be frequent

 Apriori principle holds due to the following property

of the support measure:

X , Y : ( X  Y )  s( X ) s(Y )
– Support of an itemset never exceeds the support of its
subsets
– This is known as the anti-monotone property of support

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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

null

A B C D E

AB AC AD AE BC BD BE CD CE DE

Found to be
Infrequent
ABC ABD ABE ACD ACE ADE BCD BCE BDE CDE

ABCD ABCE ABDE ACDE BCDE

Pruned
ABCDE
supersets
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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

TID Items
Items (1-itemsets)
1 Bread, Milk
Item Count
2 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Eggs
Bread 4
3 Beer, Coke, Diaper, Milk Coke 2
4 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Milk Milk 4
Beer 3
5 Bread, Coke, Diaper, Milk Diaper 4
Eggs 1

Minimum Support = 3

If every subset is considered,

6
C1 + 6C2 + 6C3
6 + 15 + 20 = 41
With support-based pruning,
6 + 6 + 4 = 16

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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

TID Items
Items (1-itemsets)
1 Bread, Milk
2 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Eggs Item Count
Bread 4
3 Beer, Coke, Diaper, Milk
Coke 2
4 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Milk Milk 4
5 Bread, Coke, Diaper, Milk Beer 3
Diaper 4
Eggs 1

Minimum Support = 3

If every subset is considered,

6
C1 + 6C2 + 6C3
6 + 15 + 20 = 41
With support-based pruning,
6 + 6 + 4 = 16

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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

Item Count Items (1-itemsets)

Bread 4
Coke 2
Milk 4 Itemset Pairs (2-itemsets)
Beer 3 {Bread,Milk}
Diaper 4 {Bread, Beer } (No need to generate
Eggs 1 {Bread,Diaper}
{Beer, Milk}
candidates involving Coke
{Diaper, Milk} or Eggs)
{Beer,Diaper}

Minimum Support = 3

If every subset is considered,

6
C1 + 6C2 + 6C3
6 + 15 + 20 = 41
With support-based pruning,
6 + 6 + 4 = 16

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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

Item Count Items (1-itemsets)

Bread 4
Coke 2
Milk 4 Itemset Count Pairs (2-itemsets)
Beer 3 {Bread,Milk} 3
Diaper 4 {Beer, Bread} 2 (No need to generate
Eggs 1 {Bread,Diaper} 3 candidates involving Coke
{Beer,Milk} 2
{Diaper,Milk} 3 or Eggs)
{Beer,Diaper} 3
Minimum Support = 3

If every subset is considered,

6
C1 + 6C2 + 6C3
6 + 15 + 20 = 41
With support-based pruning,
6 + 6 + 4 = 16

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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

Item Count Items (1-itemsets)

Bread 4
Coke 2
Milk 4 Itemset Count Pairs (2-itemsets)
Beer 3 {Bread,Milk} 3
Diaper 4 {Bread,Beer} 2 (No need to generate
Eggs 1
{Bread,Diaper} 3 candidates involving Coke
{Milk,Beer} 2 or Eggs)
{Milk,Diaper} 3
{Beer,Diaper} 3
Minimum Support = 3
Triplets (3-itemsets)
If every subset is considered,
Itemset
6
C1 + 6C2 + 6C3
{ Beer, Diaper, Milk}
6 + 15 + 20 = 41 { Beer,Bread,Diaper}
With support-based pruning, {Bread, Diaper, Milk}
6 + 6 + 4 = 16 { Beer, Bread, Milk}

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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

Item Count Items (1-itemsets)

Bread 4
Coke 2
Milk 4 Itemset Count Pairs (2-itemsets)
Beer 3 {Bread,Milk} 3
Diaper 4 {Bread,Beer} 2 (No need to generate
Eggs 1
{Bread,Diaper} 3 candidates involving Coke
{Milk,Beer} 2 or Eggs)
{Milk,Diaper} 3
{Beer,Diaper} 3
Minimum Support = 3
Triplets (3-itemsets)
If every subset is considered, Itemset Count
6
C1 + 6C2 + 6C3 { Beer, Diaper, Milk} 2
6 + 15 + 20 = 41 { Beer,Bread, Diaper} 2
With support-based pruning, {Bread, Diaper, Milk} 2
6 + 6 + 4 = 16 {Beer, Bread, Milk} 1
6 + 6 + 1 = 13

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Apriori Algorithm

– Fk: frequent k-itemsets

– Lk: candidate k-itemsets
 Algorithm
– Let k=1
– Generate F1 = {frequent 1-itemsets}
– Repeat until Fk is empty
 Candidate Generation: Generate Lk+1 from Fk
 Candidate Pruning: Prune candidate itemsets in Lk+1
containing subsets of length k that are infrequent
 Support Counting: Count the support of each candidate in

Lk+1 by scanning the DB

 Candidate Elimination: Eliminate candidates in Lk+1 that are
infrequent, leaving only those that are frequent => F k+1
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Candidate Generation: Brute-force method

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 Candidate Generation: Merge Fk-1 and F1 itemsets

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 Candidate Generation: Fk-1 x Fk-1 Method

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Candidate Generation: Fk-1 x Fk-1 Method

 Merge two frequent (k-1)-itemsets if their first (k-2) items

are identical

 F3 = {ABC,ABD,ABE,ACD,BCD,BDE,CDE}
– Merge(ABC, ABD) = ABCD
– Merge(ABC, ABE) = ABCE
– Merge(ABD, ABE) = ABDE

– Do not merge(ABD,ACD) because they share only

prefix of length 1 instead of length 2

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Candidate Pruning

 Let F3 = {ABC,ABD,ABE,ACD,BCD,BDE,CDE} be
the set of frequent 3-itemsets

 L4 = {ABCD,ABCE,ABDE} is the set of candidate

4-itemsets generated (from previous slide)

 Candidate pruning
– Prune ABCE because ACE and BCE are infrequent
– Prune ABDE because ADE is infrequent

 After candidate pruning: L4 = {ABCD}

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Alternate Fk-1 x Fk-1 Method

 Merge two frequent (k-1)-itemsets if the last (k-2) items of

the first one is identical to the first (k-2) items of the
second.

 F3 = {ABC,ABD,ABE,ACD,BCD,BDE,CDE}
– Merge(ABC, BCD) = ABCD
– Merge(ABD, BDE) = ABDE
– Merge(ACD, CDE) = ACDE
– Merge(BCD, CDE) = BCDE

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Candidate Pruning for Alternate Fk-1 x Fk-1
Method

 Let F3 = {ABC,ABD,ABE,ACD,BCD,BDE,CDE} be
the set of frequent 3-itemsets

 L4 = {ABCD,ABDE,ACDE,BCDE} is the set of

candidate 4-itemsets generated (from previous
slide)
 Candidate pruning
– Prune ABDE because ADE is infrequent
– Prune ACDE because ACE and ADE are infrequent
– Prune BCDE because BCE
 After candidate pruning: L4 = {ABCD}
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 Illustrating Apriori Principle

Item Count Items (1-itemsets)

Bread 4
Coke 2
Milk 4 Itemset Count Pairs (2-itemsets)
Beer 3 {Bread,Milk} 3
Diaper 4 {Bread,Beer} 2 (No need to generate
Eggs 1
{Bread,Diaper} 3 candidates involving Coke
{Milk,Beer} 2 or Eggs)
{Milk,Diaper} 3
{Beer,Diaper} 3
Minimum Support = 3
Triplets (3-itemsets)
If every subset is considered, Itemset Count
6
C1 + 6C2 + 6C3
{Bread, Diaper, Milk} 2
6 + 15 + 20 = 41
With support-based pruning,
6 + 6 + 1 = 13 Use of Fk-1xFk-1 method for candidate generation results in
only one 3-itemset. This is eliminated after the support
counting step.

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Support Counting of Candidate Itemsets

 Scan the database of transactions to determine the

support of each candidate itemset
– Must match every candidate itemset against every transaction,
which is an expensive operation

TID Items
Itemset
1 Bread, Milk
{ Beer, Diaper, Milk}
2 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Eggs { Beer,Bread,Diaper}
3 Beer, Coke, Diaper, Milk {Bread, Diaper, Milk}
{ Beer, Bread, Milk}
4 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Milk
5 Bread, Coke, Diaper, Milk

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Support Counting of Candidate Itemsets

 To reduce number of comparisons, store the candidate

itemsets in a hash structure
– Instead of matching each transaction against every candidate,
match it against candidates contained in the hashed buckets

Transactions Hash Structure

TID Items
1 Bread, Milk
2 Bread, Diaper, Beer, Eggs
N 3 Milk, Diaper, Beer, Coke k
4 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Beer
5 Bread, Milk, Diaper, Coke
Buckets

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Support Counting: An Example
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}

How many of these itemsets are supported by transaction (1,2,3,5,6)?

Transaction, t
1 2 3 5 6

Level 1
1 2 3 5 6 2 3 5 6 3 5 6

Level 2

12 3 5 6 13 5 6 15 6 23 5 6 25 6 35 6

123
135 235
125 156 256 356
136 236
126

Level 3 Subsets of 3 items

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Support Counting Using a Hash
Tree
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)

Hash function 234

3,6,9 567
1,4,7 145 345 356 367
136 368
2,5,8 357
124 689
457 125 159
458
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 Support Counting Using a Hash
Tree

Hash Function Candidate Hash Tree

1,4,7 3,6,9

2,5,8

234
567

145 136
345 356 367
Hash on
357 368
1, 4 or 7
124 159 689
125
457 458

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Support Counting Using a Hash
Tree

Hash Function Candidate Hash Tree

1,4,7 3,6,9

2,5,8

234
567

145 136
345 356 367
Hash on
357 368
2, 5 or 8
124 159 689
125
457 458

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Support Counting Using a Hash
Tree

Hash Function Candidate Hash Tree

1,4,7 3,6,9

2,5,8

234
567

145 136
345 356 367
Hash on
357 368
3, 6 or 9
124 159 689
125
457 458

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Support Counting Using a Hash
Tree

Hash Function
1 2 3 5 6 transaction

1+ 2356
2+ 356 1,4,7 3,6,9

2,5,8
3+ 56

234
567

145 136
345 356 367
357 368
124 159 689
125
457 458

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Support Counting Using a Hash
Tree

Hash Function
1 2 3 5 6 transaction

1+ 2356
2+ 356 1,4,7 3,6,9
12+ 356 2,5,8
3+ 56
13+ 56
234
15+ 6 567

145 136
345 356 367
357 368
124 159 689
125
457 458

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Support Counting Using a Hash
Tree

Hash Function
1 2 3 5 6 transaction

1+ 2356
2+ 356 1,4,7 3,6,9
12+ 356 2,5,8
3+ 56
13+ 56
234
15+ 6 567

145 136
345 356 367
357 368
124 159 689
125
457 458
Match transaction against 11 out of 15 candidates
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