1. CPS 196.03: Information Management and Mining
Association Rules and Frequent Itemsets

2. 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

3. Generating Candidate ItemSets
Exhaustive enumeration
F(k-1) x F(1)
Using (lexicographic) ordering
F(k-1) x F(k-1)
Will hashing help?

4. 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

5. Generate Hash Tree Hash function 3,6,9 1,4,7 2,5,8
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)
1,4,7
2,5,8
3,6,9
Hash function

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13. Factors Affecting Performance
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
number of subsets in a transaction increases with its width
this may increase max length of frequent itemsets and traversals of hash tree

14. 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

15. Compression of Itemset Information
Transaction Ids
Not supported by any transactions

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

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

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

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

20. Maximal vs Closed Itemsets

21. Why Do We Care About Closed Itemsets?
Compact representation of frequent itemsets
Helps if there are many frequent itemsets
There are efficient algorithms that can efficiently find the closed itemsets (and only them)
HW Exercise: Come up with an algorithm to generate all info about frequent itemsets given info about closed frequent itemsets?
Closed itemsets help identify redundant association rules
E.g., if {b} and {b,c} have the same support: then would you care about {b} -> {d} or {b,c} -> {d}?

22. Toivonen’s Algorithm --- (1)
Start as in the simple algorithm, but lower the threshold slightly for the sample.
Example: if the sample is 1% of the baskets, use s/125 as the support threshold rather than s /100.
Goal is to avoid missing any itemset that is frequent in the full set of baskets.

23. Toivonen’s Algorithm --- (2)
Add to the itemsets that are frequent in the sample the negative border of these itemsets.
An itemset is in the negative border if it is not deemed frequent in the sample, but all its immediate subsets are.

24. Example
ABCD is in the negative border if and only if it is not frequent, but all of ABC, BCD, ACD, and ABD are.

25. Toivonen’s Algorithm --- (3)
In a second pass, count all candidate frequent itemsets from the first pass, and also count the negative border.
If no itemset from the negative border turns out to be frequent, then the candidates found to be frequent in the whole data are exactly the frequent itemsets.

26. Toivonen’s Algorithm --- (4)
What if we find something in the negative border is actually frequent?
We must start over again!
Try to choose the support threshold so the probability of failure is low, while the number of itemsets checked on the second pass fits in main- memory.

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

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

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

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

31. ECLAT
For each item, store a list of transaction ids (tids)
TID-list

32. ECLAT
Determine support of any k-itemset by intersecting tid-lists of two of its (k-1) subsets.
3 traversal approaches:
top-down, bottom-up and hybrid
Advantage: very fast support counting
Disadvantage: intermediate tid-lists may become too large for memory  

33. Bottleneck of Frequent-pattern Mining
Multiple database scans are costly
Mining long patterns needs many passes of scanning and generates lots of candidates
To find frequent itemset i1i2…i100
# of scans: 100
# of Candidates: (1001) + (1002) + … + (110000) = = 1.27*1030 !
Bottleneck: candidate-generation-and-test
Can we avoid candidate generation?

34. FP-growth Algorithm
Use a compressed representation of the database using an FP-tree
Once an FP-tree has been constructed, it uses a recursive divide-and-conquer approach to mine the frequent itemsets

35. FP-tree construction null After reading TID=1: A:1 B:1

36. FP-Tree Construction null B:3 A:7 B:5 C:3 C:1 D:1 D:1 C:3 E:1 D:1 E:1
Transaction Database
null
B:3
A:7
B:5
C:3
C:1
D:1
Header table
D:1
C:3
E:1
D:1
E:1
D:1
E:1
D:1
Pointers are used to assist frequent itemset generation

37. Construct FP-tree from Transaction Database
TID Items bought (ordered) frequent items
100 {f, a, c, d, g, i, m, p} {f, c, a, m, p}
200 {a, b, c, f, l, m, o} {f, c, a, b, m}
300 {b, f, h, j, o, w} {f, b}
400 {b, c, k, s, p} {c, b, p}
500 {a, f, c, e, l, p, m, n} {f, c, a, m, p}
min_support = 3 {}
f:4
c:1
b:1
p:1
c:3
a:3
m:2
p:2
m:1
Header Table
Item frequency head
f 4
c 4
a 3
b 3
m 3
p 3
Scan DB once, find frequent 1-itemset (single item pattern)
Sort frequent items in frequency descending order, f-list
Scan DB again, construct FP-tree
F-list=f-c-a-b-m-p

38. Benefits of the FP-tree Structure
Completeness
Preserve complete information for frequent pattern mining
Never break a long pattern of any transaction
Compactness
Reduce irrelevant info—infrequent items are gone
Items in frequency descending order: the more frequently occurring, the more likely to be shared
Never be larger than the original database (not count node-links and the count field)

39. Partition Patterns and Databases
Frequent patterns can be partitioned into subsets according to f-list
F-list=f-c-a-b-m-p
Patterns containing p
Patterns having m but no p …
Patterns having c but no a nor b, m, p
Pattern f
Completeness and non-redundancy

40. Find Patterns From P-conditional Database
Starting at the frequent item header table in the FP-tree
Traverse the FP-tree by following the link of each frequent item p
Accumulate all of transformed prefix paths of item p to form p’s conditional pattern base {}
f:4
c:1
b:1
p:1
c:3
a:3
m:2
p:2
m:1
Header Table
Item frequency head
f 4
c 4
a 3
b 3
m 3
p 3
Conditional pattern bases
item cond. pattern base
c f:3
a fc:3
b fca:1, f:1, c:1
m fca:2, fcab:1
p fcam:2, cb:1

41. From Conditional Pattern-bases to Conditional FP-trees
For each pattern-base
Accumulate the count for each item in the base
Construct the FP-tree for the frequent items of the pattern base
m-conditional pattern base:
fca:2, fcab:1 {}
Header Table
Item frequency head
f 4
c 4
a 3
b 3
m 3
p 3
f:4
c:1
All frequent patterns relate to m m,
fm, cm, am,
fcm, fam, cam,
fcam {}
f:3
c:3
a:3
m-conditional FP-tree
c:3
b:1
b:1  
a:3
p:1
m:2
b:1
p:2
m:1

42. Recursion: Mining Each Conditional FP-tree{}
f:3
c:3
am-conditional FP-tree
Cond. pattern base of “am”: (fc:3) {}
f:3
c:3
a:3
m-conditional FP-tree {}
Cond. pattern base of “cm”: (f:3)
f:3
cm-conditional FP-tree {}
Cond. pattern base of “cam”: (f:3)
f:3
cam-conditional FP-tree

43. Mining Frequent Patterns With FP-trees
Idea: Frequent pattern growth
Recursively grow frequent patterns by pattern and database partition
Method
For each frequent item, construct its conditional pattern-base, and then its conditional FP-tree
Repeat the process on each newly created conditional FP-tree
Until the resulting FP-tree is empty, or it contains only one path—single path will generate all the combinations of its sub-paths, each of which is a frequent pattern

44. Rule Generation
Given a frequent itemset L, find all non-empty subsets f  L such that f  L – f satisfies the minimum confidence requirement
If {A,B,C,D} is a frequent itemset, candidate rules:
ABC D, ABD C, ACD B, BCD A, A BCD, B ACD, C ABD, D ABC AB CD, AC  BD, AD  BC, BC AD, BD AC, CD AB,
If |L| = k, then there are 2k – 2 candidate association rules (ignoring L   and   L)

45. Rule Generation
How to efficiently generate rules from frequent itemsets?
In general, confidence does not have an anti- monotone property
c(ABC D) can be larger or smaller than c(AB D)
But confidence of rules generated from the same itemset has an anti-monotone property
e.g., L = {A,B,C,D}: c(ABC  D)  c(AB  CD)  c(A  BCD)
Confidence is anti-monotone w.r.t. number of items on the RHS of the rule

46. Rule Generation for Apriori Algorithm
Lattice of rules
Pruned Rules
Low Confidence Rule

47. Pattern Evaluation
Association rule algorithms tend to produce too many rules
many of them are uninteresting or redundant
Redundant if {A,B,C}  {D} and {A,B}  {D} have same support & confidence
Interestingness measures can be used to prune/rank the derived patterns
In the original formulation of association rules, support & confidence are the only measures used

48. Application of Interestingness Measure
Interestingness Measures

49. Computing Interestingness Measure
Given a rule X  Y, information needed to compute rule interestingness can be obtained from a contingency table
Contingency table for X  Y Y X
f11
f10
f1+
f01
f00
fo+
f+1
f+0
|T|
f11: support of X and Y f10: support of X and Y f01: support of X and Y f00: support of X and Y
Used to define various measures
support, confidence, lift, Gini, J-measure, etc.

50. Drawback of Confidence
Coffee
Tea 15 5 20 75 80 90 10
100
Association Rule: Tea  Coffee
Confidence= P(Coffee|Tea) = 0.75
but P(Coffee) = 0.9
Although confidence is high, rule is misleading
P(Coffee|Tea) =

51. Statistical Independence
Population of 1000 students
600 students know how to swim (S)
700 students know how to bike (B)
420 students know how to swim and bike (S,B)
P(SB) = 420/1000 = 0.42
P(S)  P(B) = 0.6  0.7 = 0.42
P(SB) = P(S)  P(B) => Statistical independence
P(SB) > P(S)  P(B) => Positively correlated
P(SB) < P(S)  P(B) => Negatively correlated

52. Statistical-based Measures
Measures that take into account statistical dependence

53. Example: Lift/Interest
Coffee
Tea 15 5 20 75 80 90 10
100
Association Rule: Tea  Coffee
Confidence= P(Coffee|Tea) = 0.75
but P(Coffee) = 0.9
Lift = 0.75/0.9= (< 1, therefore is negatively associated)

54. Drawback of Lift & InterestY X 10 90
100 Y X 90 10
100
Statistical independence:
If P(X,Y)=P(X)P(Y) => Lift = 1