CS2032 Data Warehousing and Data Mining LTPC

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UNIT I DATA WAREHOUSING 10

Data warehousing Components –Building a Data warehouse –- Mapping the DataWarehouse to a
Multiprocessor Architecture – DBMS Schemas for Decision Support – Data Extraction, Cleanup, and
Transformation Tools –Metadata.

UNIT II BUSINESS ANALYSIS 8

Reporting and Query tools and Applications – Tool Categories – The Need for Applications – Cognos
Impromptu – Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) – Need – Multidimensional Data Model – OLAP
Guidelines – Multidimensional versus Multirelational OLAP – Categories of Tools – OLAP Tools and
the Internet.

UNIT III DATA MINING 8

Introduction – Data – Types of Data – Data Mining Functionalities – Interestingness of Patterns –
Classification of Data Mining Systems – Data Mining Task Primitives – Integration of a Data Mining
System with a Data Warehouse – Issues –Data Preprocessing.

UNIT IV ASSOCIATION RULE MINING AND CLASSIFICATION 11

Mining Frequent Patterns, Associations and Correlations – Mining Methods – Mining Various Kinds of
Association Rules – Correlation Analysis – Constraint Based Association Mining – Classification and
Prediction - Basic Concepts - Decision Tree Induction - Bayesian Classification – Rule Based
Classification – Classification by Backpropagation – Support Vector Machines – Associative
Classification – Lazy Learners – Other Classification Methods – Prediction

UNIT V CLUSTERING AND APPLICATIONS AND TRENDS IN DATA MINING 8

Cluster Analysis - Types of Data – Categorization of Major Clustering Methods – Kmeans – Partitioning
Methods – Hierarchical Methods - Density-Based Methods –Grid Based Methods – Model-Based
Clustering Methods – Clustering High Dimensional Data - Constraint – Based Cluster Analysis – Outlier
Analysis – Data Mining Applications.

TOTAL: 45 PERIODS
TEXT BOOKS:
1. Alex Berson and Stephen J. Smith, “ Data Warehousing, Data Mining & OLAP”, Tata McGraw – Hill
Edition, Tenth Reprint 2007.
2. Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber, “Data Mining Concepts and Techniques”, Second Edition,
Elsevier, 2007.
REFERENCES:
1. Pang-Ning Tan, Michael Steinbach and Vipin Kumar, “ Introduction To Data Mining” , Person
Education, 2007.
2. K.P. Soman, Shyam Diwakar and V. Ajay “, Insight into Data mining Theory and Practice”, Easter
Economy Edition, Prentice Hall of India, 2006.
3. G. K. Gupta, “ Introduction to Data Mining with Case Studies”, Easter Economy Edition, Prentice Hall
of India, 2006.
4. Daniel T.Larose, “Data Mining Methods and Models”, Wile-Interscience, 2006.
 UNIT I DATA WAREHOUSING 10

Data warehousing Components –Building a Data warehouse –- Mapping the Data Warehouse to
a Multiprocessor Architecture – DBMS Schemas for Decision Support – Data Extraction,
Cleanup, and Transformation Tools –Metadata.

DATA WAREHOUSE COMPONENTS & ARCHITECTURE

The data in a data warehouse comes from operational systems of the organization as well as from
other external sources. These are collectively referred to as source systems. The data extracted
from source systems is stored in a area called data staging area, where the data is cleaned,
transformed, combined, deduplicated to prepare the data for us in the data warehouse. The data
staging area is generally a collection of machines where simple activities like sorting and
sequential processing takes place. The data staging area does not provide any query or
presentation services. As soon as a system provides query or presentation services, it is
categorized as a presentation server. A presentation server is the target machine on which the
data is loaded from the data staging area organized and stored for direct querying by end users,
report writers and other applications. The three different kinds of systems that are required for a
data warehouse are:

1. Source Systems
2. Data Staging Area
3. Presentation servers
The data travels from source systems to presentation servers via the data staging area. The entire
process is popularly known as ETL (extract, transform, and load) or ETT (extract, transform, and
transfer). Oracle’s ETL tool is called Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) and MS SQL Server’s
ETL tool is called Data Transformation Services (DTS).

A typical architecture of a data warehouse is shown below:

META
DATA HIGHLY
MANAGER
OPERATIONAL

SUMMERIZED DATA

LIGHTLY
QUERY MANAGER
LOAD
SOURCE

SUMMERIZED DATA END USER ACCESS

TOOLS
DETAILED DATA

WAREHOUSE MANAGER

ARCHIVE / BACK UP
Each component and the tasks performed by them are explained below:

1. OPERATIONAL DATA
The source of data for the data warehouse is supplied from:

(i) The data from the mainframe systems in the traditional network and hierarchical
format.
(ii) Data can also come from the relational DBMS like Oracle, Informix.
(iii) In addition to these internal data, operational data also includes external data
obtained from commercial databases and databases associated with supplier and
customers.
2. LOAD MANAGER
The load manager performs all the operations associated with extraction and loading data into the
data warehouse. These operations include simple transformations of the data to prepare the data
for entry into the warehouse. The size and complexity of this component will vary between data
warehouses and may be constructed using a combination of vendor data loading tools and
custom built programs.
3. WAREHOUSE MANAGER
The warehouse manager performs all the operations associated with the management of data in
the warehouse. This component is built using vendor data management tools and custom built
programs. The operations performed by warehouse manager include:
(i) Analysis of data to ensure consistency
(ii) Transformation and merging the source data from temporary storage into data
warehouse tables
(iii) Create indexes and views on the base table.
(iv) Denormalization
(v) Generation of aggregation
(vi) Backing up and archiving of data
In certain situations, the warehouse manager also generates query profiles to determine which
indexes ands aggregations are appropriate.
4. QUERY MANAGER
The query manager performs all operations associated with management of user queries. This
component is usually constructed using vendor end-user access tools, data warehousing
monitoring tools, database facilities and custom built programs. The complexity of a query
manager is determined by facilities provided by the end-user access tools and database.
5. DETAILED DATA
This area of the warehouse stores all the detailed data in the database schema. In most cases
detailed data is not stored online but aggregated to the next level of details. However the detailed
data is added regularly to the warehouse to supplement the aggregated data.
6. LIGHTLY AND HIGHLY SUMMERIZED DATA
The area of the data warehouse stores all the predefined lightly and highly summarized
(aggregated) data generated by the warehouse manager. This area of the warehouse is transient
as it will be subject to change on an ongoing basis in order to respond to the changing query
profiles. The purpose of the summarized information is to speed up the query performance. The
summarized data is updated continuously as new data is loaded into the warehouse.
7. ARCHIVE AND BACK UP DATA
This area of the warehouse stores detailed and summarized data for the purpose of archiving and
back up. The data is transferred to storage archives such as magnetic tapes or optical disks.
8. META DATA
The data warehouse also stores all the Meta data (data about data) definitions used by all
processes in the warehouse. It is used for variety of purposed including:
(i) The extraction and loading process – Meta data is used to map data sources to a
common view of information within the warehouse.
(ii) The warehouse management process – Meta data is used to automate the
production of summary tables.
(iii) As part of Query Management process Meta data is used to direct a query to the
most appropriate data source.
The structure of Meta data will differ in each process, because the purpose is different. More
about Meta data will be discussed in the later Lecture Notes.
9. END-USER ACCESS TOOLS
The principal purpose of data warehouse is to provide information to the business managers for
strategic decision-making. These users interact with the warehouse using end user access tools.
The examples of some of the end user access tools can be:
(i) Reporting and Query Tools
(ii) Application Development Tools
(iii) Executive Information Systems Tools
(iv) Online Analytical Processing Tools
(v) Data Mining Tools
Three-tier Data warehouse architecture

The bottom tier is a ware-house database server which is almost always a relational
database system. The middle tier is an OLAP server which is typically implemented using either
(1) a Relational OLAP (ROLAP) model, (2) a Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP) model. The
top tier is a client, which contains query and reporting tools, analysis tools, and/or data mining
tools (e.g., trend analysis, prediction, and so on).

From the architecture point of view, there are three data warehouse models: the enterprise
warehouse, the data mart, and the virtual warehouse.

• Enterprise warehouse: An enterprise warehouse collects all of the information about

subjects spanning the entire organization. It provides corporate-wide data integration,
usually from one or more operational systems or external information providers, and is
cross-functional in scope. It typically contains detailed data as well as summarized data,
and can range in size from a few gigabytes to hundreds of gigabytes, terabytes, or
beyond.

• Data mart: A data mart contains a subset of corporate-wide data that is of value to a
specific group of users. The scope is connected to specific, selected subjects. For
example, a marketing data mart may connect its subjects to customer, item, and sales.
 The data contained in data marts tend to be summarized. Depending on the source of
data, data marts can be categorized into the following two classes:
(i).Independent data marts are sourced from data captured from one or more
operational systems or external information providers, or from data generated locally
within a particular department or geographic area.
(ii).Dependent data marts are sourced directly from enterprise data warehouses.

• Virtual warehouse: A virtual warehouse is a set of views over operational databases. For
efficient query processing, only some of the possible summary views may be
materialized. A virtual warehouse is easy to build but requires excess capacity on
operational database servers.

Figure: A recommended approach for data warehouse development.

Building a Data warehouse

The ETL (Extract Transformation Load) process
In this section we will discussed about the 4 major process of the data warehouse. They are
extract (data from the operational systems and bring it to the data warehouse), transform (the
data into internal format and structure of the data warehouse), cleanse (to make sure it is of
sufficient quality to be used for decision making) and load (cleanse data is put into the data
warehouse).
The four processes from extraction through loading often referred collectively as Data Staging.

EXTRACT
Some of the data elements in the operational database can be reasonably be expected to be useful
in the decision making, but others are of less value for that purpose. For this reason, it is
necessary to extract the relevant data from the operational database before bringing into the data
warehouse. Many commercial tools are available to help with the extraction process. Data
Junction is one of the commercial products. The user of one of these tools typically has an easy-
to-use windowed interface by which to specify the following:

(i) Which files and tables are to be accessed in the source database?
(ii) Which fields are to be extracted from them? This is often done internally by
SQL Select statement.
(iii) What are those to be called in the resulting database?
(iv) What is the target machine and database format of the output?
(v) On what schedule should the extraction process be repeated?

TRANSFORM

The operational databases developed can be based on any set of priorities, which keeps changing
with the requirements. Therefore those who develop data warehouse based on these databases are
typically faced with inconsistency among their data sources. Transformation process deals with
rectifying any inconsistency (if any).

One of the most common transformation issues is ‘Attribute Naming Inconsistency’. It is

common for the given data element to be referred to by different data names in different
databases. Employee Name may be EMP_NAME in one database, ENAME in the other. Thus
one set of Data Names are picked and used consistently in the data warehouse. Once all the data
elements have right names, they must be converted to common formats. The conversion may
encompass the following:

(i) Characters must be converted ASCII to EBCDIC or vise versa.

(ii) Mixed Text may be converted to all uppercase for consistency.
(iii) Numerical data must be converted in to a common format.
(iv) Data Format has to be standardized.
(v) Measurement may have to convert. (Rs/ $)
(vi) Coded data (Male/ Female, M/F) must be converted into a common format.
All these transformation activities are automated and many commercial products are available to
perform the tasks. DataMAPPER from Applied Database Technologies is one such
comprehensive tool.

CLEANSING
Information quality is the key consideration in determining the value of the information. The
developer of the data warehouse is not usually in a position to change the quality of its
underlying historic data, though a data warehousing project can put spotlight on the data quality
issues and lead to improvements for the future. It is, therefore, usually necessary to go through
the data entered into the data warehouse and make it as error free as possible. This process is
known as Data Cleansing.

Data Cleansing must deal with many types of possible errors. These include missing data and
incorrect data at one source; inconsistent data and conflicting data when two or more source are
involved. There are several algorithms followed to clean the data, which will be discussed in the
coming lecture notes.

LOADING
Loading often implies physical movement of the data from the computer(s) storing the source
database(s) to that which will store the data warehouse database, assuming it is different. This
takes place immediately after the extraction phase. The most common channel for data
movement is a high-speed communication link. Ex: Oracle Warehouse Builder is the API from
Oracle, which provides the features to perform the ETL task on Oracle Data Warehouse.

Data cleaning problems

This section classifies the major data quality problems to be solved by data cleaning and data
transformation. As we will see, these problems are closely related and should thus be treated in a
uniform way. Data transformations [26] are needed to support any changes in the structure,
representation or content of data. These transformations become necessary in many situations,
e.g., to deal with schema evolution, migrating a legacy system to a new information system, or
when multiple data sources are to be integrated. As shown in Fig. 2 we roughly distinguish
between single-source and multi-source problems and between schema- and instance-related
problems. Schema-level problems of course are also reflected in the instances; they can be
addressed at the schema level by an improved schema design (schema evolution), schema
translation and schema integration. Instance-level problems, on the other hand, refer to errors and
inconsistencies in the actual data contents which are not visible at the schema level. They are the
primary focus of data cleaning. Fig. 2 also indicates some typical problems for the various cases.
While not shown in Fig. 2, the single-source problems occur (with increased likelihood) in the
multi-source case, too, besides specific multi-source problems.

Single-source problems

The data quality of a source largely depends on the degree to which it is governed by schema and
integrity constraints controlling permissable data values. For sources without schema, such as files, there
are few restrictions on what data can be entered and stored, giving rise to a high probability of errors and
inconsistencies. Database systems, on the other hand, enforce restrictions of a specific data model (e.g.,
the relational approach requires simple attribute values, referential integrity, etc.) as well as application-
specific integrity constraints. Schema-related data quality problems thus occur because of the lack of
appropriate model-specific or application-specific integrity constraints, e.g., due to data model limitations
or poor schema design, or because only a few integrity constraints were defined to limit the overhead for
integrity control. Instance-specific problems relate to errors and inconsistencies that cannot be prevented
at the schema level (e.g., misspellings).

For both schema- and instance-level problems we can differentiate different problem scopes: attribute
(field), record, record type and source; examples for the various cases are shown in Tables 1 and 2. Note
that uniqueness constraints specified at the schema level do not prevent duplicated instances, e.g., if
information on the same real world entity is entered twice with different attribute values (see example in
Table 2).

Multi-source problems

The problems present in single sources are aggravated when multiple sources need to be integrated. Each
source may contain dirty data and the data in the sources may be represented differently, overlap or
contradict. This is because the sources are typically developed, deployed and maintained independently to
serve specific needs. This results in a large degree of heterogeneity w.r.t. data management systems, data
models, schema designs and the actual data.
At the schema level, data model and schema design differences are to be addressed by the steps of schema
translation and schema integration, respectively. The main problems w.r.t. schema design are naming and
structural conflicts. Naming conflicts arise when the same name is used for different objects (homonyms)
or different names are used for the same object (synonyms). Structural conflicts occur in many variations
and refer to different representations of the same object in different sources, e.g., attribute vs. table
representation, different component structure, different data types, different integrity constraints, etc. In
addition to schema-level conflicts, many conflicts appear only at the instance level (data conflicts). All
problems from the single-source case can occur with different representations in different sources (e.g.,
duplicated records, contradicting records,…). Furthermore, even when there are the same attribute names
and data types, there may be different value representations (e.g., for marital status) or different
interpretation of the values (e.g., measurement units Dollar vs. Euro) across sources. Moreover,
information in the sources may be provided at different aggregation levels (e.g., sales per product vs. sales
per product group) or refer to different points in time (e.g. current sales as of yesterday for source 1 vs. as
of last week for source 2).

A main problem for cleaning data from multiple sources is to identify overlapping data, in particular
matching records referring to the same real-world entity (e.g., customer). This problem is also referred to
as the object identity problem, duplicate elimination or the merge/purge problem. Frequently, the
information is only partially redundant and the sources may complement each other by providing
additional information about an entity. Thus duplicate information should be purged out and
complementing information should be consolidated and merged in order to achieve a consistent view of
real world entities.
The two sources in the example of Fig. 3 are both in relational format but exhibit schema and data
conflicts. At the schema level, there are name conflicts (synonyms Customer/Client, Cid/Cno,
Sex/Gender) and structural conflicts (different representations for names and addresses). At the instance
level, we note that there are different gender representations (“0”/”1” vs. “F”/”M”) and presumably a
duplicate record (Kristen Smith). The latter observation also reveals that while Cid/Cno are both source-
specific identifiers, their contents are not comparable between the sources; different numbers (11/493)
may refer to the same person while different persons can have the same number (24). Solving these
problems requires both schema integration and data cleaning; the third table shows a possible solution.
Note that the schema conflicts should be resolved first to allow data cleaning, in particular detection of
duplicates based on a uniform representation of names and addresses, and matching of the Gender/Sex
values.

Data cleaning approaches

In general, data cleaning involves several phases
 Data analysis: In order to detect which kinds of errors and inconsistencies are to be removed, a detailed
data analysis is required. In addition to a manual inspection of the data or data samples, analysisprograms
should be used to gain metadata about the data properties and detect data quality problems.
 Definition of transformation workflow and mapping rules: Depending on the number of data sources,
their degree of heterogeneity and the “dirtyness” of the data, a large number of data transformation and
cleaning steps may have to be executed. Sometime, a schema translation is used to map sources to a
common data model; for data warehouses, typically a relational representation is used. Early datacleaning
steps can correct single-source instance problems and prepare the data for integration. Latersteps deal
with schema/data integration and cleaning multi-source instance problems, e.g., duplicates.
For data warehousing, the control and data flow for these transformation and cleaning steps should be
specified within a workflow that defines the ETL process (Fig. 1).
The schema-related data transformations as well as the cleaning steps should be specified by a
declarative query and mapping language as far as possible, to enable automatic generation of the
transformation code. In addition, it should be possible to invoke user-written cleaning code and
specialpurpose tools during a data transformation workflow. The transformation steps may request user
feedback on data instances for which they have no built-in cleaning logic.
 Verification: The correctness and effectiveness of a transformation workflow and the transformation
definitions should be tested and evaluated, e.g., on a sample or copy of the source data, to improve the
definitions if necessary. Multiple iterations of the analysis, design and verification steps may be needed,
e.g., since some errors only become apparent after applying some transformations.
 Transformation: Execution of the transformation steps either by running the ETL workflow for loading
and refreshing a data warehouse or during answering queries on multiple sources.
 Backflow of cleaned data: After (single-source) errors are removed, the cleaned data should also
replace the dirty data in the original sources in order to give legacy applications the improved data too and
to avoid redoing the cleaning work for future data extractions. For data warehousing, the cleaned data is
available from the data staging area (Fig. 1).

Data analysis
Metadata reflected in schemas is typically insufficient to assess the data quality of a source, especially if
only a few integrity constraints are enforced. It is thus important to analyse the actual instances to obtain
real (reengineered) metadata on data characteristics or unusual value patterns. This metadata helps finding
data quality problems. Moreover, it can effectively contribute to identify attribute correspondences
between source schemas (schema matching), based on which automatic data transformations can be
derived.
There are two related approaches for data analysis, data profiling and data mining. Data profiling focuses
on the instance analysis of individual attributes. It derives information such as the data type, length, value
range, discrete values and their frequency, variance, uniqueness, occurrence of null values, typical string
pattern (e.g., for phone numbers), etc., providing an exact view of various quality aspects of the attribute.
Table 3 shows examples of how this metadata can help detecting data quality problems.

Data mining helps discover specific data patterns in large data sets, e.g., relationships holding between
several attributes. This is the focus of so-called descriptive data mining models including clustering,
summarization, association discovery and sequence discovery [10]. As shown in [28], integrity
constraints among attributes such as functional dependencies or application-specific “business rules” can
be derived, which can be used to complete missing values, correct illegal values and identify duplicate
records across data sources. For example, an association rule with high confidence can hint to data quality
problems in instances violating this rule. So a confidence of 99% for rule “total=quantity*unit price”
indicates that 1% of the records do not comply and may require closer examination.

Defining data transformations

The data transformation process typically consists of multiple steps where each step may perform schema
and instance-related transformations (mappings). To allow a data transformation and cleaning system to
generate transformation code and thus to reduce the amount of self-programming it is necessary to specify
the required transformations in an appropriate language, e.g., supported by a graphical user interface.
Various ETL tools (see Section 4) offer this functionality by supporting proprietary rule languages. A
more general and flexible approach is the use of the standard query language SQL to perform the data
transformations and utilize the possibility of application-specific language extensions, in particular
userdefined functions (UDFs) .UDFs can be implemented in SQL or a general purpose programming
language with embedded SQL statements. They allow implementing a wide range of data transformations
and support easy reuse for different transformation and query processing tasks. Furthermore, their
execution by the DBMS can reduce data access cost and thus improve performance.

necessary data transformations to be applied to the first source. The transformation defines a view on
which further mappings can be performed. The transformation performs a schema restructuring with
additional attributes in the view obtained by splitting the name and address attributes of the source. The
required data extractions are achieved by UDFs (shown in boldface). The UDF implementations can
contain cleaning logic, e.g., to remove misspellings in city names or provide missing zip codes.
UDFs may still imply a substantial implementation effort and do not support all necessary schema
transformations. In particular, simple and frequently needed functions such as attribute splitting or
merging are not generically supported but need often to be re-implemented in application-specific
variations (see specific extract functions in Fig. 4).

Conflict resolution
A set of transformation steps has to be specified and executed to resolve the various schema- and
instancelevel data quality problems that are reflected in the data sources at hand. Several types of
transformations are to be performed on the individual data sources in order to deal with single-source
problems and to prepare for integration with other sources. In addition to a possible schema translation,
these preparatory steps typically include:
 Extracting values from free-form attributes (attribute split): Free-form attributes often capture
multiple individual values that should be extracted to achieve a more precise representation and support
further cleaning steps such as instance matching and duplicate elimination. Typical examples are name
and address fields (Table 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4). Required transformations in this step are reordering of values
within a field to deal with word transpositions, and value extraction for attribute splitting.
 Validation and correction: This step examines each source instance for data entry errors and tries to
correct them automatically as far as possible. Spell checking based on dictionary lookup is useful for
identifying and correcting misspellings. Furthermore, dictionaries on geographic names and zip codes
help to correct address data. Attribute dependencies (birthdate – age, total price – unit price / quantity,
city – phone area code,…) can be utilized to detect problems and substitute missing values or correct
wrong values.
 Standardization: To facilitate instance matching and integration, attribute values should be converted
to a consistent and uniform format. For example, date and time entries should be brought into a specific
format; names and other string data should be converted to either upper or lower case, etc. Text data may
be condensed and unified by performing stemming, removing prefixes, suffixes, and stop words.
Furthermore, abbreviations and encoding schemes should consistently be resolved by consulting special
synonym dictionaries or applying predefined conversion rules. Dealing with multi-source problems
requires restructuring of schemas to achieve a schema integration, including steps such as splitting,
merging, folding and unfolding of attributes and tables. At the instance level, conflicting representations
need to be resolved and overlapping data must to be dealt with. The duplicate elimination task is typically
performed after most other transformation and cleaning steps, especially after having cleaned single-
source errors and conflicting representations. It is performed either on two cleaned sources at a time or on
a single already integrated data set. Duplicate elimination requires to first identify (i.e. match) similar
records concerning the same real world entity. In a second step, similar records are merged into one
record containing all relevant attributes without redundancy. Furthermore, redundant records are purged.

Tool support

ETL tools
A large number of commercial tools support the ETL process for data warehouses in a comprehensive
way, e.g., COPYMANAGER (InformationBuilders), DATASTAGE (Informix/Ardent), EXTRACT (ETI),
POWERMART (Informatica), DECISIONBASE (CA/Platinum), DATATRANSFORMATIONSERVICE
(Microsoft), METASUITE (Minerva/Carleton), SAGENTSOLUTIONPLATFORM (Sagent), and
WAREHOUSEADMINISTRATOR (SAS). They use a repository built on a DBMS to manage all metadata
about the data sources, target schemas, mappings, script programs, etc., in a uniform way. Schemas and
data are extracted from operational data sources via both native file and DBMS gateways as well as
standard interfaces such as ODBC and EDA. Data transformations are defined with an easy-to-use
graphical interface. To specify individual mapping steps, a proprietary rule language and a comprehensive
library of predefined conversion functions are typically provided. The tools also support reusing existing
transformation solutions, such as external C/C++ routines, by providing an interface to integrate them into
the internal transformation library. Transformation processing is carried out either by an engine that
interprets the specified transformations at runtime, or by compiled code. All engine-based tools (e.g.,
COPYMANAGER, DECISIONBASE, POWERMART, DATASTAGE, WAREHOUSEADMINISTRATOR), possess a
scheduler and support workflows with complex execution dependencies among mapping jobs. A
workflow may also invoke external tools, e.g., for specialized cleaning tasks such as name/address
cleaning or duplicate elimination. ETL tools typically have little built-in data cleaning capabilities but
allow the user to specify cleaning functionality via a proprietary API. There is usually no data analysis
support to automatically detect data errors and inconsistencies. However, users can implement such logic
with the metadata maintained and by determining content characteristics with the help of aggregation
functions (sum, count, min, max, median, variance, deviation,…). The provided transformation library
covers many data transformation and cleaning needs, such as data type conversions (e.g., date
reformatting), string functions (e.g., split, merge, replace, sub-string search), arithmetic, scientific and
statistical functions, etc. Extraction of values from free-form attributes is not completely automatic but the
user has to specify the delimiters separating sub-values. The rule languages typically cover if-then and
case constructs that help handling exceptions in data values, such as misspellings, abbreviations, missing
or cryptic values, and values outside of range. These problems can also be addressed by using a table
lookup construct and join functionality. Support for instance matching is typically restricted to the use of
the join construct and some simple string matching functions, e.g., exact or wildcard matching and
soundex. However, user-defined field matching functions as well as functions for correlating field
similarities can be programmed and added to the internal transformation library.

Metadata repository

Metadata are data about data. When used in a data warehouse, metadata are the data that define
warehouseobjects. Metadata are created for the data names and definitions of the given
warehouse. Additional metadata are created and captured for time stamping any extracted data,
the source of the extracted data, and missing fields that have been added by data cleaning or
integration processes. A metadata repository should contain:

• A description of the structure of the data warehouse. This includes the warehouse
schema, view, dimensions, hierarchies, and derived data definitions, as well as data mart
locations and contents;

• Operational metadata, which include data lineage (history of migrated data and the
sequence of transformations applied to it), currency of data (active, archived, or purged),
and monitoring information (warehouse usage statistics, error reports, and audit trails);
• the algorithms used for summarization, which include measure and dimension definition
algorithms, data on granularity, partitions, subject areas, aggregation, summarization, and
predefined queries and reports;
• The mapping from the operational environment to the data warehouse, which includes
source databases and their contents, gateway descriptions, data partitions, data extraction,
cleaning, transformation rules and defaults, data refresh and purging rules, and security
(user authorization and access control).

• Data related to system performance, which include indices and profiles that improve data
access and retrieval performance, in addition to rules for the timing and scheduling of
refresh, update, and replication cycles; and

• Business metadata, which include business terms and definitions, data ownership
information, and charging policies.
 UNIT II BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Reporting and Query tools and Applications – Tool Categories – The Need for Applications –
Cognos Impromptu – Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) – Need – Multidimensional Data
Model – OLAP Guidelines – Multidimensional versus Multirelational OLAP – Categories of
Tools – OLAP Tools and the Internet.

Features of OLTP and OLAP

The major distinguishing features between OLTP and OLAP are summarized as follows.

1. Users and system orientation: An OLTP system is customer-oriented and is used for
transaction and query processing by clerks, clients, and information technology professionals. An
OLAP system is market-oriented and is used for data analysis by knowledge workers, including
managers, executives, and analysts.

2. Data contents: An OLTP system manages current data that, typically, are too detailed to be
easily used for decision making. An OLAP system manages large amounts of historical data,
provides facilities for summarization and aggregation, and stores and manages information at
different levels of granularity. These features make the data easier for use in informed decision
making.

3. Database design: An OLTP system usually adopts an entity-relationship (ER) data model and
an application oriented database design. An OLAP system typically adopts either a star or
snowflake model and a subject-oriented database design.

4. View: An OLTP system focuses mainly on the current data within an enterprise or department,
without referring to historical data or data in different organizations. In contrast, an OLAP
system often spans multiple versions of a database schema. OLAP systems also deal with
information that originates from different organizations, integrating information from many data
stores. Because of their huge volume, OLAP data are stored on multiple storage media.

5. Access patterns: The access patterns of an OLTP system consist mainly of short, atomic
transactions. Such a system requires concurrency control and recovery mechanisms. However,
accesses to OLAP systems are mostly read-only operations although many could be complex
queries.
Comparison between OLTP and OLAP systems.

Multidimensional DataModel.

The most popular data model for data warehouses is a multidimensional model. This
model can exist in the form of a star schema, a snowflake schema, or a fact constellation schema.
Let's have a look at each of these schema types.
• Star schema: The star schema is a modeling paradigm in which the data warehouse
contains (1) a large central table (fact table), and (2) a set of smaller attendant tables
(dimension tables), one for each dimension. The schema graph resembles a starburst,
with the dimension tables displayed in a radial pattern around the central fact table.

Figure Star schema of a data warehouse for sales.

• Snowflake schema: The snowflake schema is a variant of the star schema model, where
some dimension tables are normalized, thereby further splitting the data into additional
tables. The resulting schema graph forms a shape similar to a snowflake. The major
difference between the snowflake and star schema models is that the dimension tables of
the snowflake model may be kept in normalized form. Such a table is easy to maintain
and also saves storage space because a large dimension table can be extremely large
when the dimensional structure is included as columns.

Figure Snowflake schema of a data warehouse for sales.

 • Fact constellation: Sophisticated applications may require multiple fact tables to share
dimension tables. This kind of schema can be viewed as a collection of stars, and hence is
called a galaxy schema or a fact constellation.

Figure Fact constellation schema of a data warehouse for sales and shipping.

A Data Mining Query Language, DMQL: Language Primitives

◼ Cube Definition (Fact Table)
define cube <cube_name> [<dimension_list>]: <measure_list>
◼ Dimension Definition (Dimension Table)
define dimension <dimension_name> as (<attribute_or_subdimension_list>)
◼ Special Case (Shared Dimension Tables)
◼ First time as “cube definition”
◼ define dimension <dimension_name> as <dimension_name_first_time> in cube
<cube_name_first_time>
Defining a Star Schema in DMQL
define cube sales_star [time, item, branch, location]:
dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales = avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week, month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand, type, supplier_type)
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name, branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city, province_or_state, country)

Defining a Snowflake Schema in DMQL

define cube sales_snowflake [time, item, branch, location]:
dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales = avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week, month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand, type, supplier(supplier_key,
supplier_type))
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name, branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city(city_key, province_or_state, country))

Defining a Fact Constellation in DMQL

define cube sales [time, item, branch, location]:
dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales = avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week, month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand, type, supplier_type)
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name, branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city, province_or_state, country)
define cube shipping [time, item, shipper, from_location, to_location]:
dollar_cost = sum(cost_in_dollars), unit_shipped = count(*)
define dimension time as time in cube sales
define dimension item as item in cube sales
define dimension shipper as (shipper_key, shipper_name, location as location in cube sales,
shipper_type)
define dimension from_location as location in cube sales
define dimension to_location as location in cube sales

Measures: Three Categories

Measure: a function evaluated on aggregated data corresponding to given dimension-value pairs.
Measures can be:
◼ distributive: if the measure can be calculated in a distributive manner.
◼ E.g., count(), sum(), min(), max().
◼ algebraic: if it can be computed from arguments obtained by applying distributive
aggregate functions.
◼ E.g., avg()=sum()/count(), min_N(), standard_deviation().
◼ holistic: if it is not algebraic.
◼ E.g., median(), mode(), rank().

A Concept Hierarchy
Concept hierarchies allow data to be handled at varying levels of abstraction

OLAP operations on multidimensional data.

1. Roll-up: The roll-up operation performs aggregation on a data cube, either by climbing-up a
concept hierarchy for a dimension or by dimension reduction. Figure shows the result of a roll-up
operation performed on the central cube by climbing up the concept hierarchy for location. This
hierarchy was defined as the total order street < city < province or state <country.
2. Drill-down: Drill-down is the reverse of roll-up. It navigates from less detailed data to more
detailed data. Drill-down can be realized by either stepping-down a concept hierarchy for a
dimension or introducing additional dimensions. Figure shows the result of a drill-down
operation performed on the central cube by stepping down a concept hierarchy for time defined
as day < month < quarter < year. Drill-down occurs by descending the time hierarchy from the
level of quarter to the more detailed level of month.

3. Slice and dice: The slice operation performs a selection on one dimension of the given cube,
resulting in a subcube. Figure shows a slice operation where the sales data are selected from the
central cube for the dimension time using the criteria time=”Q2". The dice operation defines a
subcube by performing a selection on two or more dimensions.

4. Pivot (rotate): Pivot is a visualization operation which rotates the data axes in view in order
to provide an alternative presentation of the data. Figure shows a pivot operation where the item
and location axes in a 2-D slice are rotated.

Figure : Examples of typical OLAP operations on multidimensional data.

From on-line analytical processing to on-line analytical mining.

On-Line Analytical Mining (OLAM) (also called OLAP mining), which integrates on-
line analytical processing (OLAP) with data mining and mining knowledge in multidimensional
databases, is particularly important for the following reasons.

1. High quality of data in data warehouses.

Most data mining tools need to work on integrated, consistent, and cleaned data, which
requires costly data cleaning, data transformation and data integration as preprocessing steps. A
data warehouse constructed by such preprocessing serves as a valuable source of high quality
data for OLAP as well as for data mining.

2. Available information processing infrastructure surrounding data warehouses.

Comprehensive information processing and data analysis infrastructures have been or

will be systematically constructed surrounding data warehouses, which include accessing,
integration, consolidation, and transformation of multiple, heterogeneous databases,
ODBC/OLEDB connections, Web-accessing and service facilities, reporting and OLAP analysis
tools.

3. OLAP-based exploratory data analysis.

Effective data mining needs exploratory data analysis. A user will often want to traverse
through a database, select portions of relevant data, analyze them at different granularities, and
present knowledge/results in different forms. On-line analytical mining provides facilities for
data mining on different subsets of data and at different levels of abstraction, by drilling,
pivoting, filtering, dicing and slicing on a data cube and on some intermediate data mining
results.

4. On-line selection of data mining functions.

By integrating OLAP with multiple data mining functions, on-line analytical mining
provides users with the exibility to select desired data mining functions and swap data mining
tasks dynamically.

Architecture for on-line analytical mining

An OLAM engine performs analytical mining in data cubes in a similar manner as an

OLAP engine performs on-line analytical processing. An integrated OLAM and OLAP
architecture is shown in Figure, where the OLAM and OLAP engines both accept users' on-line
queries via a User GUI API and work with the data cube in the data analysis via a Cube API.
 A metadata directory is used to guide the access of the data cube. The data cube can be
constructed by accessing and/or integrating multiple databases and/or by filtering a data
warehouse via a Database API which may support OLEDB or ODBC connections. Since an
OLAM engine may perform multiple data mining tasks, such as concept description, association,
classification, prediction, clustering, time-series analysis,etc., it usually consists of multiple,
integrated data mining modules and is more sophisticated than an OLAP engine.

Figure: An integrated OLAM and OLAP architecture.

Data Cube Computation.

Data cube can be viewed as a lattice of cuboids

• The bottom-most cuboid is the base cuboid

• The top-most cuboid (apex) contains only one cell
• How many cuboids in an n-dimensional cube with L levels?

Materialization of data cube

• Materialize every (cuboid) (full materialization), none (no materialization), or some

(partial materialization)
• Selection of which cuboids to materialize
• Based on size, sharing, access frequency, etc.
Cube Operation

• Cube definition and computation in DMQL

define cube sales[item, city, year]: sum(sales_in_dollars)

compute cube sales

• Transform it into a SQL-like language (with a new operator cube by, introduced by Gray
et al.’96)
SELECT item, city, year, SUM (amount)

FROM SALES

CUBE BY item, city, year

• Need compute the following Group-Bys

(date, product, customer),

(date,product),(date, customer), (product, customer),

(date), (product), (customer)

()

Cube Computation: ROLAP-Based Method

• Efficient cube computation methods

o ROLAP-based cubing algorithms (Agarwal et al’96)
o Array-based cubing algorithm (Zhao et al’97)
o Bottom-up computation method (Bayer & Ramarkrishnan’99)
• ROLAP-based cubing algorithms
o Sorting, hashing, and grouping operations are applied to the dimension attributes
in order to reorder and cluster related tuples
• Grouping is performed on some subaggregates as a “partial grouping step”
• Aggregates may be computed from previously computed aggregates, rather than
from the base fact table
Multi-way Array Aggregation for Cube

• Computation
• Partition arrays into chunks (a small subcube which fits in memory).
• Compressed sparse array addressing: (chunk_id, offset)
• Compute aggregates in “multiway” by visiting cube cells in the order which
minimizes the # of times to visit each cell, and reduces memory access and
storage cost.

Indexing OLAP data

The bitmap indexing method is popular in OLAP products because it allows quick searching in
data cubes.

The bitmap index is an alternative representation of the record ID (RID) list. In the
bitmap index for a given attribute, there is a distinct bit vector, By, for each value v in the
domain of the attribute. If the domain of a given attribute consists of n values, then n bits are
needed for each entry in the bitmap index

The join indexing method gained popularity from its use in relational database query
processing. Traditional indexing maps the value in a given column to a list of rows having that
value. In contrast, join indexing registers the joinable rows of two relations from a relational
database. For example, if two relations R(RID;A) and S(B; SID) join on the attributes A and B,
then the join index record contains the pair (RID; SID), where RID and SID are record identifiers
from the R and S relations, respectively.

Efficient processing of OLAP queries

1. Determine which operations should be performed on the available cuboids. This involves
transforming any selection, projection, roll-up (group-by) and drill-down operations specified in
the query into corresponding SQL and/or OLAP operations. For example, slicing and dicing of a
data cube may correspond to selection and/or projection operations on a materialized cuboid.

2. Determine to which materialized cuboid(s) the relevant operations should be applied. This
involves identifying all of the materialized cuboids that may potentially be used to answer the
query, pruning the

Metadata repository

Metadata are data about data. When used in a data warehouse, metadata are the data that define
warehouseobjects. Metadata are created for the data names and definitions of the given
warehouse. Additional metadata are created and captured for time stamping any extracted data,
the source of the extracted data, and missing fields that have been added by data cleaning or
integration processes. A metadata repository should contain:

• A description of the structure of the data warehouse. This includes the warehouse
schema, view, dimensions, hierarchies, and derived data definitions, as well as data mart
locations and contents;

• Operational metadata, which include data lineage (history of migrated data and the
sequence of transformations applied to it), currency of data (active, archived, or purged),
and monitoring information (warehouse usage statistics, error reports, and audit trails);
• the algorithms used for summarization, which include measure and dimension definition
algorithms, data on granularity, partitions, subject areas, aggregation, summarization, and
predefined queries and reports;

• The mapping from the operational environment to the data warehouse, which includes
source databases and their contents, gateway descriptions, data partitions, data extraction,
cleaning, transformation rules and defaults, data refresh and purging rules, and security
(user authorization and access control).

• Data related to system performance, which include indices and profiles that improve data
access and retrieval performance, in addition to rules for the timing and scheduling of
refresh, update, and replication cycles; and

• Business metadata, which include business terms and definitions, data ownership
information, and charging policies.
Data warehouse back-end tools and utilities
Data warehouse systems use back-end tools and utilities to populate and refresh their data. These
tools and facilities include the following functions:

1. Data extraction, which typically gathers data from multiple, heterogeneous, and external
sources;
2. Data cleaning, which detects errors in the data and recti_es them when possible;
3. Data transformation, which converts data from legacy or host format to warehouse
format;
4. Load, which sorts, summarizes, consolidates, computes views, checks integrity, and
builds indices and partitions;
5. Refresh, which propagates the updates from the data sources to the warehouse.
6. Besides cleaning, loading, refreshing, and metadata defnition tools, data warehouse
systems usually provide a good set of data warehouse management tools.

OLAP Server Architectures.

Relational OLAP (ROLAP) servers: These are the intermediate servers that stand in between a
relational back-end server and client front-end tools. They use a relational or extended-relational
DBMS to store and manage warehouse data, and OLAP middleware to support missing pieces.
ROLAP servers include optimization for each DBMS back-end, implementation of aggregation
navigation logic, and additional tools and services. ROLAP technology tends to have greater
scalability than MOLAP technology.

Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP) servers: These servers support multidimensional views of

data through array-based multidimensional storage engines. They map multidimensional views
directly to data cube array structures.Many OLAP servers adopt a two-level storage
representation to handle sparse and dense data sets: the dense subcubes are identified and stored
as array structures, while the sparse subcubes employ compression technology for efficient
storage utilization.

Hybrid OLAP (HOLAP) servers: The hybrid OLAP approach combines ROLAP and MOLAP
technology, benefitting from the greater scalability of ROLAP and the faster computation of
MOLAP. For example, a HOLAP server may allow large volumes of detail data to be stored in a
relational database, while aggregations are kept in a separate MOLAP store.

Specialized SQL servers: To meet the growing demand of OLAP processing in relational
databases, some relational and data warehousing forms (e.g., Redbrick) implement specialized
SQL servers which provide advanced query language and query processing support for SQL
queries over star and snowflake schemas in a read-only environment.

Comparison between MDDBs and RDBMSs

MDDB RDBMS
Data is stored in multidimensional arrays Data is stored in relations
Direct inspection of an array gives a great Not so
deal of information
Can handle limited size databases (< 100GB) Proven track record for handling VLDBs
Takes long to load and update Highly volatile data are better handled
Support aggregations better RDBMSs are catching up-Aggregate
Navigators
New investments need to be made and new Most enterprises already made significant
skill sets need to be developed investments in RDBMS technology and skill
sets
Adds complexity to the overall system No additional complexity
architecture
Limited no. of facts an dimensional tables No such restriction
Examples Examples

• Arbor-Essbase • IBM-DB2
• Brio Query-Enterprise • Microsoft-SQL Server
• Dimensional Insight-DI Diver • Oracle-Oracle RDBMS
• Oracle-Express Server • Red Brick Systems-Red Brick
Warehouse
 UNIT III

DATA MINING

Introduction – Data – Types of Data – Data Mining Functionalities – Interestingness of Patterns

– Classification of Data Mining Systems – Data Mining Task Primitives – Integration of a Data
Mining System with a Data Warehouse – Issues –Data Preprocessing.

What is Data?

• Collection of data objects and their attributes

• An attribute is a property or characteristic of an object
– Examples: eye color of a person, temperature, etc.
– Attribute is also known as variable, field, characteristic, or feature
• A collection of attributes describe an object
– Object is also known as record, point, case, sample, entity, or instance
Attributes

Tid Refund Marital Taxable

Status Income Cheat

1 Yes Single 125K No

2 No Married 100K No

Objects 3 No Single 70K No

4 Yes Married 120K No
5 No Divorced 95K Yes
6 No Married 60K No
7 Yes Divorced 220K No
8 No Single 85K Yes
9 No Married 75K No
10 No Single 90K Yes
10

Attribute Values
• Attribute values are numbers or symbols assigned to an attribute
• Distinction between attributes and attribute values
– Same attribute can be mapped to different attribute values
• Example: height can be measured in feet or meters
– Different attributes can be mapped to the same set of values
• Example: Attribute values for ID and age are integers
• But properties of attribute values can be different
– ID has no limit but age has a maximum and minimum value
Types of Attributes
• There are different types of attributes
– Nominal
• Examples: ID numbers, eye color, zip codes
– Ordinal
• Examples: rankings (e.g., taste of potato chips on a scale from 1-10),
grades, height in {tall, medium, short}
– Interval
• Examples: calendar dates, temperatures in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
– Ratio
Examples: temperature in Kelvin, length, time, counts

Evolution of Database Technology

Data mining primitives.

A data mining query is defined in terms of the following primitives

1. Task-relevant data: This is the database portion to be investigated. For example, suppose that
you are a manager of All Electronics in charge of sales in the United States and Canada. In
particular, you would like to study the buying trends of customers in Canada. Rather than mining
on the entire database. These are referred to as relevant attributes

2. The kinds of knowledge to be mined: This specifies the data mining functions to be
performed, such as characterization, discrimination, association, classification, clustering, or
evolution analysis. For instance, if studying the buying habits of customers in Canada, you may
choose to mine associations between customer profiles and the items that these customers like to
buy

3. Background knowledge: Users can specify background knowledge, or knowledge about the
domain to be mined. This knowledge is useful for guiding the knowledge discovery process, and
for evaluating the patterns found. There are several kinds of background knowledge.

4. Interestingness measures: These functions are used to separate uninteresting patterns from
knowledge. They may be used to guide the mining process, or after discovery, to evaluate the
discovered patterns. Different kinds of knowledge may have different interestingness measures.

5. Presentation and visualization of discovered patterns: This refers to the form in which
discovered patterns are to be displayed. Users can choose from different forms for knowledge
presentation, such as rules, tables, charts, graphs, decision trees, and cubes.
Figure : Primitives for specifying a data mining task.
Knowledge Discovery in Databases or KDD

Knowledge discovery as a process is depicted and consists of an iterative sequence of the

following steps:

• Data cleaning (to remove noise or irrelevant data),

• Data integration (where multiple data sources may be combined)
• Data selection (where data relevant to the analysis task are retrieved from the database)
• Data transformation (where data are transformed or consolidated into forms appropriate
for mining by performing summary or aggregation operations, for instance),
• Data mining (an essential process where intelligent methods are applied in order to
extract data patterns),
• Pattern evaluation (to identify the truly interesting patterns representing knowledge based
on some interestingness measures;), and
• Knowledge presentation (where visualization and knowledge representation techniques
are used to present the mined knowledge to the user).

Figure: Data mining as a process of knowledge discovery.

Architecture of a typical data mining system.

The architecture of a typical data mining system may have the following major components

1. Database, data warehouse, or other information repository. This is one or a set of

databases, data warehouses, spread sheets, or other kinds of information repositories. Data
cleaning and data integration techniques may be performed on the data.

2. Database or data warehouse server. The database or data warehouse server is responsible
for fetching the relevant data, based on the user's data mining request.

3. Knowledge base. This is the domain knowledge that is used to guide the search, or evaluate
the interestingness of resulting patterns. Such knowledge can include concept hierarchies, used to
organize attributes or attribute values into different levels of abstraction. Knowledge such as user
beliefs, which can be used to assess a pattern's interestingness based on its unexpectedness, may
also be included.

4. Data mining engine. This is essential to the data mining system and ideally consists of a set
of functional modules for tasks such as characterization, association analysis, classification,
evolution and deviation analysis.

5. Pattern evaluation module. This component typically employs interestingness measures and
interacts with the data mining modules so as to focus the search towards interesting patterns. It
may access interestingness thresholds stored in the knowledge base. Alternatively, the pattern
evaluation module may be integrated with the mining module, depending on the implementation
of the data mining method used.

6. Graphical user interface. This module communicates between users and the data mining
system, allowing the user to interact with the system by specifying a data mining query or task,
providing information to help focus the search, and performing exploratory data mining based on
the intermediate data mining results.

Figure: Architecture of a typical data mining system

Data Mining Functionalities

Data mining functionalities are used to specify the kind of patterns to be found in data mining
tasks. In general, data mining tasks can be classified into two categories Descriptive and
Predictive.

Descriptive mining tasks characterize the general properties of the data in the database.
Predictive mining tasks perform inference on the current data in order to make predictions. In
some cases, users may have no idea of which kinds of patterns in their data may be interesting,
and hence may like to search for several different kinds of patterns in parallel. Thus it is
important to have a data mining system that can mine multiple kinds of patterns to accommodate
different user expectations or applications. Furthermore, data mining systems should be able to
discover patterns at various granularities. To encourage interactive and exploratory mining, users
should be able to easily \play" with the output patterns, such as by mouse clicking. Operations
that can be specified by simple mouse clicks include adding or dropping a dimension (or an
attribute), swapping rows and columns (pivoting, or axis rotation), changing dimension
representations (e.g., from a 3-D cube to a sequence of 2-D cross tabulations, or crosstabs), or
using OLAP roll-up or drill-down operations along dimensions. Such operations allow data
patterns to be expressed from different angles of view and at multiple levels of abstraction.

Data mining systems should also allow users to specify hints to guide or focus the search for
interesting patterns. Since some patterns may not hold for all of the data in the database, a
measure of certainty or \trustworthiness" is usually associated with each discovered pattern. Data
mining functionalities, and the kinds of patterns they can discover, are described below.

Concept/class description: characterization and discrimination

Data can be associated with classes or concepts. For example, in the AllElectronics store, classes
of items for sale include computers and printers, and concepts of customers include bigSpenders
and budgetSpenders. It can be useful to describe individual classes and concepts in summarized,
concise, and yet precise terms. Such descriptions of a class or a concept are called class/concept
descriptions. These descriptions can be derived via (1) data characterization, by summarizing the
data of the class under study (often called the target class) in general terms, or (2) data
discrimination, by comparison of the target class with one or a set of comparative classes (often
called the contrasting classes), or (3) both data characterization and discrimination.

Data characterization is a summarization of the general characteristics or features of a target

class of data. The data corresponding to the user-specified class are typically collected by a
database query. For example, to study the characteristics of software products whose sales
increased by 10% in the last year, one can collect the data related to such products by executing
an SQL query. There are several methods for effective data summarization and characterization.
For instance, the data cube- based OLAP roll-up operation can be used to perform user-
controlled data summarization along a specified dimension. This process is further detailed in
Chapter 2 which discusses data warehousing. An attribute- oriented induction technique can be
used to perform data generalization and characterization without step-by-step user interaction.
The output of data characterization can be presented in various forms. Examples include pie
charts, bar charts, curves, multidimensional data cubes, and multidimensional tables, including
crosstabs. The resulting descriptions can also be presented as generalized relations, or in rule
form (called characteristic rules).

Association Analysis

Association analysis is the discovery of association rules showing attribute-value conditions that
occur frequently together in a given set of data. Association analysis is widely used for market
basket or transaction data analysis. More formally, association rules are of the form X ) Y , i.e.,
\A1 ^ _ _ _ ^Am !B1 ^ _ _ _^Bn", where Ai (for i 2 f1; : : :;mg) and Bj (for j 2 f1; : : :; ng) are
attribute-value pairs. The association rule X ) Y is interpreted as \database tuples that satisfy the
conditions in X are also likely to satisfy the conditions in Y ".

An association between more than one attribute, or predicate (i.e., age, income, and buys).
Adopting the terminology used in multidimensional databases, where each attribute is referred to
as a dimension, the above rule can be referred to as a multidimensional association rule.
Suppose, as a marketing manager of AllElectronics, you would like to determine which items are
frequently purchased together within the same transactions. An example of such a rule is
Contains
(T; \computer") ) contains(T; \software") [support = 1%; confidence = 50%]
meaning that if a transaction T contains \computer", there is a 50% chance that it contains
\software" as well, and 1% of all of the transactions contain both. This association rule involves a
single attribute or predicate (i.e., contains) which repeats. Association rules that contain a single
predicate are referred to as single-dimensional association rules. Dropping the predicate notation,
the above rule can be written simply as \computer ) software [1%, 50%]".

Classification and Prediction

Classification is the processing of finding a set of models (or functions) which describe and
distinguish data classes or concepts, for the purposes of being able to use the model to predict the
class of objects whose class label is unknown. The derived model is based on the analysis of a
set of training data (i.e., data objects whose class label is known). The derived model may be
represented in various forms, such as classification (IF-THEN) rules, decision trees,
mathematical formulae, or neural networks. A decision tree is a flow-chart-like tree structure,
where each node denotes a test on an attribute value, each branch represents an outcome of the
test, and tree leaves represent classes or class distributions. Decision trees can be easily
converted to classification rules. A neural network is a collection of linear threshold units that
can be trained to distinguish objects of different classes. Classification can be used for predicting
the class label of data objects. However, in many applications, one may like to predict some
missing or unavailable data values rather than class labels. This is usually the case when the
predicted values are numerical data, and is often specifically referred to as prediction. Although
prediction may refer to both data value prediction and class label prediction, it is usually
confined to data value prediction and thus is distinct from classification. Prediction also
encompasses the identification of distribution trends based on the available data. Classification
and prediction may need to be preceded by relevance analysis which attempts to identify at
tributes that do not contribute to the classification or prediction process.
Clustering Analysis

Clustering analyzes data objects without consulting a known class label. In general, the class
labels are not present in the training data simply because they are not known to begin with.
Clustering can be used to generate such labels. The objects are clustered or grouped based on the
principle of maximizing the intraclass similarity and minimizing the interclass similarity. That is,
clusters of objects are formed so that objects within a cluster have high similarity in comparison
to one another, but are very dissimilar to objects in other clusters. Each cluster that is formed can
be viewed as a class of objects, from which rules can be derived.

Evolution and Deviation Analysis

Data evolution analysis describes and models regularities or trends for objects whose behavior
changes over time. Although this may include characterization, discrimination, association,
classification, or clustering of time-related data, distinct features of such an analysis include
time-series data analysis, sequence or periodicity pattern matching, and similarity-based data
analysis.

Interestingness Patterns

A data mining system has the potential to generate thousands or even millions of patterns, or
rules. This raises some serious questions for data mining:
A pattern is interesting if (1) it is easily understood by humans, (2) valid on new or test data with
some degree of certainty, (3) potentially useful, and (4) novel. A pattern is also interesting if it
validates a hypothesis that the user sought to confirm. An interesting pattern represents
knowledge. Several objective measures of pattern interestingness exist. These are based on the
structure of discovered patterns and the statistics underlying them. An objective measure for
association rules of the form XU Y is rule support, representing the percentage of data samples
that the given rule satisfies. Another objective measure for association rules is confidence, which
assesses the degree of certainty of the detected association. It is defined as the conditional
probability that a pattern Y is true given that X is true. More formally, support and confidence
are defined as

support(X ) Y) = Prob{XUY}g
confidence (X ) Y) = Prob{Y |X}g

A classification of Data Mining Systems

Data mining is an interdisciplinary field, the confluence of a set of disciplines including database
systems, statistics, machine learning, visualization, and information science. Moreover,
depending on the data mining approach used, techniques from other disciplines may be applied,
such as neural networks, fuzzy and/or rough set theory, knowledge representation, inductive
logic programming, or high performance computing. Depending on the kinds of data to be mined
or on the given data mining application, the data mining system may also integrate techniques
from spatial data analysis, information retrieval, pattern recognition, image analysis, signal
processing, computer graphics, Web technology, economics, or psychology. Because of the
diversity of disciplines contributing to data mining, data mining research is expected to generate
a large variety of data mining systems. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a clear classification
of data mining systems. Such a classification may help potential users distinguish data mining
systems and identify those that best match their needs. Data mining systems can be categorized
according to various criteria, as follows._ Classification according to the kinds of databases
mined. A data mining system can be classified according to the kinds of databases mined.
Database systems themselves can be classified according to different criteria (such as data
models, or the types of data or applications involved), each of which may require its own data
mining technique. Data mining systems can therefore be classified accordingly.
For instance, if classifying according to data models, we may have a relational, transactional,
object-oriented, object-relational, or data warehouse mining system. If classifying according to
the special types of data handled, we may have a spatial, time-series, text, or multimedia data
mining system, or a World-Wide Web mining system. Other system types include heterogeneous
data mining systems, and legacy data mining systems.
Classification according to the kinds of knowledge mined. Data mining systems can be
categorized according to the kinds of knowledge they mine, i.e., based on data mining
functionalities, such as characterization, discrimination, association, classification, clustering,
trend and evolution analysis, deviation analysis, similarity analysis, etc. A comprehensive data
mining system usually provides multiple and/or integrated data mining functionalities. Moreover,
data mining systems can also be distinguished based on the granularity or levels of abstraction of
the knowledge mined, including generalized knowledge (at a high level of abstraction),
primitive-level knowledge (at a raw data level), or knowledge at multiple levels (considering
several levels of abstraction). An advanced data mining system should facilitate the discovery of
knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction.

Classification according to the kinds of knowledge mined.

Data mining systems can be categorized according to the kinds of knowledge they mine, i.e.,
based on data mining functionalities, such as characterization, discrimination, association,
classification, clustering, trend and evolution analysis, deviation analysis, similarity analysis, etc.
A comprehensive data mining system usually provides multiple and/or integrated data mining
functionalities. Moreover, data mining systems can also be distinguished based on the granularity
or levels of abstraction of the knowledge mined, including generalized knowledge (at a high
level of abstraction), primitive-level knowledge (at a raw data level), or knowledge at multiple
levels (considering several levels of abstraction). An advanced data mining system should
facilitate the discovery of knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction.

Classification according to the kinds of techniques utilized

Data mining systems can also be categorized according to the underlying data mining techniques
employed. These techniques can be described according to the degree of user interaction
involved (e.g., autonomous systems, interactive exploratory systems, query-driven systems), or
the methods of data analysis employed (e.g., database-oriented or data warehouse-oriented
techniques, machine learning, statistics, visualization, pattern recognition, neural networks, and
so on). A sophisticated data mining system will often adopt multiple data mining techniques or
work out an effective, integrated technique which combines the merits of a few individual
approaches.
Major issues in data mining
The scope of this book addresses major issues in data mining regarding mining methodology,
user interaction, performance, and diverse data types. These issues are introduced below:
1. Mining methodology and user-interaction issues. These reflect the kinds of knowledge
mined, the ability to mine knowledge at multiple granularities, the use of domain knowledge, ad-
hoc mining, and knowledge visualization.
Mining different kinds of knowledge in databases.
Since different users can be interested in different kinds of knowledge, data mining should cover
a wide spectrum of data analysis and knowledge discovery tasks, including data characterization,
discrimination, association, classification, clustering, trend and deviation analysis, and similarity
analysis. These tasks may use the same database in different ways and require the development
of numerous data mining techniques.
Interactive mining of knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction.
Since it is difficult to know exactly what can be discovered within a database, the data mining
process should be interactive. For databases containing a huge amount of data, appropriate
sampling technique can first be applied to facilitate interactive data exploration. Interactive
mining allows users to focus the search for patterns, providing and refining data mining requests
based on returned results. Specifically, knowledge should be mined by drilling-down, rolling-up,
and pivoting through the data space and knowledge space interactively, similar to what OLAP
can do on data cubes. In this way, the user can interact with the data mining system to view data
and discovered patterns at multiple granularities and from different angles.

Incorporation of background knowledge.

Background knowledge, or information regarding the domain under study, may be used to guide
the discovery process and allow discovered patterns to be expressed in concise terms and at
different levels of abstraction. Domain knowledge related to databases, such as integrity
constraints and deduction rules, can help focus and speed up a data mining process, or judge the
interestingness of discovered patterns.

Data mining query languages and ad-hoc data mining.

Relational query languages (such as SQL) allow users to pose ad-hoc queries for data retrieval.
In a similar vein, high-level data mining query languages need to be developed to allow users to
describe ad-hoc data mining tasks by facilitating the specification of the relevant sets of data for
analysis, the domain knowledge, the kinds of knowledge to be mined, and the conditions and
interestingness constraints to be enforced on the discovered patterns. Such a language should be
integrated with a database or data warehouse query language, and optimized for efficient and
flexible data mining.

Presentation and visualization of data mining results.

Discovered knowledge should be expressed in high-level languages, visual representations, or
other expressive forms so that the knowledge can be easily understood and directly usable by
humans. This is especially crucial if the data mining system is to be interactive. This requires the
system to adopt expressive knowledge representation techniques, such as trees, tables, rules,
graphs, charts, crosstabs, matrices, or curves.
Handling outlier or incomplete data.
The data stored in a database may reflect outlier’s noise, exceptional cases, or incomplete data
objects. These objects may confuse the analysis process, causing over fitting of the data to the
knowledge model constructed. As a result, the accuracy of the discovered patterns can be poor.
Data cleaning methods and data analysis methods which can handle outliers are required. While
most methods discard outlier data, such data may be of interest in itself such as in fraud detection
for finding unusual usage of tele-communication services or credit cards. This form of data
analysis is known as outlier mining.
Pattern evaluation: the interestingness problem.
A data mining system can uncover thousands of patterns. Many of the patterns discovered may
be uninteresting to the given user, representing common knowledge or lacking novelty. Several
challenges remain regarding the development of techniques to assess the interestingness of
discovered patterns, particularly with regard to subjective measures which estimate the value of
patterns with respect to a given user class, based on user beliefs or expectations. The use of
interestingness measures to guide the discovery process and reduce the search space is another
active area of research.

2. Performance issues. These include efficiency, scalability, and parallelization of data mining
algorithms.
Efficiency and scalability of data mining algorithms.
To effectively extract information from a huge amount of data in databases, data mining
algorithms must be efficient and scalable. That is, the running time of a data mining algorithm
must be predictable and acceptable in large databases. Algorithms with exponential or even
medium-order polynomial complexity will not be of practical use. From a database perspective
on knowledge discovery, efficiency and scalability are key issues in the implementation of data
mining systems. Many of the issues discussed above under mining methodology and user-
interaction must also consider efficiency and scalability.

Parallel, distributed, and incremental updating algorithms.

The huge size of many databases, the wide distribution of data, and the computational
complexity of some data mining methods are factors motivating the development of parallel and
distributed data mining algorithms. Such algorithms divide the data into partitions, which are
processed in parallel. The results from the partitions are then merged. Moreover, the high cost of
some data mining processes promotes the need for incremental data mining algorithms which
incorporate database updates without having to mine the entire data again \from scratch". Such
algorithms perform knowledge modification incrementally to amend and strengthen what was
previously discovered.

3. Issues relating to the diversity of database types.

Handling of relational and complex types of data.
There are many kinds of data stored in databases and data warehouses. Since relational databases
and data warehouses are widely used, the development of efficient and effective data mining
systems for such data is important. However, other databases may contain complex data objects,
hypertext and multimedia data, spatial data, temporal data, or transaction data. It is unrealistic to
expect one system to mine all kinds of data due to the diversity of data types and different goals
of data mining. Specific data mining systems should be constructed for mining specific kinds of
data. Therefore, one may expect to have different data mining systems for different kinds of data.

Mining information from heterogeneous databases and global information systems.

Local and wide-area computer networks (such as the Internet) connect many sources of data,
forming huge, distributed, and heterogeneous databases. The discovery of knowledge from
different sources of structured, semi-structured, or unstructured data with diverse data semantics
poses great challenges to data mining. Data mining may help disclose high-level data regularities
in multiple heterogeneous databases that are unlikely to be discovered by simple query systems
and may improve information exchange and interoperability in heterogeneous databases.

DataPreprocessing
Data cleaning.

Data cleaning routines attempt to fill in missing values, smooth out noise while
identifying outliers, and correct inconsistencies in the data.

(i). Missing values

1. Ignore the tuple: This is usually done when the class label is missing (assuming the mining
task involves classification or description). This method is not very effective, unless the tuple
contains several attributes with missing values. It is especially poor when the percentage of
missing values per attribute varies considerably.

2. Fill in the missing value manually: In general, this approach is time-consuming and may not
be feasible given a large data set with many missing values.

3. Use a global constant to fill in the missing value: Replace all missing attribute values by the
same constant, such as a label like “Unknown". If missing values are replaced by, say,
“Unknown", then the mining program may mistakenly think that they form an interesting
concept, since they all have a value in common - that of “Unknown". Hence, although this
method is simple, it is not recommended.

4. Use the attribute mean to fill in the missing value: For example, suppose that the average
income of All Electronics customers is $28,000. Use this value to replace the missing value for
income.

5. Use the attribute mean for all samples belonging to the same class as the given tuple: For
example, if classifying customers according to credit risk, replace the missing value with the
average income value for customers in the same credit risk category as that of the given tuple.

6. Use the most probable value to fill in the missing value: This may be determined with
inference-based tools using a Bayesian formalism or decision tree induction. For example, using
the other customer attributes in your data set, you may construct a decision tree to predict the
missing values for income.

(ii). Noisy data

Noise is a random error or variance in a measured variable.

1. Binning methods:

Binning methods smooth a sorted data value by consulting the ”neighborhood", or values
around it. The sorted values are distributed into a number of 'buckets', or bins. Because binning
methods consult the neighborhood of values, they perform local smoothing. Figure illustrates
some binning techniques.

In this example, the data for price are first sorted and partitioned into equi-depth bins (of
depth 3). In smoothing by bin means, each value in a bin is replaced by the mean value of the
bin. For example, the mean of the values 4, 8, and 15 in Bin 1 is 9. Therefore, each original value
in this bin is replaced by the value 9. Similarly, smoothing by bin medians can be employed, in
which each bin value is replaced by the bin median. In smoothing by bin boundaries, the
minimum and maximum values in a given bin are identified as the bin boundaries. Each bin
value is then replaced by the closest boundary value.

(i).Sorted data for price (in dollars): 4, 8, 15, 21, 21, 24, 25, 28, 34

(ii).Partition into (equi-width) bins:

• Bin 1: 4, 8, 15
• Bin 2: 21, 21, 24
• Bin 3: 25, 28, 34
(iii).Smoothing by bin means:

- Bin 1: 9, 9, 9,

- Bin 2: 22, 22, 22

- Bin 3: 29, 29, 29

(iv).Smoothing by bin boundaries:

• Bin 1: 4, 4, 15
• Bin 2: 21, 21, 24
• Bin 3: 25, 25, 34
2. Clustering:

Outliers may be detected by clustering, where similar values are organized into groups or
“clusters”. Intuitively, values which fall outside of the set of clusters may be considered outliers.
Figure: Outliers may be detected by clustering analysis.

3. Combined computer and human inspection: Outliers may be identified through a

combination of computer and human inspection. In one application, for example, an information-
theoretic measure was used to help identify outlier patterns in a handwritten character database
for classification. The measure's value reflected the “surprise" content of the predicted character
label with respect to the known label. Outlier patterns may be informative or “garbage". Patterns
whose surprise content is above a threshold are output to a list. A human can then sort through
the patterns in the list to identify the actual garbage ones

4. Regression: Data can be smoothed by fitting the data to a function, such as with regression.
Linear regression involves finding the “best" line to fit two variables, so that one variable can be
used to predict the other. Multiple linear regression is an extension of linear regression, where
more than two variables are involved and the data are fit to a multidimensional surface.

(iii). Inconsistent data

There may be inconsistencies in the data recorded for some transactions. Some data
inconsistencies may be corrected manually using external references. For example, errors made
at data entry may be corrected by performing a paper trace. This may be coupled with routines
designed to help correct the inconsistent use of codes. Knowledge engineering tools may also be
used to detect the violation of known data constraints. For example, known functional
dependencies between attributes can be used to find values contradicting the functional
constraints.

Data transformation.

In data transformation, the data are transformed or consolidated into forms appropriate
for mining. Data transformation can involve the following:
1. Normalization, where the attribute data are scaled so as to fall within a small specified range,
such as -1.0 to 1.0, or 0 to 1.0.

There are three main methods for data normalization : min-max normalization, z-score
normalization, and normalization by decimal scaling.

(i).Min-max normalization performs a linear transformation on the original data. Suppose that
minA and maxA are the minimum and maximum values of an attribute A. Min-max
normalization maps a value v of A to v0 in the range [new minA; new maxA] by computing

(ii).z-score normalization (or zero-mean normalization), the values for an attribute A are
normalized based on the mean and standard deviation of A. A value v of A is normalized to v0
by computing where mean A and stand dev A are the mean and standard deviation, respectively,
of attribute A. This method of normalization is useful when the actual minimum and maximum
of attribute A are unknown, or when there are outliers which dominate the min-max
normalization.

(iii). Normalization by decimal scaling normalizes by moving the decimal point of values of
attribute A. The number of decimal points moved depends on the maximum absolute value of A.
A value v of A is normalized to v0by computing where j is the smallest integer such that

2. Smoothing, which works to remove the noise from data? Such techniques include binning,
clustering, and regression.

(i). Binning methods:

Binning methods smooth a sorted data value by consulting the ”neighborhood", or values
around it. The sorted values are distributed into a number of 'buckets', or bins. Because binning
methods consult the neighborhood of values, they perform local smoothing. Figure illustrates
some binning techniques.

In this example, the data for price are first sorted and partitioned into equi-depth bins (of
depth 3). In smoothing by bin means, each value in a bin is replaced by the mean value of the
bin. For example, the mean of the values 4, 8, and 15 in Bin 1 is 9. Therefore, each original value
in this bin is replaced by the value 9. Similarly, smoothing by bin medians can be employed, in
which each bin value is replaced by the bin median. In smoothing by bin boundaries, the
minimum and maximum values in a given bin are identified as the bin boundaries. Each bin
value is then replaced by the closest boundary value.

(i).Sorted data for price (in dollars): 4, 8, 15, 21, 21, 24, 25, 28, 34

(ii).Partition into (equi-width) bins:

• Bin 1: 4, 8, 15
• Bin 2: 21, 21, 24
• Bin 3: 25, 28, 34
(iii).Smoothing by bin means:

- Bin 1: 9, 9, 9,

- Bin 2: 22, 22, 22

- Bin 3: 29, 29, 29

(iv).Smoothing by bin boundaries:

• Bin 1: 4, 4, 15
• Bin 2: 21, 21, 24
• Bin 3: 25, 25, 34
(ii). Clustering:

Outliers may be detected by clustering, where similar values are organized into groups or
“clusters”. Intuitively, values which fall outside of the set of clusters may be considered outliers.

Figure: Outliers may be detected by clustering analysis.

3. Aggregation, where summary or aggregation operations are applied to the data. For example,
the daily sales data may be aggregated so as to compute monthly and annual total amounts.

4. Generalization of the data, where low level or 'primitive' (raw) data are replaced by higher
level concepts through the use of concept hierarchies. For example, categorical attributes, like
street, can be generalized to higher level concepts, like city or county.
Data reduction.

Data reduction techniques can be applied to obtain a reduced representation of the data
set that is much smaller in volume, yet closely maintains the integrity of the original data. That
is, mining on the reduced data set should be more efficient yet produce the same (or almost the
same) analytical results.

Strategies for data reduction include the following.

1. Data cube aggregation, where aggregation operations are applied to the data in the
construction of a data cube.

2. Dimension reduction, where irrelevant, weakly relevant or redundant attributes or dimensions

may be detected and removed.

3. Data compression, where encoding mechanisms are used to reduce the data set size.

4. Numerosity reduction, where the data are replaced or estimated by alternative, smaller data
representations such as parametric models (which need store only the model parameters instead
of the actual data), or nonparametric methods such as clustering, sampling, and the use of
histograms.

5. Discretization and concept hierarchy generation, where raw data values for attributes are
replaced by ranges or higher conceptual levels. Concept hierarchies allow the mining of data at
multiple levels of abstraction, and are a powerful tool for data mining.

Data Cube Aggregation

• The lowest level of a data cube

– the aggregated data for an individual entity of interest
– e.g., a customer in a phone calling data warehouse.
• Multiple levels of aggregation in data cubes
– Further reduce the size of data to deal with
• Reference appropriate levels
– Use the smallest representation which is enough to solve the task
• Queries regarding aggregated information should be answered using data cube, when
possible
•
Dimensionality Reduction

Feature selection (i.e., attribute subset selection):

– Select a minimum set of features such that the probability distribution of different
classes given the values for those features is as close as possible to the original
distribution given the values of all features
– reduce # of patterns in the patterns, easier to understand
Heuristic methods:

1. Step-wise forward selection: The procedure starts with an empty set of attributes. The best of
the original attributes is determined and added to the set. At each subsequent iteration or step, the
best of the remaining original attributes is added to the set.

2. Step-wise backward elimination: The procedure starts with the full set of attributes. At each
step, it removes the worst attribute remaining in the set.

3. Combination forward selection and backward elimination: The step-wise forward

selection and backward elimination methods can be combined, where at each step one selects the
best attribute and removes the

4. Decision tree induction: Decision tree algorithms, such as ID3 and C4.5, were originally
intended for classifcation. Decision tree induction constructs a flow-chart-like structure where
each internal (non-leaf) node denotes a test on an attribute, each branch corresponds to an
outcome of the test, and each external (leaf) node denotes a class prediction. At each node, the
algorithm chooses the “best" attribute to
partition the data into individual classes.
Data compression

In data compression, data encoding or transformations are applied so as to obtain a

reduced or ”compressed" representation of the original data. If the original data can be
reconstructed from the compressed data without any loss of information, the data compression
technique used is called lossless. If, instead, we can reconstruct only an approximation of the
original data, then the data compression technique is called lossy. The two popular and effective
methods of lossy data compression: wavelet transforms, and principal components analysis.

Wavelet transforms

The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is a linear signal processing technique that, when
applied to a data vector D, transforms it to a numerically different vector, D0, of wavelet
coefficients. The two vectors are of the same length.

The DWT is closely related to the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), a signal processing
technique involving sines and cosines. In general, however, the DWT achieves better lossy
compression.

The general algorithm for a discrete wavelet transform is as follows.

1. The length, L, of the input data vector must be an integer power of two. This condition
can be met by padding the data vector with zeros, as necessary.
2. Each transform involves applying two functions. The first applies some data smoothing,
such as a sum or weighted average. The second performs a weighted difference.
3. The two functions are applied to pairs of the input data, resulting in two sets of data of
length L=2. In general, these respectively represent a smoothed version of the input data,
and the high-frequency content of it.
4. The two functions are recursively applied to the sets of data obtained in the previous
loop, until the resulting data sets obtained are of desired length.
5. A selection of values from the data sets obtained in the above iterations are designated
the wavelet coefficients of the transformed data.

Principal components analysis

Principal components analysis (PCA) searches for c k-dimensional orthogonal vectors

that can best be used to represent the data, where c << N. The original data is thus projected onto
a much smaller space, resulting in data compression. PCA can be used as a form of
dimensionality reduction. The initial data can then be projected onto this smaller set.

The basic procedure is as follows.

1. The input data are normalized, so that each attribute falls within the same range. This step
helps ensure that attributes with large domains will not dominate attributes with smaller domains.
2. PCA computes N orthonormal vectors which provide a basis for the normalized input data.
These are unit vectors that each point in a direction perpendicular to the others. These vectors are
referred to as the principal components. The input data are a linear combination of the principal
components.

3. The principal components are sorted in order of decreasing “significance" or strength. The
principal components essentially serve as a new set of axes for the data, providing important
information about variance.

4. since the components are sorted according to decreasing order of “significance", the size of the
data can be reduced by eliminating the weaker components, i.e., those with low variance. Using
the strongest principal components, it should be possible to reconstruct a good approximation of
the original data.

Numerosity reduction

Regression and log-linear models

Regression and log-linear models can be used to approximate the given data. In linear
regression, the data are modeled to fit a straight line. For example, a random variable, Y (called a
response variable), can be modeled as a linear function of another random variable, X (called a
predictor variable), with the equation where the variance of Y is assumed to be constant. These
coefficients can be solved for by the method of least squares, which minimizes the error between
the actual line separating the data and the estimate of the line.

Multiple regression is an extension of linear regression allowing a response variable Y

to be modeled as a linear function of a multidimensional feature vector.

Log-linear models approximate discrete multidimensional probability distributions. The

method can be used to estimate the probability of each cell in a base cuboid for a set of
discretized attributes, based on the smaller cuboids making up the data cube lattice

Histograms

A histogram for an attribute A partitions the data distribution of A into disjoint subsets, or
buckets. The buckets are displayed on a horizontal axis, while the height (and area) of a bucket
typically reflects the average frequency of the values represented by the bucket.

1. Equi-width: In an equi-width histogram, the width of each bucket range is constant (such as
the width of $10 for the buckets in Figure 3.8).

2. Equi-depth (or equi-height): In an equi-depth histogram, the buckets are created so that,
roughly, the frequency of each bucket is constant (that is, each bucket contains roughly the same
number of contiguous data samples).
3. V-Optimal: If we consider all of the possible histograms for a given number of buckets, the V-
optimal histogram is the one with the least variance. Histogram variance is a weighted sum of the
original values that each bucket represents, where bucket weight is equal to the number of values
in the bucket.

4. MaxDiff: In a MaxDiff histogram, we consider the difference between each pair of adjacent
values. A bucket boundary is established between each pair for pairs having the largest
differences, where is user-specified.

Clustering

Clustering techniques consider data tuples as objects. They partition the objects into
groups or clusters, so that objects within a cluster are “similar" to one another and “dissimilar" to
objects in other clusters. Similarity is commonly defined in terms of how “close" the objects are
in space, based on a distance function. The “quality" of a cluster may be represented by its
diameter, the maximum distance between any two objects in the cluster. Centroid distance is an
alternative measure of cluster quality, and is defined as the average distance of each cluster
object from the cluster centroid.

Sampling

Sampling can be used as a data reduction technique since it allows a large data set to be
represented by a much smaller random sample (or subset) of the data. Suppose that a large data
set, D, contains N tuples. Let's have a look at some possible samples for D.

1. Simple random sample without replacement (SRSWOR) of size n: This is created by

drawing n of the N tuples from D (n < N), where the probably of drawing any tuple in D is 1=N,
i.e., all tuples are equally likely.
2. Simple random sample with replacement (SRSWR) of size n: This is similar to SRSWOR,
except that each time a tuple is drawn from D, it is recorded and then replaced. That is, after a
tuple is drawn, it is placed back in D so that it may be drawn again.

3. Cluster sample: If the tuples in D are grouped into M mutually disjoint “clusters", then a SRS
of m clusters can be obtained, where m < M. A reduced data representation can be obtained by
applying, say, SRSWOR to the pages, resulting in a cluster sample of the tuples.

4. Stratified sample: If D is divided into mutually disjoint parts called “strata", a stratified
sample of D is generated by obtaining a SRS at each stratum. This helps to ensure a
representative sample, especially when the data are skewed. For example, a stratified sample
may be obtained from customer data, where stratum is created for each customer age group.

Figure : Sampling can be used for data reduction.

Major Issues in Data Warehousing and Mining

• Mining methodology and user interaction

– Mining different kinds of knowledge in databases
– Interactive mining of knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction
– Incorporation of background knowledge
– Data mining query languages and ad-hoc data mining
– Expression and visualization of data mining results
– Handling noise and incomplete data
– Pattern evaluation: the interestingness problem
• Performance and scalability
– Efficiency and scalability of data mining algorithms
– Parallel, distributed and incremental mining methods
• Issues relating to the diversity of data types
– Handling relational and complex types of data
– Mining information from heterogeneous databases and global information
systems (WWW)
• Issues related to applications and social impacts
– Application of discovered knowledge
• Domain-specific data mining tools
 UNIT IV
ASSOCIATION RULE MINING AND CLASSIFICATION

Mining Frequent Patterns, Associations and Correlations – Mining Methods – Mining Various
Kinds of Association Rules – Correlation Analysis – Constraint Based Association Mining –
Classification and Prediction - Basic Concepts - Decision Tree Induction - Bayesian
Classification – Rule Based Classification – Classification by Back propagation – Support
Vector Machines – Associative Classification – Lazy Learners – Other Classification Methods –
Prediction

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.
• Applications:
– Basket data analysis, cross-marketing, catalog design, loss-leader analysis,
clustering, classification, etc.
• Examples.
– Rule form: “Body ® Head [support, confidence]”.
– buys(x, “diapers”) ® buys(x, “beers”) [0.5%, 60%]
– major(x, “CS”) ^ takes(x, “DB”) ® grade(x, “A”) [1%, 75%]

Association Rule: Basic Concepts

• Given: (1) database of transactions, (2) each transaction is a list of items (purchased by a
customer in a visit)
• Find: all rules that correlate the presence of one set of items with that of another set of
items
– E.g., 98% of people who purchase tires and auto accessories also get automotive
services done
• Applications
– *  Maintenance Agreement (What the store should do to boost Maintenance
Agreement sales)
– Home Electronics  * (What other products should the store stocks up?)
– Attached mailing in direct marketing
– Detecting “ping-pong”ing of patients, faulty “collisions”

Rule Measures: Support and Confidence

• Find all the rules X & Y  Z with minimum confidence and support
– support, s, probability that a transaction contains {X  Y  Z}
– confidence, c, conditional probability that a transaction having {X  Y} also
contains Z
Let minimum support 50%, and minimum confidence 50%, we have

– A  C (50%, 66.6%)
– C  A (50%, 100%)
Transaction ID Items Bought
2000 A,B,C
1000 A,C
4000 A,D
5000 B,E,F
Association Rule Mining: A Road Map

• Boolean vs. quantitative associations (Based on the types of values handled)

– buys(x, “SQLServer”) ^ buys(x, “DMBook”) ® buys(x, “DBMiner”) [0.2%,
60%]
– age(x, “30..39”) ^ income(x, “42..48K”) ® buys(x, “PC”) [1%, 75%]
• Single dimension vs. multiple dimensional associations (see ex. Above)
• Single level vs. multiple-level analysis
– What brands of beers are associated with what brands of diapers?
• Various extensions
– Correlation, causality analysis
• Association does not necessarily imply correlation or causality
– Maxpatterns and closed itemsets
– Constraints enforced
• E.g., small sales (sum < 100) trigger big buys (sum > 1,000)?

Market – Basket analysis

A market basket is a collection of items purchased by a customer in a single transaction,

which is a well-defined business activity. For example, a customer's visits to a grocery store or
an online purchase from a virtual store on the Web are typical customer transactions. Retailers
accumulate huge collections of transactions by recording business activities over time. One
common analysis run against a transactions database is to find sets of items, or itemsets, that
appear together in many transactions. A business can use knowledge of these patterns to improve
the Placement of these items in the store or the layout of mail- order catalog page and Web
pages. An itemset containing i items is called an i-itemset. The percentage of transactions that
contain an itemset is called the itemset's support. For an itemset to be interesting, its support
must be higher than a user-specified minimum. Such itemsets are said to be frequent.
 Figure : Market basket analysis.

Rule support and confidence are two measures of rule interestingness. They respectively
reflect the usefulness and certainty of discovered rules. A support of 2% for association Rule
means that 2% of all the transactions under analysis show that computer and financial
management software are purchased together. A confidence of 60% means that 60% of the
customers who purchased a computer also bought the software. Typically, association rules are
considered interesting if they satisfy both a minimum support threshold and a minimum
confidence threshold.

Mining Frequent Patterns

The method that mines the complete set of frequent itemsets with candidate generation.
Apriori property & The Apriori Algorithm.

Apriori property

• All nonempty subsets of a frequent item set most also be frequent.

– An item set I does not satisfy the minimum support threshold, min-sup, then I is
not frequent, i.e., support(I) < min-sup
– If an item A is added to the item set I then the resulting item set (I U A) cannot
occur more frequently than I.
• Monotonic functions are functions that move in only one direction.
• This property is called anti-monotonic.
• If a set cannot pass a test, all its supersets will fail the same test as well.
• This property is monotonic in failing the test.
The Apriori Algorithm

• Join Step: Ck is generated by joining Lk-1with itself

• Prune Step: Any (k-1)-itemset that is not frequent cannot be a subset of a frequent k-
itemset
 Example

The method that mines the complete set of frequent itemsets without generation.

• Compress a large database into a compact, Frequent-Pattern tree (FP-tree) structure

– highly condensed, but complete for frequent pattern mining
– avoid costly database scans
• Develop an efficient, FP-tree-based frequent pattern mining method
– A divide-and-conquer methodology: decompose mining tasks into smaller ones
– Avoid candidate generation: sub-database test only!

Construct FP-tree from a Transaction DB

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} min_support = 0.5
300 {b, f, h, j, o} {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}
 Steps:

1. Scan DB once, find frequent 1-itemset (single item pattern)

2. Order frequent items in frequency descending order
3. Scan DB again, construct FP-tree

Header Table

Item frequency head

f 4
c 4
a 3
b 3
m 3
p 3

Benefits of the FP-tree Structure

• Completeness:
– never breaks a long pattern of any transaction
– preserves complete information for frequent pattern mining
• Compactness
– reduce irrelevant information—infrequent items are gone
– frequency descending ordering: more frequent items are more likely to be shared
– never be larger than the original database (if not count node-links and counts)
– Example: For Connect-4 DB, compression ratio could be over 100

Mining Frequent Patterns Using FP-tree

• General idea (divide-and-conquer)

– Recursively grow frequent pattern path using the FP-tree
• Method
– For each 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)

Major Steps to Mine FP-tree

1) Construct conditional pattern base for each node in the FP-tree

2) Construct conditional FP-tree from each conditional pattern-base
3) Recursively mine conditional FP-trees and grow frequent patterns obtained so far
▪ If the conditional FP-tree contains a single path, simply enumerate all the patterns
Principles of Frequent Pattern Growth

• Pattern growth property

– Let  be a frequent itemset in DB, B be 's conditional pattern base, and  be an
itemset in B. Then    is a frequent itemset in DB iff  is frequent in B.
• “abcdef ” is a frequent pattern, if and only if
– “abcde ” is a frequent pattern, and
– “f ” is frequent in the set of transactions containing “abcde ”

Why Is Frequent Pattern Growth Fast?

• Our performance study shows

– FP-growth is an order of magnitude faster than Apriori, and is also faster than
tree-projection
• Reasoning
– No candidate generation, no candidate test
– Use compact data structure
– Eliminate repeated database scan
Basic operation is counting and FP-tree building

Mining multilevel association rules from transactional databases.

• Items often form hierarchy.

• Items at the lower level are expected to have lower support.
• Rules regarding itemsets at
appropriate levels could be quite useful.

• Transaction database can be encoded based on dimensions and levels

• We can explore shared multi-level mining

Food

Milk Bread

Skim 2% Wheat White

Fraser Sunset

TID Items
T1 {111, 121, 211, 221}
T2 {111, 211, 222, 323}
T3 {112, 122, 221, 411}
T4 {111, 121}
T5 {111, 122, 211, 221, 413}
Mining Multi-Level Associations

• A top_down, progressive deepening approach:

– First find high-level strong rules:
milk ® bread [20%, 60%].

– Then find their lower-level “weaker” rules:

2% milk ® wheat bread [6%, 50%].

• Variations at mining multiple-level association rules.

– Level-crossed association rules:
2% milk ® Wonder wheat bread

– Association rules with multiple, alternative hierarchies:

2% milk ® Wonder bread

Multi-level Association: Uniform Support vs. Reduced Support

• Uniform Support: the same minimum support for all levels

– + One minimum support threshold. No need to examine itemsets containing any
item whose ancestors do not have minimum support.
– – Lower level items do not occur as frequently. If support threshold
• too high  miss low level associations
• too low  generate too many high level associations
• Reduced Support: reduced minimum support at lower levels
– There are 4 search strategies:
• Level-by-level independent
• Level-cross filtering by k-itemset
• Level-cross filtering by single item
• Controlled level-cross filtering by single item

Multi-level Association: Redundancy Filtering

• Some rules may be redundant due to “ancestor” relationships between items.

• Example
– milk  wheat bread [support = 8%, confidence = 70%]
– 2% milk  wheat bread [support = 2%, confidence = 72%]
• We say the first rule is an ancestor of the second rule.
• A rule is redundant if its support is close to the “expected” value, based on the rule’s
ancestor

Multi-Level Mining: Progressive Deepening

• A top-down, progressive deepening approach:

– First mine high-level frequent items:
 milk (15%), bread (10%)

– Then mine their lower-level “weaker” frequent itemsets:

2% milk (5%), wheat bread (4%)

• Different min_support threshold across multi-levels lead to different algorithms:

– If adopting the same min_support across multi-levels then toss t if any of t’s
ancestors is infrequent.
– If adopting reduced min_support at lower levels then examine only those
descendents whose ancestor’s support is frequent/non-negligible.

Correlation in detail.

• Interest (correlation, lift)

– taking both P(A) and P(B) in consideration
– P(A^B)=P(B)*P(A), if A and B are independent events
– A and B negatively correlated, if the value is less than 1; otherwise A and B
positively correlated

X11110000 Itemset Support Interest

Y11000000 X,Y 25% 2
2ZCorrelation
01111111 X,Z 37.50% 0.9
• 2 measures correlation Y,Z 12.50% attributes
between categorical 0.57
(observed _ exp ected ) 2
 =2 =  exp ected
game not game sum(row)
video 4000(4500) 3500(3000) 7500
not video 2000(1500) 500 (1000) 2500
sum(col.) 6000 4000 10000

• expected(i,j) = count(row i) * count(column j) / N

• 2 = (4000 - 4500)2 / 4500 - (3500 - 3000)2 / 3000 - (2000 - 1500)2 / 1500 - (500 -
1000)2 / 1000 = 555.6
• 2 > 1 and observed value of (game, video) < expected value, there is a negative
correlation
Numeric correlation

• Correlation concept in statistics

– Used to study the relationship existing between 2 or more numeric variables
– A correlation is a measure of the linear relationship between variables
Ex: number of hours spent studying in a class with grade received
– Outcomes:
• → positively related
• → Not related
• → negatively related
– Statistical relationships
• Covariance
• Correlation coefficient

Constraint-Based Mining in detail.

• Interactive, exploratory mining giga-bytes of data?

– Could it be real? — Making good use of constraints!
• What kinds of constraints can be used in mining?
– Knowledge type constraint: classification, association, etc.
– Data constraint: SQL-like queries
• Find product pairs sold together in Vancouver in Dec.’98.
– Dimension/level constraints:
• in relevance to region, price, brand, customer category.
– Rule constraints
• small sales (price < $10) triggers big sales (sum > $200).
– Interestingness constraints:
• strong rules (min_support  3%, min_confidence  60%).

Rule Constraints in Association Mining

• Two kind of rule constraints:

– Rule form constraints: meta-rule guided mining.
• P(x, y) ^ Q(x, w) ® takes(x, “database systems”).
– Rule (content) constraint: constraint-based query optimization (Ng, et al.,
SIGMOD’98).
• sum(LHS) < 100 ^ min(LHS) > 20 ^ count(LHS) > 3 ^ sum(RHS) > 1000
• 1-variable vs. 2-variable constraints (Lakshmanan, et al. SIGMOD’99):
– 1-var: A constraint confining only one side (L/R) of the rule, e.g., as shown
above.
– 2-var: A constraint confining both sides (L and R).
• sum(LHS) < min(RHS) ^ max(RHS) < 5* sum(LHS)
Constrain-Based Association Query

• Database: (1) trans (TID, Itemset ), (2) itemInfo (Item, Type, Price)
• A constrained asso. query (CAQ) is in the form of {(S1, S2 )|C },
– where C is a set of constraints on S1, S2 including frequency constraint
• A classification of (single-variable) constraints:
– Class constraint: S  A. e.g. S  Item
– Domain constraint:
• S v,   { =, , , , ,  }. e.g. S.Price < 100
• v S,  is  or . e.g. snacks  S.Type
• V S, or S V,   { , , , =,  }
– e.g. {snacks, sodas }  S.Type
– Aggregation constraint: agg(S)  v, where agg is in {min, max, sum, count, avg},
and   { =, , , , ,  }.
• e.g. count(S1.Type) = 1 , avg(S2.Price)  100

Constrained Association Query Optimization Problem

• Given a CAQ = { (S1, S2) | C }, the algorithm should be :

– sound: It only finds frequent sets that satisfy the given constraints C
– complete: All frequent sets satisfy the given constraints C are found
• A naïve solution:
– Apply Apriori for finding all frequent sets, and then to test them for constraint
satisfaction one by one.
• Our approach:
– Comprehensive analysis of the properties of constraints and try to push them as
deeply as possible inside the frequent set computation.
Categories of Constraints.

1. Anti-monotone and Monotone Constraints

• constraint Ca is anti-monotone iff. for any pattern S not satisfying Ca, none of the super-
patterns of S can satisfy Ca
• A constraint Cm is monotone iff. for any pattern S satisfying Cm, every super-pattern of
S also satisfies it

2. Succinct Constraint
• A subset of item Is is a succinct set, if it can be expressed as p(I) for some selection
predicate p, where  is a selection operator
• SP2I is a succinct power set, if there is a fixed number of succinct set I1, …, Ik I, s.t.
SP can be expressed in terms of the strict power sets of I1, …, Ik using union and minus
• A constraint Cs is succinct provided SATCs(I) is a succinct power set

3. Convertible Constraint
• Suppose all items in patterns are listed in a total order R
 • A constraint C is convertible anti-monotone iff a pattern S satisfying the constraint
implies that each suffix of S w.r.t. R also satisfies C
• A constraint C is convertible monotone iff a pattern S satisfying the constraint implies
that each pattern of which S is a suffix w.r.t. R also satisfies C

Property of Constraints: Anti-Monotone

• Anti-monotonicity: If a set S violates the constraint, any superset of S violates the

constraint.
• Examples:
– sum(S.Price)  v is anti-monotone
– sum(S.Price)  v is not anti-monotone
– sum(S.Price) = v is partly anti-monotone
• Application:
– Push “sum(S.price)  1000” deeply into iterative frequent set computation.

Example of Convertible Constraints: Avg(S)  V

• Let R be the value descending order over the set of items

– E.g. I={9, 8, 6, 4, 3, 1}
• Avg(S)  v is convertible monotone w.r.t. R
– If S is a suffix of S1, avg(S1)  avg(S)
• {8, 4, 3} is a suffix of {9, 8, 4, 3}
• avg({9, 8, 4, 3})=6  avg({8, 4, 3})=5
– If S satisfies avg(S) v, so does S1
• {8, 4, 3} satisfies constraint avg(S)  4, so does {9, 8, 4, 3}

Property of Constraints: Succinctness

• Succinctness:
– For any set S1 and S2 satisfying C, S1  S2 satisfies C
– Given A1 is the sets of size 1 satisfying C, then any set S satisfying C are based
on A1 , i.e., it contains a subset belongs to A1 ,
• Example :
– sum(S.Price )  v is not succinct
– min(S.Price )  v is succinct
• Optimization:
– If C is succinct, then C is pre-counting prunable. The satisfaction of the constraint
alone is not affected by the iterative support counting.
Classification and Prediction
• Classification:

– predicts categorical class labels

– classifies data (constructs a model) based on the training set and the values (class
labels) in a classifying attribute and uses it in classifying new data
• Prediction

– models continuous-valued functions, i.e., predicts unknown or missing values

• Typical applications

– Credit approval
– Target marketing
– Medical diagnosis
– Fraud detection
–
Classification—A Two-Step Process

• Model construction: describing a set of predetermined classes

– Each tuple/sample is assumed to belong to a predefined class, as determined by
the class label attribute
– The set of tuples used for model construction: training set
– The model is represented as classification rules, decision trees, or mathematical
formulae
• Model usage: for classifying future or unknown objects
– Estimate accuracy of the model
• The known label of test sample is compared with the classified result from
the model
• Accuracy rate is the percentage of test set samples that are correctly
classified by the model
• Test set is independent of training set, otherwise over-fitting will occur
Process (1): Model Construction
Process (2): Using the Model in Prediction

Supervised vs. Unsupervised Learning

◼ Supervised learning (classification)
◼ Supervision: The training data (observations, measurements, etc.) are
accompanied by labels indicating the class of the observations
◼ New data is classified based on the training set
◼ Unsupervised learning (clustering)
◼ The class labels of training data is unknown
◼ Given a set of measurements, observations, etc. with the aim of establishing the
existence of classes or clusters in the data

Classification by Decision Tree Induction

Decision tree

– A flow-chart-like tree structure

– Internal node denotes a test on an attribute
– Branch represents an outcome of the test
– Leaf nodes represent class labels or class distribution
• Decision tree generation consists of two phases
– Tree construction
• At start, all the training examples are at the root
• Partition examples recursively based on selected attributes
– Tree pruning
• Identify and remove branches that reflect noise or outliers
• Use of decision tree: Classifying an unknown sample
– Test the attribute values of the sample against the decision tree
Training Dataset

This follows an example from Quinlan’s ID3

age income student credit_rating
<=30 high no fair
<=30 high no excellent
31…40 high no fair
>40 medium no fair
>40 low yes fair
>40 low yes excellent
31…40 low yes excellent
<=30 medium no fair
<=30 low yes fair
>40 medium yes fair
<=30 medium yes excellent
31…40 medium no excellent
31…40 high yes fair
>40 medium no excellent

Algorithm for Decision Tree Induction

• Basic algorithm (a greedy algorithm)

– Tree is constructed in a top-down recursive divide-and-conquer manner
– At start, all the training examples are at the root
– Attributes are categorical (if continuous-valued, they are discretized in advance)
– Examples are partitioned recursively based on selected attributes
– Test attributes are selected on the basis of a heuristic or statistical measure (e.g.,
information gain)
• Conditions for stopping partitioning
– All samples for a given node belong to the same class
– There are no remaining attributes for further partitioning – majority voting is
employed for classifying the leaf
– There are no samples left

Extracting Classification Rules from Trees

• Represent the knowledge in the form of IF-THEN rules

• One rule is created for each path from the root to a leaf
• Each attribute-value pair along a path forms a conjunction
• The leaf node holds the class prediction
• Rules are easier for humans to understand
•
• Example

IF age = “<=30” AND student = “no” THEN buys_computer = “no”

IF age = “<=30” AND student = “yes” THEN buys_computer = “yes”

IF age = “31…40” THEN buys_computer = “yes”

IF age = “>40” AND credit_rating = “excellent” THEN buys_computer = “yes”

IF age = “>40” AND credit_rating = “fair” THEN buys_computer = “no”

Avoid Overfitting in Classification

• The generated tree may overfit the training data

– Too many branches, some may reflect anomalies due to noise or outliers
– Result is in poor accuracy for unseen samples
• Two approaches to avoid overfitting
– Prepruning: Halt tree construction early—do not split a node if this would result
in the goodness measure falling below a threshold
• Difficult to choose an appropriate threshold
– Postpruning: Remove branches from a “fully grown” tree—get a sequence of
progressively pruned trees
• Use a set of data different from the training data to decide which is the
“best pruned tree”

Tree Mining in Weka and Tree Mining in Clementine.

Tree Mining in Weka

• Example:
– Weather problem: build a decision tree to guide the decision about whether or not
to play tennis.
– Dataset
(weather.nominal.arff)

• Validation:
– Using training set as a test set will provide optimal classification accuracy.
– Expected accuracy on a different test set will always be less.
– 10-fold cross validation is more robust than using the training set as a test set.
• Divide data into 10 sets with about same proportion of class label values
as in original set.
• Run classification 10 times independently with the remaining 9/10 of the
set as the training set.
• Average accuracy.
– Ratio validation: 67% training set / 33% test set.
– Best: having a separate training set and test set.

• Results:
– Classification accuracy (correctly classified instances).
– Errors (absolute mean, root squared mean, …)
– Kappa statistic (measures agreement between predicted and observed
classification; -100%-100% is the proportion of agreements after chance
agreement has been excluded; 0% means complete agreement by chance)
 • Results:
– TP (True Positive) rate per class label
– FP (False Positive) rate
– Precision = TP rate = TP / (TP + FN)) * 100%
– Recall = TP / (TP + FP)) * 100%
– F-measure = 2* recall * precision / recall + precision
• ID3 characteristics:
– Requires nominal values
– Improved into C4.5
• Dealing with numeric attributes
• Dealing with missing values
• Dealing with noisy data
• Generating rules from trees
Tree Mining in Clementine

• Methods:
– C5.0: target field must be categorical, predictor fields may be numeric or
categorical, provides multiple splits on the field that provides the maximum
information gain at each level
– QUEST: target field must be categorical, predictor fields may be numeric ranges
or categorical, statistical binary split
– C&RT: target and predictor fields may be numeric ranges or categorical,
statistical binary split based on regression
– CHAID: target and predictor fields may be numeric ranges or categorical,
statistical binary split based on chi-square

Bayesian Classification:
• Probabilistic learning: Calculate explicit probabilities for hypothesis, among the most
practical approaches to certain types of learning problems
• Incremental: Each training example can incrementally increase/decrease the probability
that a hypothesis is correct. Prior knowledge can be combined with observed data.
• Probabilistic prediction: Predict multiple hypotheses, weighted by their probabilities
• Standard: Even when Bayesian methods are computationally intractable, they can provide
a standard of optimal decision making against which other methods can be measured

Bayesian Theorem

• Given training data D, posteriori probability of a hypothesis h, P(h|D) follows the Bayes
theorem

P(h | D) = P(D | h)P(h)

P(D)
• MAP (maximum posteriori) hypothesis
 h  arg max P(h | D) = arg max P(D | h)P(h).
MAP hH hH

• Practical difficulty: require initial knowledge of many probabilities, significant

computational cost

Naïve Bayes Classifier (I)

• A simplified assumption: attributes are conditionally independent:

n
P (C j | V )  P (C j ) P (vi | C j )
i =1

• Greatly reduces the computation cost, only count the class distribution.

Naive Bayesian Classifier (II)

Given a training set, we can compute the probabilities

Outlook P N Humidity P N
sunny 2/9 3/5 high 3/9 4/5
overcast 4/9 0 normal 6/9 1/5
rain 3/9 2/5
Bayesian classification
Temperature W indy
hot 2/9 2/5 true 3/9 3/5
• The mild 4/9 2/5 false 6/9 2/5
classification cool 3/9 1/5 problem
may be
formalized using a-posteriori probabilities:
• P(C|X) = prob. that the sample tuple
• X=<x1,…,xk> is of class C.
• E.g. P(class=N | outlook=sunny, windy=true,…)
• Idea: assign to sample X the class label C such that P(C|X) is maximal

Estimating a-posteriori probabilities

• Bayes theorem:
P(C|X) = P(X|C)·P(C) / P(X)

• P(X) is constant for all classes

• P(C) = relative freq of class C samples
 • C such that P(C|X) is maximum =
C such that P(X|C)·P(C) is maximum
• Problem: computing P(X|C) is unfeasible!

Naïve Bayesian Classification

• Naïve assumption: attribute independence

P(x1,…,xk|C) = P(x1|C)·…·P(xk|C)

• If i-th attribute is categorical:

P(xi|C) is estimated as the relative freq of samples having value xi as i-th attribute in
class C
• If i-th attribute is continuous:
P(xi|C) is estimated thru a Gaussian density function
• Computationally easy in both cases

Bayesian Belief Networks

◼ Bayesian belief network allows a subset of the variables conditionally independent

◼ A graphical model of causal relationships
◼ Represents dependency among the variables
◼ Gives a specification of joint probability distribution

Bayesian Belief Network: An Example

The conditional probability table (CPT) for variable LungCancer:

CPT shows the conditional probability for each possible combination of its parents

Derivation of the probability of a particular combination of values of X, from CPT:

n
P( x1 ,..., xn ) =  P( xi | Parents(Y i ))
i =1

Association-Based Classification

• Several methods for association-based classification

– ARCS: Quantitative association mining and clustering of association rules (Lent
et al’97)
• It beats C4.5 in (mainly) scalability and also accuracy
– Associative classification: (Liu et al’98)
• It mines high support and high confidence rules in the form of “cond_set
=> y”, where y is a class label
– CAEP (Classification by aggregating emerging patterns) (Dong et al’99)
• Emerging patterns (EPs): the itemsets whose support increases
significantly from one class to another
• Mine Eps based on minimum support and growth rate

Pruning of decision trees

Discarding one or more subtrees and replacing them with leaves simplify a decision tree, and
that is the main task in decision-tree pruning. In replacing the subtree with a leaf, the algorithm
expects to lower the predicted error rate and increase the quality of a classification model. But
computation of error rate is not simple. An error rate based only on a training data set does not
provide a suitable estimate. One possibility to estimate the predicted error rate is to use a new,
additional set of test samples if they are available, or to use the cross-validation techniques. This
technique divides initially available samples into equal sized blocks and, for each block, the tree
is constructed from all samples except this block and tested with a given block of samples. With
the available training and testing samples, the basic idea of decision tree-pruning is to remove
parts of the tree (subtrees) that do not contribute to the classification accuracy of unseen testing
samples, producing a less complex and thus more comprehensible tree. There are two ways in
which the recursive-partitioning method can be modified:

1. Deciding not to divide a set of samples any further under some conditions. The stopping
criterion is usually based on some statistical tests, such as the χ2 test: If there are no
 significant differences in classification accuracy before and after division, then represent
a current node as a leaf. The decision is made in advance, before splitting, and therefore
this approach is called prepruning.
2. Removing restrospectively some of the tree structure using selected accuracy criteria. The
decision in this process of postpruning is made after the tree has been built.

C4.5 follows the postpruning approach, but it uses a specific technique to estimate the predicted
error rate. This method is called pessimistic pruning. For every node in a tree, the estimation of
the upper confidence limit ucf is computed using the statistical tables for binomial distribution
(given in most textbooks on statistics). Parameter U cf is a function of ∣Ti∣ and E for a given node.
C4.5 uses the default confidence level of 25%, and compares U 25% (∣Ti∣/E) for a given node Ti
with a weighted confidence of its leaves. Weights are the total number of cases for every leaf. If
the predicted error for a root node in a subtree is less than weighted sum of U25% for the leaves
(predicted error for the subtree), then a subtree will be replaced with its root node, which
becomes a new leaf in a pruned tree.

Let us illustrate this procedure with one simple example. A subtree of a decision tree is
given in Figure, where the root node is the test x 1 on three possible values {1, 2, 3} of the
attribute A. The children of the root node are leaves denoted with corresponding classes and
(∣Ti∣/E) parameters. The question is to estimate the possibility of pruning the subtree and
replacing it with its root node as a new, generalized leaf node.

Figure : Pruning a subtree by replacing it with one leaf node

To analyze the possibility of replacing the subtree with a leaf node it is necessary to
compute a predicted error PE for the initial tree and for a replaced node. Using default
confidence of 25%, the upper confidence limits for all nodes are collected from statistical tables:
U25% (6, 0) = 0.206, U25%(9, 0) = 0.143, U25%(1, 0) = 0.750, and U25%(16, 1) = 0.157. Using these
values, the predicted errors for the initial tree and the replaced node are

PEtree = 6.0.206 + 9.0.143 + 1.0.750 = 3.257

PEnode = 16.0.157 = 2.512

Since the existing subtree has a higher value of predicted error than the replaced node, it
is recommended that the decision tree be pruned and the subtree replaced with the new leaf node.
Rule Based Classification

Using IF-THEN Rules for Classification

◼ Represent the knowledge in the form of IF-THEN rules

R: IF age = youth AND student = yes THEN buys_computer = yes

◼ Rule antecedent/precondition vs. rule consequent

◼ Assessment of a rule: coverage and accuracy
◼ ncovers = # of tuples covered by R
◼ ncorrect = # of tuples correctly classified by R

coverage(R) = ncovers /|D| /* D: training data set */

accuracy(R) = ncorrect / ncovers

◼ If more than one rule is triggered, need conflict resolution

◼ Size ordering: assign the highest priority to the triggering rules that has the
“toughest” requirement (i.e., with the most attribute test)
◼ Class-based ordering: decreasing order of prevalence or misclassification cost per
class
◼ Rule-based ordering (decision list): rules are organized into one long priority list,
according to some measure of rule quality or by experts

Rule Extraction from a Decision Tree

◼ Rules are easier to understand than large trees

◼ One rule is created for each path from the root to a leaf
◼ Each attribute-value pair along a path forms a conjunction: the leaf holds the class
prediction
◼ Rules are mutually exclusive and exhaustive

◼ Example: Rule extraction from our buys_computer decision-tree

IF age = young AND student = no THEN buys_computer = no

IF age = young AND student = yes THEN buys_computer = yes
IF age = mid-age THEN buys_computer = yes
IF age = old AND credit_rating = excellent THEN buys_computer = yes
IF age = young AND credit_rating = fair THEN buys_computer = no

Rule Extraction from the Training Data

◼ Sequential covering algorithm: Extracts rules directly from training data

◼ Typical sequential covering algorithms: FOIL, AQ, CN2, RIPPER
◼ Rules are learned sequentially, each for a given class Ci will cover many tuples of Ci but
none (or few) of the tuples of other classes
◼ Steps:
◼ Rules are learned one at a time
◼ Each time a rule is learned, the tuples covered by the rules are removed
◼ The process repeats on the remaining tuples unless termination condition, e.g.,
when no more training examples or when the quality of a rule returned is below a
user-specified threshold
◼ Comp. w. decision-tree induction: learning a set of rules simultaneously

Classification by Backpropagation
◼ Backpropagation: A neural network learning algorithm
◼ Started by psychologists and neurobiologists to develop and test computational analogues
of neurons
◼ A neural network: A set of connected input/output units where each connection has a
weight associated with it
◼ During the learning phase, the network learns by adjusting the weights so as to be able
to predict the correct class label of the input tuples
◼ Also referred to as connectionist learning due to the connections between units
Neural Network as a Classifier

◼ Weakness
◼ Long training time
◼ Require a number of parameters typically best determined empirically, e.g., the
network topology or ``structure."
◼ Poor interpretability: Difficult to interpret the symbolic meaning behind the
learned weights and of ``hidden units" in the network
◼ Strength
◼ High tolerance to noisy data
◼ Ability to classify untrained patterns
◼ Well-suited for continuous-valued inputs and outputs
◼ Successful on a wide array of real-world data
◼ Algorithms are inherently parallel
◼ Techniques have recently been developed for the extraction of rules from trained
neural networks
A Neuron (= a perceptron)

◼ The n-dimensional input vector x is mapped into variable y by means of the scalar
product and a nonlinear function mapping

A Multi-Layer Feed-Forward Neural Network

◼ The inputs to the network correspond to the attributes measured for each training tuple
◼ Inputs are fed simultaneously into the units making up the input layer
◼ They are then weighted and fed simultaneously to a hidden layer
◼ The number of hidden layers is arbitrary, although usually only one
◼ The weighted outputs of the last hidden layer are input to units making up the output
layer, which emits the network's prediction
◼ The network is feed-forward in that none of the weights cycles back to an input unit or to
an output unit of a previous layer
◼ From a statistical point of view, networks perform nonlinear regression: Given enough
hidden units and enough training samples, they can closely approximate any function

Backpropagation

◼ Iteratively process a set of training tuples & compare the network's prediction with the
actual known target value
◼ For each training tuple, the weights are modified to minimize the mean squared error
between the network's prediction and the actual target value
◼ Modifications are made in the “backwards” direction: from the output layer, through each
hidden layer down to the first hidden layer, hence “backpropagation”
◼ Steps
 ◼ Initialize weights (to small random #s) and biases in the network
◼ Propagate the inputs forward (by applying activation function)
◼ Backpropagate the error (by updating weights and biases)
◼ Terminating condition (when error is very small, etc.)
◼ Efficiency of backpropagation: Each epoch (one interation through the training set) takes
O(|D| * w), with |D| tuples and w weights, but # of epochs can be exponential to n, the
number of inputs, in the worst case
◼ Rule extraction from networks: network pruning
◼ Simplify the network structure by removing weighted links that have the least
effect on the trained network
◼ Then perform link, unit, or activation value clustering
◼ The set of input and activation values are studied to derive rules describing the
relationship between the input and hidden unit layers
◼ Sensitivity analysis: assess the impact that a given input variable has on a network output.
The knowledge gained from this analysis can be represented in rules

SVM—Support Vector Machines

◼ A new classification method for both linear and nonlinear data
◼ It uses a nonlinear mapping to transform the original training data into a higher
dimension
◼ With the new dimension, it searches for the linear optimal separating hyperplane (i.e.,
“decision boundary”)
◼ With an appropriate nonlinear mapping to a sufficiently high dimension, data from two
classes can always be separated by a hyperplane
◼ SVM finds this hyperplane using support vectors (“essential” training tuples) and
margins (defined by the support vectors)
◼ Features: training can be slow but accuracy is high owing to their ability to model
complex nonlinear decision boundaries (margin maximization)
◼ Used both for classification and prediction
◼ Applications:
◼ handwritten digit recognition, object recognition, speaker identification,
benchmarking time-series prediction tests

SVM—General Philosophy

SVM—Margins and Support Vectors

SVM—Linearly Separable
◼ A separating hyperplane can be written as
W●X+b=0
where W={w1, w2, …, wn} is a weight vector and b a scalar (bias)
◼ For 2-D it can be written as
w0 + w1 x1 + w2 x2 = 0
◼ The hyperplane defining the sides of the margin:
H1: w0 + w1 x1 + w2 x2 ≥ 1 for yi = +1, and
H2: w0 + w1 x1 + w2 x2 ≤ – 1 for yi = –1
◼ Any training tuples that fall on hyperplanes H1 or H2 (i.e., the
sides defining the margin) are support vectors
◼ This becomes a constrained (convex) quadratic optimization problem: Quadratic
objective function and linear constraints → Quadratic Programming (QP) → Lagrangian
multipliers
Why Is SVM Effective on High Dimensional Data?
◼ The complexity of trained classifier is characterized by the # of support vectors rather
than the dimensionality of the data
◼ The support vectors are the essential or critical training examples —they lie closest to the
decision boundary (MMH)
◼ If all other training examples are removed and the training is repeated, the same
separating hyperplane would be found
◼ The number of support vectors found can be used to compute an (upper) bound on the
expected error rate of the SVM classifier, which is independent of the data dimensionality
◼ Thus, an SVM with a small number of support vectors can have good generalization,
even when the dimensionality of the data is high
Associative Classification
◼ Associative classification
◼ Association rules are generated and analyzed for use in classification
◼ Search for strong associations between frequent patterns (conjunctions of
attribute-value pairs) and class labels
◼ Classification: Based on evaluating a set of rules in the form of
P1 ^ p2 … ^ pl → “Aclass = C” (conf, sup)
◼ Why effective?
◼ It explores highly confident associations among multiple attributes and may
overcome some constraints introduced by decision-tree induction, which
considers only one attribute at a time
In many studies, associative classification has been found to be more accurate than some
traditional classification methods, such as C4.

Typical Associative Classification Methods

◼ CBA (Classification By Association: Liu, Hsu & Ma, KDD’98)
◼ Mine association possible rules in the form of
◼ Cond-set (a set of attribute-value pairs) → class label
◼ Build classifier: Organize rules according to decreasing precedence based on
confidence and then support
◼ CMAR (Classification based on Multiple Association Rules: Li, Han, Pei, ICDM’01)
◼ Classification: Statistical analysis on multiple rules
◼ CPAR (Classification based on Predictive Association Rules: Yin & Han, SDM’03)
◼ Generation of predictive rules (FOIL-like analysis)
◼ High efficiency, accuracy similar to CMAR
◼ RCBT (Mining top-k covering rule groups for gene expression data, Cong et al.
SIGMOD’05)
◼ Explore high-dimensional classification, using top-k rule groups
◼ Achieve high classification accuracy and high run-time efficiency

Associative Classification May Achieve High Accuracy and Efficiency (Cong et al.
SIGMOD05)
Other Classification Methods
The k-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm

◼ All instances correspond to points in the n-D space

◼ The nearest neighbor are defined in terms of Euclidean distance, dist(X1, X2)
◼ Target function could be discrete- or real- valued
◼ For discrete-valued, k-NN returns the most common value among the k training examples
nearest to xq
◼ k-NN for real-valued prediction for a given unknown tuple
◼ Returns the mean values of the k nearest neighbors
◼ Distance-weighted nearest neighbor algorithm
◼ Weight the contribution of each of the k neighbors according to their distance to
the query xq
◼ Give greater weight to closer neighbors
◼ Robust to noisy data by averaging k-nearest neighbors
◼ Curse of dimensionality: distance between neighbors could be dominated by irrelevant
attributes
◼ To overcome it, axes stretch or elimination of the least relevant attributes

Genetic Algorithms

◼ Genetic Algorithm: based on an analogy to biological evolution

◼ An initial population is created consisting of randomly generated rules
◼ Each rule is represented by a string of bits
◼ E.g., if A1 and ¬A2 then C2 can be encoded as 100
◼ If an attribute has k > 2 values, k bits can be used
◼ Based on the notion of survival of the fittest, a new population is formed to consist of the
fittest rules and their offsprings
◼ The fitness of a rule is represented by its classification accuracy on a set of training
examples
◼ Offsprings are generated by crossover and mutation
◼ The process continues until a population P evolves when each rule in P satisfies a
prespecified threshold
◼ Slow but easily parallelizable
Rough Set Approach:

◼ Rough sets are used to approximately or “roughly” define equivalent classes

◼ A rough set for a given class C is approximated by two sets: a lower approximation
(certain to be in C) and an upper approximation (cannot be described as not belonging to
C)
Finding the minimal subsets (reducts) of attributes for feature reduction is NP-hard but a
discernibility matrix (which stores the differences between attribute values for each pair of data
tuples) is used to reduce the computation intensity

Figure: A rough set approximation of the set of tuples of the class C suing lower and upper
approximation sets of C. The rectangular regions represent equivalence classes

Fuzzy Set approaches

◼ Fuzzy logic uses truth values between 0.0 and 1.0 to represent the degree of
membership (such as using fuzzy membership graph)
◼ Attribute values are converted to fuzzy values
◼ e.g., income is mapped into the discrete categories {low, medium, high} with
fuzzy values calculated
◼ For a given new sample, more than one fuzzy value may apply
◼ Each applicable rule contributes a vote for membership in the categories
◼ Typically, the truth values for each predicted category are summed, and these sums are
combined
Prediction

◼ (Numerical) prediction is similar to classification

◼ construct a model
◼ use model to predict continuous or ordered value for a given input
◼ Prediction is different from classification
◼ Classification refers to predict categorical class label
◼ Prediction models continuous-valued functions
◼ Major method for prediction: regression
◼ model the relationship between one or more independent or predictor variables
and a dependent or response variable
◼ Regression analysis
◼ Linear and multiple regression
◼ Non-linear regression
◼ Other regression methods: generalized linear model, Poisson regression, log-
linear models, regression trees
Linear Regression
◼ Linear regression: involves a response variable y and a single predictor variable x
y = w 0 + w1 x
where w0 (y-intercept) and w1 (slope) are regression coefficients
◼ Method of least squares: estimates the best-fitting straight line
◼ Multiple linear regression: involves more than one predictor variable
◼ Training data is of the form (X1, y1), (X2, y2),…, (X|D|, y|D|)
◼ Ex. For 2-D data, we may have: y = w0 + w1 x1+ w2 x2
◼ Solvable by extension of least square method or using SAS, S-Plus
◼ Many nonlinear functions can be transformed into the above
Nonlinear Regression
◼ Some nonlinear models can be modeled by a polynomial function
◼ A polynomial regression model can be transformed into linear regression model. For
example,
y = w0 + w1 x + w2 x2 + w3 x3
convertible to linear with new variables: x2 = x2, x3= x3
y = w0 + w1 x + w2 x2 + w3 x3
◼ Other functions, such as power function, can also be transformed to linear model
◼ Some models are intractable nonlinear (e.g., sum of exponential terms)
◼ possible to obtain least square estimates through extensive calculation on more
complex formulae
 UNIT V
CLUSTERING AND APPLICATIONS AND TRENDS IN DATA MINING

Cluster Analysis - Types of Data – Categorization of Major Clustering Methods – Kmeans –

Partitioning Methods – Hierarchical Methods - Density-Based Methods –Grid Based Methods –
Model-Based Clustering Methods – Clustering High Dimensional Data - Constraint – Based
Cluster Analysis – Outlier Analysis – Data Mining Applications.

Cluster Analysis

What is Cluster Analysis?

• Cluster: a collection of data objects

– Similar to one another within the same cluster
– Dissimilar to the objects in other clusters
• Cluster analysis
– Grouping a set of data objects into clusters
• Clustering is unsupervised classification: no predefined classes
• Typical applications
– As a stand-alone tool to get insight into data distribution
– As a preprocessing step for other algorithms

General Applications of Clustering

• Pattern Recognition
• Spatial Data Analysis
– create thematic maps in GIS by clustering feature spaces
– detect spatial clusters and explain them in spatial data mining
• Image Processing
• Economic Science (especially market research)
• WWW
– Document classification
– Cluster Weblog data to discover groups of similar access patterns
Examples of Clustering Applications

• Marketing: Help marketers discover distinct groups in their customer bases, and then use
this knowledge to develop targeted marketing programs
• Land use: Identification of areas of similar land use in an earth observation database
• Insurance: Identifying groups of motor insurance policy holders with a high average
claim cost
• City-planning: Identifying groups of houses according to their house type, value, and
geographical location
• Earth-quake studies: Observed earth quake epicenters should be clustered along continent
faults
What Is Good Clustering?
• A good clustering method will produce high quality clusters with
– high intra-class similarity
– low inter-class similarity
• The quality of a clustering result depends on both the similarity measure used by the
method and its implementation.
• The quality of a clustering method is also measured by its ability to discover some or all
of the hidden patterns.

Requirements of Clustering in Data Mining

• Scalability
• Ability to deal with different types of attributes
• Discovery of clusters with arbitrary shape
• Minimal requirements for domain knowledge to determine input parameters
• Able to deal with noise and outliers
• Insensitive to order of input records
• High dimensionality
• Incorporation of user-specified constraints
• Interpretability and usability

Type of data in clustering analysis

• Interval-scaled variables:
• Binary variables:
• Nominal, ordinal, and ratio variables:
• Variables of mixed types:

Interval-valued variables
• Standardize data
– Calculate the mean absolute deviation:

Where mf = 1
n (x1 f + x2 f + ... + xnf ) .

– Calculate the standardized measurement (z-score)

xif − m f
zif = sf
• Using mean absolute deviation is more robust than using standard deviation

Similarity and Dissimilarity Between Objects

• Distances are normally used to measure the similarity or dissimilarity between two data
objects
• Some popular ones include: Minkowski distance:
d (i, j) = q (| x − x |q + | x − x |q +...+ | x − x |q )
i1 j1 i2 j 2 ip jp
where i = (xi1, xi2, …, xip) and j = (xj1, xj2, …, xjp) are two p-dimensional data objects, and q
is a positive integer

• If q = 1, d is Manhattan distance
d (i, j) =| x − x | + | x − x | +...+ | x − x |
i1 j1 i2 j 2 i p jp
• If q = 2, d is Euclidean distance:

d (i, j) = (| x − x |2 + | x − x |2 +...+ | x − x |2 )
i1 j1 i2 j 2 ip jp
sf = 1
n (| x1 f − m f | + | x2 f − m f | +...+ | xnf − m f |)
– Properties

• d(i,j)  0

• d(i,i) = 0

• d(i,j) = d(j,i)

• d(i,j)  d(i,k) + d(k,j)

• Also one can use weighted distance, parametric Pearson product moment correlation, or
other disimilarity measures.

Binary Variables

A contingency table for binary data

Object j

1 0 sum
1 a b a +b
Object i
0 c d c+d
sum a + c b + d p
 • Simple matching coefficient (invariant, if the binary variable is symmetric):
• Jaccard coefficient (noninvariant if the binary variable is asymmetric):
Dissimilarity between Binary Variables
• Example

Name Gender Fever Cough Test-1 Test-2 Test-3 Test-4

Jack M Y N P N N N
Mary F Y N P N P N
Jim M Y P N N N N

– gender is a symmetric attribute

– the remaining attributes are asymmetric binary
– let the values Y and P be set to 1, and the value N be set to 0
0 +1
d ( jack , mary) = = 0.33
2 + 0 +1
1+1
d ( jack , jim) = = 0.67
1+1+1
1+ 2
d ( jim, mary) = = 0.75
1+1+ 2

Nominal Variables
A generalization of the binary variable in that it can take more than 2 states, e.g., red, yellow,
blue, green
• Method 1: Simple matching
– m: # of matches, p: total # of variables

d (i, j) = p −pm
• Method 2: use a large number of binary variables

– creating a new binary variable for each of the M nominal states

Ordinal Variables

An ordinal variable can be

• discrete or continuous
• order is important, e.g., rank
• Can be treated like interval-scaled
if
r {1,...,M }
f
– replacing xif by their rank
– map the range of each variable onto [0, 1] by replacing i-th object in the f-th
variable by
rif −1
zif =
M f −1
 • compute the dissimilarity using methods for interval-scaled variables

Ratio-Scaled Variables

• Ratio-scaled variable: a positive measurement on a nonlinear scale, approximately at

exponential scale,
such as AeBt or Ae-Bt
• Methods:
– treat them like interval-scaled variables — not a good choice! (why?)
– apply logarithmic transformation
yif = log(xif)
– treat them as continuous ordinal data treat their rank as interval-scaled.

Variables of Mixed Types

• A database may contain all the six types of variables

– symmetric binary, asymmetric binary, nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio.
• One may use a weighted formula to combine their effects.

 pf = 1 ij( f )dij( f )
– d (i, j) =
–  pf = 1 ij( f )
–
– f is binary or nominal:
dij(f) = 0 if xif = xjf , or dij(f) = 1 o.w.
– f is interval-based: use the normalized distance
– f is ordinal or ratio-scaled
• compute ranks rif and
• and treat zif as interval-scaled
z =
r
if − 1
if M f −1

Partitioning Algorithms: Basic Concept

• Partitioning method: Construct a partition of a database D of n objects into a set of k

clusters
• Given a k, find a partition of k clusters that optimizes the chosen partitioning criterion
– Global optimal: exhaustively enumerate all partitions
– Heuristic methods: k-means and k-medoids algorithms
– k-means (MacQueen’67): Each cluster is represented by the center of the cluster
– k-medoids or PAM (Partition around medoids) (Kaufman & Rousseeuw’87): Each
cluster is represented by one of the objects in the cluster
The K-Means Clustering Method

• Given k, the k-means algorithm is implemented in 4 steps:

– Partition objects into k nonempty subsets
 – Compute seed points as the centroids of the clusters of the current partition. The
centroid is the center (mean point) of the cluster.
– Assign each object to the cluster with the nearest seed point.
– Go back to Step 2, stop when no more new assignment.

The K-Means Clustering Method

• Example
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Comments on the K-Means Method

• Strength
– Relatively efficient: O(tkn), where n is # objects, k is # clusters, and t is #
iterations. Normally, k, t << n.
– Often terminates at a local optimum. The global optimum may be found using
techniques such as: deterministic annealing and genetic algorithms
• Weakness
– Applicable only when mean is defined, then what about categorical data?
– Need to specify k, the number of clusters, in advance
– Unable to handle noisy data and outliers
– Not suitable to discover clusters with non-convex shapes

Variations of the K-Means Method

• A few variants of the k-means which differ in

– Selection of the initial k means
– Dissimilarity calculations
– Strategies to calculate cluster means
• Handling categorical data: k-modes (Huang’98)
 – Replacing means of clusters with modes
– Using new dissimilarity measures to deal with categorical objects
– Using a frequency-based method to update modes of clusters
– A mixture of categorical and numerical data: k-prototype method

The K-Medoids Clustering Method

• Find representative objects, called medoids, in clusters

• PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids, 1987)
– starts from an initial set of medoids and iteratively replaces one of the medoids by
one of the non-medoids if it improves the total distance of the resulting clustering
– PAM works effectively for small data sets, but does not scale well for large data
sets
• CLARA (Kaufmann & Rousseeuw, 1990)
• CLARANS (Ng & Han, 1994): Randomized sampling
• Focusing + spatial data structure (Ester et al., 1995)

K-Medoids Clustering Method

• Find representative objects, called medoids, in clusters

• PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids, 1987)
– starts from an initial set of medoids and iteratively replaces one of the medoids by
one of the non-medoids if it improves the total distance of the resulting clustering
– PAM works effectively for small data sets, but does not scale well for large data
sets
• CLARA (Kaufmann & Rousseeuw, 1990)
• CLARANS (Ng & Han, 1994): Randomized sampling
• Focusing + spatial data structure (Ester et al., 1995)

PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids) (1987)

• PAM (Kaufman and Rousseeuw, 1987), built in Splus

• Use real object to represent the cluster
– Select k representative objects arbitrarily
– For each pair of non-selected object h and selected object i, calculate the total
swapping cost TCih
– For each pair of i and h,
• If TCih < 0, i is replaced by h
• Then assign each non-selected object to the most similar representative
object
– repeat steps 2-3 until there is no change
PAM Clustering: Total swapping cost TCih=jCjih

10 10

9 9
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8
t 8 t
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Cjih = d(j, h) - d(j, i) Cjih = 0

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Cjih = d(j, h) - d(j,

Cjih = d(j, t) - t)
d(j, i)
CLARA (Clustering Large Applications) (1990)
• CLARA (Kaufmann and Rousseeuw in 1990)
– Built in statistical analysis packages, such as S+
• It draws multiple samples of the data set, applies PAM on each sample, and gives the best
clustering as the output
• Strength: deals with larger data sets than PAM
• Weakness:
– Efficiency depends on the sample size
– A good clustering based on samples will not necessarily represent a good
clustering of the whole data set if the sample is biased

CLARANS (“Randomized” CLARA) (1994)

CLARANS (A Clustering Algorithm based on Randomized Search) (Ng and Han’94)

CLARANS draws sample of neighbors dynamically The clustering process can be presented as
searching a graph where every node is a potential solution, that is, a set of k medoids If the local
optimum is found, CLARANS starts with new randomly selected node in search for a new local
optimum It is more efficient and scalable than both PAM and CLARA

• Focusing techniques and spatial access structures may further improve its performance
(Ester et al.’95)
Hierarchical Clustering

Use distance matrix as clustering criteria. This method does not require the number of clusters k
as an input, but needs a termination condition

AGNES (Agglomerative Nesting)

• Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)

• Implemented in statistical analysis packages, e.g., Splus
• Use the Single-Link method and the dissimilarity matrix.
• Merge nodes that have the least dissimilarity
• Go on in a non-descending fashion
• Eventually all nodes belong to the same cluster
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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

A Dendrogram Shows How the Clusters are Merged Hierarchically

Decompose data objects into a several levels of nested partitioning (tree of clusters), called a
dendrogram.

A clustering of the data objects is obtained by cutting the dendrogram at the desired level, then
each connected component forms a cluster.

DIANA (Divisive Analysis)

• Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)

• Implemented in statistical analysis packages, e.g., Splus
• Inverse order of AGNES
• Eventually each node forms a cluster on its own
More on Hierarchical Clustering Methods

• Major weakness of agglomerative clustering methods

– do not scale well: time complexity of at least O(n2), where n is the number of
total objects
– can never undo what was done previously
• Integration of hierarchical with distance-based clustering
– BIRCH (1996): uses CF-tree and incrementally adjusts the quality of sub-clusters
– CURE (1998): selects well-scattered points from the cluster and then shrinks them
towards the center of the cluster by a specified fraction
– CHAMELEON (1999): hierarchical clustering using dynamic modeling
BIRCH (1996)

• Birch: Balanced Iterative Reducing and Clustering using Hierarchies, by Zhang,

Ramakrishnan, Livny (SIGMOD’96)
• Incrementally construct a CF (Clustering Feature) tree, a hierarchical data structure for
multiphase clustering
– Phase 1: scan DB to build an initial in-memory CF tree (a multi-level
compression of the data that tries to preserve the inherent clustering structure of
the data)
– Phase 2: use an arbitrary clustering algorithm to cluster the leaf nodes of the CF-
tree
• Scales linearly: finds a good clustering with a single scan and improves the quality with a
few additional scans
• Weakness: handles only numeric data, and sensitive to the order of the data record.

Rock Algorithm and CHAMELEON.

• ROCK: Robust Clustering using linKs,

by S. Guha, R. Rastogi, K. Shim (ICDE’99).
– Use links to measure similarity/proximity
– Not distance based
– Computational complexity:
• Basic ideas:
– Similarity function and neighbors:
Let T1 = {1,2,3}, T2={3,4,5}

Rock: Algorithm

• Links: The number of common neighbours for the two points.

{1,2,3}, {1,2,4}, {1,2,5}, {1,3,4}, {1,3,5}

{1,4,5}, {2,3,4}, {2,3,5}, {2,4,5}, {3,4,5}

{1,2,3} 3 {1,2,4}
 • Algorithm
– Draw random sample
– Cluster with links
– Label data in disk

CHAMELEON

• CHAMELEON: hierarchical clustering using dynamic modeling, by G. Karypis, E.H.

Han and V. Kumar’99
• Measures the similarity based on a dynamic model
– Two clusters are merged only if the interconnectivity and closeness (proximity)
between two clusters are high relative to the internal interconnectivity of the
clusters and closeness of items within the clusters
• A two phase algorithm
– 1. Use a graph partitioning algorithm: cluster objects into a large number of
relatively small sub-clusters
– 2. Use an agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm: find the genuine
clusters by repeatedly combining these sub-clusters

AGGLOMERATIVE HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING

Algorithms of hierarchical cluster analysis are divided into the two categories divisible
algorithms and agglomerative algorithms. A divisible algorithm starts from the entire set of
samples X and divides it into a partition of subsets, then divides each subset into smaller sets,
and so on. Thus, a divisible algorithm generates a sequence of partitions that is ordered from a
coarser one to a finer one. An agglomerative algorithm first regards each object as an initial
cluster. The clusters are merged into a coarser partition, and the merging process proceeds until
the trivial partition is obtained: all objects are in one large cluster. This process of clustering is a
bottom-up process, where partitions from a finer one to a coarser one.

Most agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms are variants of the single-link or

complete-link algorithms. In the single-link method, the distance between two clusters is the
minimum of the distances between all pairs of samples drawn from the two clusters (one element
from the first cluster, the other from the second). In the complete-link algorithm, the distance
between two clusters is the maximum of all distances between all pairs drawn from the two
clusters. A graphical illustration of these two distance measures is given.

The basic steps of the agglomerative clustering algorithm are the same. These steps are

1. Place each sample in its own cluster. Construct the list of inter-cluster distances for all
distinct unordered pairs of samples, and sort this list in ascending order.
2. Step through the sorted list of distances, forming for each distinct threshold value d k a
graph of the samples where pairs samples closer than dk are connected into a new cluster
by a graph edge. If all the samples are members of a connected graph, stop. Otherwise,
repeat this step.
 3. The output of the algorithm is a nested hierarchy of graphs, which can be cut at the
desired dissimilarity level forming a partition (clusters) identified by simple connected
components in the corresponding subgraph.

Let us consider five points {x1, x2, x3, x4, x5} with the following coordinates as a two-
dimensional sample for clustering:

For this example, we selected two-dimensional points because it is easier to graphically

represent these points and to trace all the steps in the clustering algorithm.

The distances between these points using the Euclidian measure are

d(x1 , x2 ) =2, d(x1, x3) = 2.5, d(x1, x4) = 5.39, d(x1, x5) = 5

d(x1 , x3 ) =1.5, d(x2, x4) = 5, d(x2, x5) = 5.29,

d(x3 , x4 ) =3.5, d(x3, x5) = 4.03, d(x4, x5) = 2

The distances between points as clusters in the first iteration are the same for both single-
link and complete-link clustering. Further computation for these two algorithms is different.
Using agglomerative single-link clustering, the following steps are performed to create a cluster
and to represent the cluster structure as a dendrogram.

Hierarchical and Non-Hierarchical Clustering

There are two main types of clustering techniques, those that create a hierarchy of
clusters and those that do not. The hierarchical clustering techniques create a hierarchy of
clusters from small to big. The main reason for this is that, as was already stated, clustering is
an unsupervised learning technique, and as such, there is no absolutely correct answer. For this
reason and depending on the particular application of the clustering, fewer or greater numbers of
clusters may be desired. With a hierarchy of clusters defined it is possible to choose the number
of clusters that are desired. At the extreme it is possible to have as many clusters as there are
records in the database. In this case the records within the cluster are optimally similar to each
other (since there is only one) and certainly different from the other clusters. But of course such
a clustering technique misses the point in the sense that the idea of clustering is to find useful
patters in the database that summarize it and make it easier to understand. Any clustering
algorithm that ends up with as many clusters as there are records has not helped the user
understand the data any better. Thus one of the main points about clustering is that there be
many fewer clusters than there are original records. Exactly how many clusters should be
formed is a matter of interpretation. The advantage of hierarchical clustering methods is that
they allow the end user to choose from either many clusters or only a few.

The hierarchy of clusters is usually viewed as a tree where the smallest clusters merge
together to create the next highest level of clusters and those at that level merge together to
create the next highest level of clusters. Figure 1.5 below shows how several clusters might form
a hierarchy. When a hierarchy of clusters like this is created the user can determine what the
right number of clusters is that adequately summarizes the data while still providing useful
information (at the other extreme a single cluster containing all the records is a great
summarization but does not contain enough specific information to be useful).

This hierarchy of clusters is created through the algorithm that builds the clusters. There are
two main types of hierarchical clustering algorithms:

• Agglomerative - Agglomerative clustering techniques start with as many clusters as there

are records where each cluster contains just one record. The clusters that are nearest
each other are merged together to form the next largest cluster. This merging is
continued until a hierarchy of clusters is built with just a single cluster containing all the
records at the top of the hierarchy.
• Divisive - Divisive clustering techniques take the opposite approach from agglomerative
techniques. These techniques start with all the records in one cluster and then try to split
that cluster into smaller pieces and then in turn to try to split those smaller pieces.

Of the two the agglomerative techniques are the most commonly used for clustering and have
more algorithms developed for them. We’ll talk about these in more detail in the next section.
The non-hierarchical techniques in general are faster to create from the historical database but
require that the user make some decision about the number of clusters desired or the minimum
“nearness” required for two records to be within the same cluster. These non-hierarchical
techniques often times are run multiple times starting off with some arbitrary or even random
clustering and then iteratively improving the clustering by shuffling some records around. Or
these techniques some times create clusters that are created with only one pass through the
database adding records to existing clusters when they exist and creating new clusters when no
existing cluster is a good candidate for the given record. Because the definition of which clusters
are formed can depend on these initial choices of which starting clusters should be chosen or
even how many clusters these techniques can be less repeatable than the hierarchical techniques
and can sometimes create either too many or too few clusters because the number of clusters is
predetermined by the user not determined solely by the patterns inherent in the database.
Figure 1.5 Diagram showing a hierarchy of clusters. Clusters at the lowest level are merged
together to form larger clusters at the next level of the hierarchy.

Non-Hierarchical Clustering

There are two main non-hierarchical clustering techniques. Both of them are very fast to
compute on the database but have some drawbacks. The first are the single pass methods. They
derive their name from the fact that the database must only be passed through once in order to
create the clusters (i.e. each record is only read from the database once). The other class of
techniques are called reallocation methods. They get their name from the movement or
“reallocation” of records from one cluster to another in order to create better clusters. The
reallocation techniques do use multiple passes through the database but are relatively fast in
comparison to the hierarchical techniques.

Hierarchical Clustering

Hierarchical clustering has the advantage over non-hierarchical techniques in that the
clusters are defined solely by the data (not by the users predetermining the number of clusters)
and that the number of clusters can be increased or decreased by simple moving up and down the
hierarchy.
The hierarchy is created by starting either at the top (one cluster that includes all records)
and subdividing (divisive clustering) or by starting at the bottom with as many clusters as there
are records and merging (agglomerative clustering). Usually the merging and subdividing are
done two clusters at a time.
The main distinction between the techniques is their ability to favor long, scraggly
clusters that are linked together record by record, or to favor the detection of the more classical,
compact or spherical cluster that was shown at the beginning of this section. It may seem strange
to want to form these long snaking chain like clusters, but in some cases they are the patters that
the user would like to have detected in the database. These are the times when the underlying
space looks quite different from the spherical clusters and the clusters that should be formed are
not based on the distance from the center of the cluster but instead based on the records being
“linked” together. Consider the example shown in Figure 1.6 or in Figure 1.7. In these cases
there are two clusters that are not very spherical in shape but could be detected by the single link
technique.
When looking at the layout of the data in Figure1.6 there appears to be two relatively flat
clusters running parallel to each along the income axis. Neither the complete link nor Ward’s
method would, however, return these two clusters to the user. These techniques rely on creating
a “center” for each cluster and picking these centers so that they average distance of each record
from this center is minimized. Points that are very distant from these centers would necessarily
fall into a different cluster.
.

Figure 1.6 an example of elongated clusters which would not be recovered by the complete
link or Ward's methods but would be by the single-link method.

Density-Based Clustering Methods

• Clustering based on density (local cluster criterion), such as density-connected points

• Major features:
– Discover clusters of arbitrary shape
– Handle noise
– One scan
– Need density parameters as termination condition
• Several interesting studies:
– DBSCAN: Ester, et al. (KDD’96)
– OPTICS: Ankerst, et al (SIGMOD’99).
– DENCLUE: Hinneburg & D. Keim (KDD’98)
– CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98)
Density-Based Clustering: Background

• Two parameters:
– Eps: Maximum radius of the neighbourhood
– MinPts: Minimum number of points in an Eps-neighbourhood of that point
• NEps(p): {q belongs to D | dist(p,q) <= Eps}
• Directly density-reachable: A point p is directly density-reachable from a point q wrt.
Eps, MinPts if
– 1) p belongs to NEps(q)
– 2) core point condition:
|NEps (q)| >= MinPts

Density-Based Clustering: Background (II)

• Density-reachable:
– A point p is density-reachable from a point q wrt. Eps, MinPts if there is a chain
of points p1, …, pn, p1 = q, pn = p such that pi+1 is directly density-reachable
from pi
• Density-connected
– A point p is density-connected to a point q wrt. Eps, MinPts if there is a point o
such that both, p and q are density-reachable from o wrt. Eps and MinPts.

DBSCAN: Density Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise

• Relies on a density-based notion of cluster: A cluster is defined as a maximal set of
density-connected points
• Discovers clusters of arbitrary shape in spatial databases with noise

DBSCAN: The Algorithm

– Arbitrary select a point p
– Retrieve all points density-reachable from p wrt Eps and MinPts.
– If p is a core point, a cluster is formed.
– If p is a border point, no points are density-reachable from p and DBSCAN visits the next
point of the database.
– Continue the process until all of the points have been processed

OPTICS: A Cluster-Ordering Method (1999)

• OPTICS: Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering Structure
– Ankerst, Breunig, Kriegel, and Sander (SIGMOD’99)
– Produces a special order of the database wrt its density-based clustering structure
– This cluster-ordering contains info equiv to the density-based clusterings
corresponding to a broad range of parameter settings
– Good for both automatic and interactive cluster analysis, including finding
intrinsic clustering structure
– Can be represented graphically or using visualization techniques
OPTICS: Some Extension from DBSCAN
• Index-based:
• k = number of dimensions
• N = 20
• p = 75%
• M = N(1-p) = 5
– Complexity: O(kN2)
• Core Distance
• Reachability Distance

Max (core-distance (o), d (o, p))

r(p1, o) = 2.8cm. r(p2,o) = 4cm
DENCLUE: using density functions
• DENsity-based CLUstEring by Hinneburg & Keim (KDD’98)
• Major features
– Solid mathematical foundation
– Good for data sets with large amounts of noise
– Allows a compact mathematical description of arbitrarily shaped clusters in high-
dimensional data sets
– Significant faster than existing algorithm (faster than DBSCAN by a factor of up
to 45)
– But needs a large number of parameters

Denclue: Technical Essence

• Uses grid cells but only keeps information about grid cells that do actually contain data
points and manages these cells in a tree-based access structure.
• Influence function: describes the impact of a data point within its neighborhood.
• Overall density of the data space can be calculated as the sum of the influence function of
all data points.
• Clusters can be determined mathematically by identifying density attractors.
• Density attractors are local maximal of the overall density function.

Grid-Based Methods
Using multi-resolution grid data structure
• Several interesting methods
– STING (a STatistical INformation Grid approach) by Wang, Yang and Muntz
(1997)
– WaveCluster by Sheikholeslami, Chatterjee, and Zhang (VLDB’98)
• A multi-resolution clustering approach using wavelet method
– CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98)

STING: A Statistical Information Grid Approach

• Wang, Yang and Muntz (VLDB’97)
• The spatial area is divided into rectangular cells
 • There are several levels of cells corresponding to different levels of resolution

STING: A Statistical Information Grid Approach (2)

– Each cell at a high level is partitioned into a number of smaller cells in the next
lower level
– Statistical info of each cell is calculated and stored beforehand and is used to
answer queries
– Parameters of higher level cells can be easily calculated from parameters of lower
level cell
• count, mean, s, min, max
• type of distribution—normal, uniform, etc.
– Use a top-down approach to answer spatial data queries
– Start from a pre-selected layer—typically with a small number of cells
– For each cell in the current level compute the confidence interval

STING: A Statistical Information Grid Approach (3)

– Remove the irrelevant cells from further consideration
– When finish examining the current layer, proceed to the next lower level
– Repeat this process until the bottom layer is reached
– Advantages:
• Query-independent, easy to parallelize, incremental update
• O(K), where K is the number of grid cells at the lowest level
– Disadvantages:
• All the cluster boundaries are either horizontal or vertical, and no diagonal
boundary is detected

WaveCluster (1998)
• Sheikholeslami, Chatterjee, and Zhang (VLDB’98)
• A multi-resolution clustering approach which applies wavelet transform to the feature
space
– A wavelet transform is a signal processing technique that decomposes a signal
into different frequency sub-band.
• Both grid-based and density-based
• Input parameters:
– # of grid cells for each dimension
– the wavelet, and the # of applications of wavelet transform.

• How to apply wavelet transform to find clusters

– Summaries the data by imposing a multidimensional grid structure onto data

space
– These multidimensional spatial data objects are represented in a n-dimensional
feature space
– Apply wavelet transform on feature space to find the dense regions in the feature
space
 – Apply wavelet transform multiple times which result in clusters at different scales
from fine to coarse

• Why is wavelet transformation useful for clustering

– Unsupervised clustering
It uses hat-shape filters to emphasize region where points cluster, but simultaneously to
suppress weaker information in their boundary
– Effective removal of outliers
– Multi-resolution
– Cost efficiency
• Major features:
– Complexity O(N)
– Detect arbitrary shaped clusters at different scales
– Not sensitive to noise, not sensitive to input order
– Only applicable to low dimensional data

CLIQUE (Clustering In QUEst)

• Agrawal, Gehrke, Gunopulos, Raghavan (SIGMOD’98).
• Automatically identifying subspaces of a high dimensional data space that allow better
clustering than original space
• CLIQUE can be considered as both density-based and grid-based
– It partitions each dimension into the same number of equal length interval
– It partitions an m-dimensional data space into non-overlapping rectangular units
– A unit is dense if the fraction of total data points contained in the unit exceeds the
input model parameter
– A cluster is a maximal set of connected dense units within a subspace

CLIQUE: The Major Steps

• Partition the data space and find the number of points that lie inside each cell of the
partition.
• Identify the subspaces that contain clusters using the Apriori principle
• Identify clusters:
– Determine dense units in all subspaces of interests
– Determine connected dense units in all subspaces of interests.
• Generate minimal description for the clusters
– Determine maximal regions that cover a cluster of connected dense units for each
cluster
– Determination of minimal cover for each cluster

Strength and Weakness of CLIQUE

• Strength
– It automatically finds subspaces of the highest dimensionality such that high
density clusters exist in those subspaces
– It is insensitive to the order of records in input and does not presume some
canonical data distribution
 – It scales linearly with the size of input and has good scalability as the number of
dimensions in the data increases
• Weakness
– The accuracy of the clustering result may be degraded at the expense of simplicity
of the method

Model-Based Clustering Methods

• Attempt to optimize the fit between the data and some mathematical model
• Statistical and AI approach
– Conceptual clustering
• A form of clustering in machine learning
• Produces a classification scheme for a set of unlabeled objects
• Finds characteristic description for each concept (class)
– COBWEB (Fisher’87)
• A popular a simple method of incremental conceptual learning
• Creates a hierarchical clustering in the form of a classification tree
• Each node refers to a concept and contains a probabilistic description of
that concept

COBWEB Clustering Method

A classification tree

More on Statistical-Based Clustering

• Limitations of COBWEB
– The assumption that the attributes are independent of each other is often too
strong because correlation may exist
– Not suitable for clustering large database data – skewed tree and expensive
probability distributions
• CLASSIT
– an extension of COBWEB for incremental clustering of continuous data
– suffers similar problems as COBWEB
• AutoClass (Cheeseman and Stutz, 1996)
– Uses Bayesian statistical analysis to estimate the number of clusters
– Popular in industry
Other Model-Based Clustering Methods
• Neural network approaches
– Represent each cluster as an exemplar, acting as a “prototype” of the cluster
– New objects are distributed to the cluster whose exemplar is the most similar
according to some distance measure.
• Competitive learning
– Involves a hierarchical architecture of several units (neurons)
– Neurons compete in a “winner-takes-all” fashion for the object currently being
presented.

Outlier Analysis
What Is Outlier Discovery?
• What are outliers?
– The set of objects are considerably dissimilar from the remainder of the data
– Example: Sports: Michael Jordon, Wayne Gretzky, ...
• Problem
– Find top n outlier points
• Applications:
– Credit card fraud detection
– Telecom fraud detection
– Customer segmentation
– Medical analysis
Outlier Discovery: Statistical Approaches

• Assume a model underlying distribution that generates data set (e.g. normal
distribution)
• Use discordancy tests depending on
– data distribution
– distribution parameter (e.g., mean, variance)
– number of expected outliers
• Drawbacks
– most tests are for single attribute
– In many cases, data distribution may not be known
Outlier Discovery: Distance-Based Approach
• Introduced to counter the main limitations imposed by statistical methods
– We need multi-dimensional analysis without knowing data distribution.
• Distance-based outlier: A DB(p, D)-outlier is an object O in a dataset T such that at least
a fraction p of the objects in T lies at a distance greater than D from O
• Algorithms for mining distance-based outliers
 – Index-based algorithm
– Nested-loop algorithm
– Cell-based algorithm
Outlier Discovery: Deviation-Based Approach
• Identifies outliers by examining the main characteristics of objects in a group
• Objects that “deviate” from this description are considered outliers
• sequential exception technique
– simulates the way in which humans can distinguish unusual objects from among a
series of supposedly like objects
• OLAP data cube technique
– uses data cubes to identify regions of anomalies in large multidimensional data

Applications of data mining.

• Data mining is a young discipline with wide and diverse applications
– There is still a nontrivial gap between general principles of data mining and
domain-specific, effective data mining tools for particular applications
• Some application domains (covered in this chapter)
– Biomedical and DNA data analysis
– Financial data analysis
– Retail industry
– Telecommunication industry

Biomedical Data Mining and DNA Analysis

• DNA sequences: 4 basic building blocks (nucleotides): adenine (A), cytosine (C),
guanine (G), and thymine (T).
• Gene: a sequence of hundreds of individual nucleotides arranged in a particular order
• Humans have around 100,000 genes
• Tremendous number of ways that the nucleotides can be ordered and sequenced to form
distinct genes
• Semantic integration of heterogeneous, distributed genome databases
– Current: highly distributed, uncontrolled generation and use of a wide variety of
DNA data
– Data cleaning and data integration methods developed in data mining will help
DNA Analysis: Examples
• Similarity search and comparison among DNA sequences
– Compare the frequently occurring patterns of each class (e.g., diseased and
healthy)
– Identify gene sequence patterns that play roles in various diseases
• Association analysis: identification of co-occurring gene sequences
– Most diseases are not triggered by a single gene but by a combination of genes
acting together
– Association analysis may help determine the kinds of genes that are likely to co-
occur together in target samples
• Path analysis: linking genes to different disease development stages
– Different genes may become active at different stages of the disease
– Develop pharmaceutical interventions that target the different stages separately
 • Visualization tools and genetic data analysis

Data Mining for Financial Data Analysis

• Financial data collected in banks and financial institutions are often relatively complete,
reliable, and of high quality
• Design and construction of data warehouses for multidimensional data analysis and data
mining
– View the debt and revenue changes by month, by region, by sector, and by other
factors
– Access statistical information such as max, min, total, average, trend, etc.
• Loan payment prediction/consumer credit policy analysis
– feature selection and attribute relevance ranking
– Loan payment performance
– Consumer credit rating

Financial Data Mining

• Classification and clustering of customers for targeted marketing
– multidimensional segmentation by nearest-neighbor, classification, decision trees,
etc. to identify customer groups or associate a new customer to an appropriate
customer group
• Detection of money laundering and other financial crimes
– integration of from multiple DBs (e.g., bank transactions, federal/state crime
history DBs)
– Tools: data visualization, linkage analysis, classification, clustering tools, outlier
analysis, and sequential pattern analysis tools (find unusual access sequences)

Data Mining for Retail Industry

• Retail industry: huge amounts of data on sales, customer shopping history, etc.
• Applications of retail data mining
– Identify customer buying behaviors
– Discover customer shopping patterns and trends
– Improve the quality of customer service
– Achieve better customer retention and satisfaction
– Enhance goods consumption ratios
– Design more effective goods transportation and distribution policies

Data Mining in Retail Industry: Examples

• Design and construction of data warehouses based on the benefits of data mining
– Multidimensional analysis of sales, customers, products, time, and region
• Analysis of the effectiveness of sales campaigns
• Customer retention: Analysis of customer loyalty
– Use customer loyalty card information to register sequences of purchases of
particular customers
– Use sequential pattern mining to investigate changes in customer consumption or
loyalty
– Suggest adjustments on the pricing and variety of goods
 • Purchase recommendation and cross-reference of items

Data Mining for Telecomm. Industry

• A rapidly expanding and highly competitive industry and a great demand for data mining
– Understand the business involved
– Identify telecommunication patterns
– Catch fraudulent activities
– Make better use of resources
– Improve the quality of service
• Multidimensional analysis of telecommunication data
– Intrinsically multidimensional: calling-time, duration, location of caller, location
of callee, type of call, etc.
• Fraudulent pattern analysis and the identification of unusual patterns
– Identify potentially fraudulent users and their atypical usage patterns
– Detect attempts to gain fraudulent entry to customer accounts
– Discover unusual patterns which may need special attention
• Multidimensional association and sequential pattern analysis
– Find usage patterns for a set of communication services by customer group, by
month, etc.
– Promote the sales of specific services
– Improve the availability of particular services in a region
• Use of visualization tools in telecommunication data analysis