Frequent Itemset Mining &

Association Rules
Association Rule Discovery
Supermarket shelf management – Market-basket
model:
 Goal: Identify items that are bought together by
sufficiently many customers
 Approach: Process the sales data collected with
barcode scanners to find dependencies among
items
 A classic rule:
 If someone buys diaper and milk, then he/she is
likely to buy beer
 Don’t be surprised if you find six-packs next to diapers!
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 2
The Market-Basket Model
Input:
 A large set of items
 e.g., things sold in a
supermarket
 A large set of baskets
 Each basket is a
small subset of items Output:
 e.g., the things one Rules
RulesDiscovered:
Discovered:
{Milk}
{Milk}-->
-->{Coke}
{Coke}
customer buys on one day {Diaper,
{Diaper,Milk}
Milk}-->
-->{Beer}
{Beer}
 Want to discover
association rules
 People who bought {x,y,z} tend to buy {v,w}
 Amazon!
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 3
Applications – (1)
 Items = products; Baskets = sets of products
someone bought in one trip to the store
 Real market baskets: Chain stores keep TBs of
data about what customers buy together
 Tells how typical customers navigate stores, lets
them position tempting items
 Suggests tie-in “tricks”, e.g., run sale on diapers
and raise the price of beer
 Need the rule to occur frequently, or no $$’s
 Amazon’s people who bought X also bought Y

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 4

Applications – (2)
 Baskets = sentences; Items = documents
containing those sentences
 Items that appear together too often could
represent plagiarism
 Notice items do not have to be “in” baskets

 Baskets = patients; Items = drugs & side-effects

 Has been used to detect combinations
of drugs that result in particular side-effects
 But requires extension: Absence of an item
needs to be observed as well as presence
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 5
More generally
 A general many-to-many mapping
(association) between two kinds of things
 But we ask about connections among “items”,
not “baskets”

 For example:
 Finding communities in graphs (e.g., Twitter)

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Example:
 Finding communities in graphs (e.g., Twitter)
 Baskets = nodes; Items = outgoing neighbors
 Searching for complete bipartite subgraphs Ks,t of a
big graph  How?
 View each node i as a
basket Bi of nodes i it points to
t nodes
s nodes

 Ks,t = a set Y of size t that

occurs in s buckets Bi
…
…

 Looking for Ks,t  set of

A dense 2-layer graph support s and look at layer t –
all frequent sets of size t
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 17
Outline
First: Define
Frequent itemsets
Association rules:
Confidence, Support, Interestingness
Then: Algorithms for finding frequent itemsets
Finding frequent pairs
A-Priori algorithm
PCY algorithm + 2 refinements

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 18

Example: Frequent Itemsets

 Items = {milk, coke, pepsi, beer, juice}

 Support threshold = 3 baskets
B1 = {m, c, b} B2 = {m, p, j}
B3 = {m, b} B4 = {c, j}
B5 = {m, p, b} B6 = {m, c, b, j}
B7 = {c, b, j} B8 = {b, c}
 Frequent itemsets: {m}, {c}, {b}, {j},
{m,b} , {b,c} , {c,j}.

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 20

Association Rules
 Association Rules:
If-then rules about the contents of baskets
 {i1, i2,…,ik} → j means: “if a basket contains
all of i1,…,ik then it is likely to contain j”
 In practice there are many rules, want to find
significant/interesting ones!
 Confidence of this association rule is the
probability of j given I = {i1,…,ik}

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 21

Interesting Association Rules
 Not all high-confidence rules are interesting
 The rule X → milk may have high confidence for
many itemsets X, because milk is just purchased very
often (independent of X) and the confidence will be
high
 Interest of an association rule I→ j:
difference between its confidence and the
fraction of baskets that contain j

 Interesting rules are those with high positive or

negative interest values (usually above 0.5)
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 22
Example: Confidence and Interest
B1 = {m, c, b} B2 = {m, p, j}
B3 = {m, b} B4= {c, j}
B5 = {m, p, b} B6 = {m, c, b, j}
B7 = {c, b, j} B8 = {b, c}

 Association rule: {m, b} →c

 Confidence = 2/4 = 0.5
 Interest = |0.5 – 5/8| = 1/8
 Item c appears in 5/8 of the baskets
 Rule is not very interesting!

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Finding Frequent Itemsets
 Itemsets: Computation Model
Item
 Back to finding frequent itemsets Item
Item
 Typically, data is kept in flat files Item
Item
rather than in a database system: Item
Item
 Stored on disk Item
Item
 Stored basket-by-basket Item
Item

 Baskets are small but we have Item

many baskets and many items

Etc.
 Expand baskets into pairs, triples, etc.
as you read baskets
 Use k nested loops to generate all
sets of size k Items are positive integers,
Note: We want to find frequent itemsets. To find them, we and boundaries between
have to count them. To count them, we have to generate them. baskets are –1.
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 30
Computation Model
 The true cost of mining disk-resident data is
usually the number of disk I/Os

 In practice, association-rule algorithms read

the data in passes – all baskets read in turn

 We measure the cost by the number of

passes an algorithm makes over the data

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 31

Main-Memory Bottleneck
 For many frequent-itemset algorithms,
main-memory is the critical resource
 As we read baskets, we need to count
something, e.g., occurrences of pairs of items
 The number of different things we can count
is limited by main memory
 Swapping counts in/out is a disaster (why?)

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Finding Frequent Pairs
 The hardest problem often turns out to be
finding the frequent pairs of items {i1, i2}
 Why? Freq. pairs are common, freq. triples are rare
 Why? Probability of being frequent drops exponentially
with size; number of sets grows more slowly with size
 Let’s first concentrate on pairs, then extend to
larger sets
 The approach:
 We always need to generate all the itemsets
 But we would only like to count (keep track) of those
itemsets that in the end turn out to be frequent
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 33
Naïve Algorithm
 Naïve approach to finding frequent pairs
 Read file once, counting in main memory
the occurrences of each pair:
 From each basket of n items, generate its
n(n-1)/2 pairs by two nested loops
 Fails if (#items)2 exceeds main memory
 Remember: #items can be
100K (Wal-Mart) or 10B (Web pages)
 Suppose 105 items, counts are 4-byte integers
 Number of pairs of items: 105(105-1)/2 = 5*109
 Therefore, 2*1010 (20 gigabytes) of memory needed
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 34
Counting Pairs in Memory
Two approaches:
 Approach 1: Count all pairs using a matrix
 Approach 2: Keep a table of triples [i, j, c] = “the
count of the pair of items {i, j} is c.”
 If integers and item ids are 4 bytes, we need
approximately 12 bytes for pairs with count > 0
 Plus some additional overhead for the hashtable
Note:
 Approach 1 only requires 4 bytes per pair
 Approach 2 uses 12 bytes per pair
(but only for pairs with count > 0)
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 35
Comparing the 2 Approaches

12 per
4 bytes per pair
occurring pair

Triangular Matrix Triples

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 36

Comparing the two approaches
 Approach 1: Triangular Matrix
 n = total number items
 Count pair of items {i, j} only if i<j
 Keep pair counts in lexicographic order:
 {1,2}, {1,3},…, {1,n}, {2,3}, {2,4},…,{2,n}, {3,4},…
 Pair {i, j} is at position (i –1)(n– i/2) + j –1
 Total number of pairs n(n –1)/2; total bytes= 2n2
 Triangular Matrix requires 4 bytes per pair
 Approach 2 uses 12 bytes per occurring pair
(but only for pairs with count > 0)
 Beats Approach 1 if less than 1/3 of
possible pairs actually occur
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 37
Comparing the two approaches
 Approach 1: Triangular Matrix
 n = total number items
 Count pair of items {i, j} only if i<j
 Keep pair counts in lexicographic order:
Problem is if we have too
 {1,2}, {1,3},…, {1,n}, {2,3}, {2,4},…,{2,n}, {3,4},…
 Pair {i,many items(i –1)(n–
j} is at position so the i/2)pairs
+ j –1
do not
 Total number fit into
of pairs memory.
n(n –1)/2; total bytes= 2n2
 Triangular Matrix requires 4 bytes per pair
Can we do better?
 Approach 2 uses 12 bytes per pair
(but only for pairs with count > 0)
 Beats Approach 1 if less than 1/3 of
possible pairs actually occur
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 38
A-Priori Algorithm
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Example

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Example 2

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 ** Note here we generate new candidates by
generating Ck from Lk-1 and L1.

Example But that one can be more careful with candidate

generation. For example, in C3 we know {b,m,j}
cannot be frequent since {m,j} is not frequent

 Hypothetical steps of the A-Priori algorithm

 C1 = { {b} {c} {j} {m} {n} {p} }
 Count the support of itemsets in C1
 Prune non-frequent: L1 = { b, c, j, m }
 Generate C2 = { {b,c} {b,j} {b,m} {c,j} {c,m} {j,m} }
 Count the support of itemsets in C2
 Prune non-frequent: L2 = { {b,m} {b,c} {c,m} {c,j} }
 Generate C3 = { {b,c,m} {b,c,j} {b,m,j} {c,m,j} }
 Count the support of itemsets in C3 **

 Prune non-frequent: L3 = { {b,c,m} }

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 77
PCY (Park-Chen-Yu) Algorithm
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Organize Memory

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PCY Algorithm

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Example

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Multistage PCY

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PCY (Park-Chen-Yu) Algorithm
 Observation:
In pass 1 of A-Priori, most memory is idle
 We store only individual item counts
 Can we use the idle memory to reduce
memory required in pass 2?
 Pass 1 of PCY: In addition to item counts,
maintain a hash table with as many
buckets as fit in memory
 Keep a count for each bucket into which
pairs of items are hashed
 For each bucket just keep the count, not the actual
pairs that hash to the bucket!
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 PCY Algorithm – First Pass
FOR (each basket) :
FOR (each item in the basket) :
add 1 to item’s count;
New FOR (each pair of items) :
in hash the pair to a bucket;
PCY add 1 to the count for that bucket;

 Few things to note:

 Pairs of items need to be generated from the input
file; they are not present in the file
 We are not just interested in the presence of a pair,
but we need to see whether it is present at least s
(support) times
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Observations about Buckets
 Observation: If a bucket contains a frequent pair, then
the bucket is surely frequent
 However, even without any frequent pair,
a bucket can still be frequent 
 So, we cannot use the hash to eliminate any
member (pair) of a “frequent” bucket
 But, for a bucket with total count less than s,
none of its pairs can be frequent 
 Pairs that hash to this bucket can be eliminated as candidates
(even if the pair consists of 2 frequent items)

 Pass 2:
Only count pairs that hash to frequent buckets
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 111
PCY Algorithm – Between Passes
 Replace the buckets by a bit-vector:
 1 means the bucket count exceeded the support s
(call it a frequent bucket); 0 means it did not

 4-byte integer counts are replaced by bits,

so the bit-vector requires 1/32 of memory

 Also, decide which items are frequent

and list them for the second pass

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 112

PCY Algorithm – Pass 2
 Count all pairs {i, j} that meet the
conditions for being a candidate pair:
1. Both i and j are frequent items
2. The pair {i, j} hashes to a bucket whose bit in
the bit vector is 1 (i.e., a frequent bucket)

 Both conditions are necessary for the

pair to have a chance of being frequent

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 113

Main-Memory: Picture of PCY

Item counts Frequent items

Bitmap
Main memory

Hash
Hash table
table Counts of
for pairs
candidate
pairs

Pass 1 Pass 2

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 114

Main-Memory Details
 Buckets require a few bytes each:
 Note: we do not have to count past s
 #buckets is O(main-memory size)

 On second pass, a table of (item, item, count)

triples is essential (we cannot use triangular
matrix approach, why?)
 Thus, hash table must eliminate approx. 2/3
of the candidate pairs for PCY to beat A-Priori

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 115

Refinement: Multistage Algorithm
 Limit the number of candidates to be counted
 Remember: Memory is the bottleneck
 Still need to generate all the itemsets but we only want
to count/keep track of the ones that are frequent
 Key idea: After Pass 1 of PCY, rehash only those
pairs that qualify for Pass 2 of PCY
 i and j are frequent, and
 {i, j} hashes to a frequent bucket from Pass 1
 On middle pass, fewer pairs contribute to
buckets, so fewer false positives
 Requires 3 passes over the data

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 116

Main-Memory: Multistage
Item counts Freq. items Freq. items
Main memory

Bitmap 1 Bitmap 1

First Bitmap 2
hash table
First
Second Counts
hash table Counts of
of
hash table candidate
candidate
pairs
pairs

Pass 1 Pass 2 Pass 3

Hash pairs {i,j} Count pairs {i,j} iff:
Count items into Hash2 iff: i,j are frequent,
Hash pairs {i,j} i,j are frequent, {i,j} hashes to
{i,j} hashes to freq. bucket in B1
freq. bucket in B1 {i,j} hashes to
freq. bucket in B2
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 117
Multistage – Pass 3
 Count only those pairs {i, j} that satisfy these
candidate pair conditions:
1. Both i and j are frequent items
2. Using the first hash function, the pair hashes to
a bucket whose bit in the first bit-vector is 1
3. Using the second hash function, the pair hashes to
a bucket whose bit in the second bit-vector is 1

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 118

Important Points
1. The two hash functions have to be
independent
2. We need to check both hashes on the
third pass
 If not, we would end up counting pairs of
frequent items that hashed first to an
infrequent bucket but happened to hash
second to a frequent bucket

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 119

Refinement: Multihash
 Key idea: Use several independent hash
tables on the first pass
 Risk: Halving the number of buckets doubles
the average count
 We have to be sure most buckets will still not
reach count s

 If so, we can get a benefit like multistage,

but in only 2 passes

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 120

Main-Memory: Multihash

Item counts Freq. items

Bitmap 1
Main memory

First
First hash
hash table
table Bitmap 2

Counts
Countsofof
Second
Second candidate
candidate
hash table
hash table pairs
pairs

Pass 1 Pass 2

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 121

PCY: Extensions
 Either multistage or multihash can use more
than two hash functions

 In multistage, there is a point of diminishing

returns, since the bit-vectors eventually
consume all of main memory

 For multihash, the bit-vectors occupy exactly

what one PCY bitmap does, but too many
hash functions makes all counts > s
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 122
SON Algorithm – (1)
 Repeatedly read small subsets of the baskets
into main memory and run an in-memory
algorithm to find all frequent itemsets
 Note: we are not sampling, but processing the
entire file in memory-sized chunks

 An itemset becomes a candidate if it is found

to be frequent in any one or more subsets of
the baskets.

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 127

SON Algorithm – (2)
 On a second pass, count all the candidate
itemsets and determine which are frequent in
the entire set

 Key “monotonicity” idea: an itemset cannot

be frequent in the entire set of baskets unless
it is frequent in at least one subset.

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 128

SON – Distributed Version
 SON lends itself to distributed data mining

 Baskets distributed among many nodes

 Compute frequent itemsets at each node
 Distribute candidates to all nodes
 Accumulate the counts of all candidates

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 129

SON: Map/Reduce
 Phase 1: Find candidate itemsets
 Map?
 Reduce?

 Phase 2: Find true frequent itemsets

 Map?
 Reduce?

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 130