C.-C.

Chan
Department of Computer Science
University of Akron
Akron, OH 44325-4003
USA
chan@uakron.edu

UA Faculty Forum 2008 by C.-C. Chan 1

Outline
Overview of Data Mining
Software Tools
A Rule-Based System for Data Mining
Concluding Remarks

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Data Mining (KDD)
From Data to Knowledge
Process of KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases)
Related Technologies
Comparisons

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Why KDD?
We are drowning in information, but starving for
knowledge  John Naisbett

Growing Gap between Data Generation and Data

Understanding:
Automation of business activities:
Telephone calls, credit card charges, medical tests, etc.
Earth observation satellites:
Estimated will generate one terabyte (10 15 bytes) of data per day. At a rate of
one picture per second.
Biology:
Human Genome database project has collected over gigabytes of data on the human
genetic code [Fasman, Cuticchia, Kingsbury, 1994.]
US Census data:
NASA databases:
…
World Wide Web:

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Process of KDD

[1] Fayyad, U., Editorial, Int. J. of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Vol.1, Issue 1, 1997.
[2] Fayyad, U., G. Piatetsky-Shapiro, and P. Smyth, "From data mining to knowledge discovery: an
overview," in Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining , Fayyad et al (Eds.), MIT Press, 1996.

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Process of KDD

1. Selection
 Learning the application domain
 Creating a target dataset
2. Pre-Processing
 Data cleaning and preprocessing
3. Transformation
 Data reduction and projection
4. Data Mining
 Choosing the functions and algorithms of data mining
 Association rules, classification rules, clustering rules
5. Interpretation and Evaluation
 Validate and verify discovered patterns
6. Using discovered knowledge

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Typical Data Mining Tasks
Finding Association Rules [Rakesh Agrawal et al, 1993]
 Each transaction is a set of items.
Given a set of transactions, an association rule is of the form
XY
where X and Y are sets of items.
 e.g.: 30% of transactions that contain beer also contain diapers;
 2% of all transactions contain both of these items.
Applications:
 Market basket analysis and cross-marketing
 Catalog design
 Store layout
 Buying patterns

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Finding Sequential Patterns
 Each data sequence is a list of transactions.
 Find all sequential patterns with a user-specified minimum support.
 e.g.: Consider a book-club database

 A sequential pattern might be

 5% of customers bought “Harry Potter I”, then “Harry Potter

II”, and then “Harry Potter III”.

Applications:
 Add-on sales
 Customer satisfaction
 Identify symptoms/diseases that precede certain diseases

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Finding Classification Rules
 Finding discriminant rules for objects of different classes.
Approaches:
 Finding Decision Trees
 Finding Production Rules

Applications:
Process loans and credit cards applications
Model identification

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Text Mining
Web Usage Mining
Etc.

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Related Technologies
 Database Systems
 MS SQL server
 Transaction databases
 OLAP (Data Cubes)
 Data Mining
 Decision Trees
 Clustering Tools

 Machine Learning/Data Mining Systems

 CART (Classification And Regression Trees)
 C 5.x (Decision Trees)
 WEKA (Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis)
 LERS
 ROSE 2
 Rule-Based Expert System Development Environments
 CLIPS, JESS
 EXSYS
 Web-based Platforms
 Java
 MS .Net

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 Comparisons

Pre- Learning Inference End-User Web-Based Reasoning

Processing Data Mining Engine Interface Access with
Uncertaintie
s
MS SQL N/A Decision Trees N/A N/A N/A N/A
Server Clustering

CART N/A Decision Trees Built-in Embedded N/A N/A

C 5.x
WEKA Yes Trees, Rules, N/A Embedded Need N/A
Clustering, Programming
Association

CLIPS N/A N/A Built-in Embedded Need 3rd parties

JESS Programming Extensions

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Rule-Based Data Mining System
Objectives
Develop an integrated rule-based data mining system
provides
Synergy of database systems, machine learning, and
expert systems
Dealing with uncertain rules
Delivery of web-based user interface

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Structure of Rule-Based Systems
Working M atcher
Memory

Selector
Rule
Base
Execution

No
Answer

Yes

Inference
Result

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System Workflow

User
Input Data Pre- Rule Interface
Data Set processing Generator Generator

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Input Data Set:
 Text file with comma separated values (CSV)
 It is assumed that there are N columns of values corresponding to
N variables or parameters, which may be real or symbolic values.
 The first N – 1 variables are considered as inputs and the last one is
the output variable.
Data Preprocessing:
 Discretize domains of real variables into a finite number of
intervals
 Discretized data file is then used to generate an attribute
information file and a training data file.
Rule Generator:
 A symbolic learning program called BLEM2 is used to generate
rules with uncertainty
User Interface Generator:
 Generate a web-based rule-based system from a rule file and
corresponding attribute file

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Architecture of RBC generator
Requests

Client SQL DB server

Middle Tier
Responses

Workflow of RBC generator

Rule set File Metadata File

RBC Generator

Rule Table Definition

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Concluding Remarks
A system for generating rule-based classifier from
data with the following benefits:
No need of end user programming
Automatic rule-based system creation
Delivery system is web-based provides easy access

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Project Status
The current version 1.4 of our system provides
fundamental features for data mining from data
including:
Data Preprocessing
Management of preprocessed data files
Machine Learning tool to generate rules from data
Rule-Based Classifier system supporting uncertain rules
Web-Based access

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Future Work
More advanced features in Data Preprocessing such
as data cleansing, data transformation, and data
statistics
Learning from multi-criteria inputs with preferential
rankings to support Multiple Criteria Decision
Making processes
Concept-Oriented information retrieval and search

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 Thank You!

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