Association Rule Mining -- Not Your Typical ML Algorithm

Many mathematical algorithms that we use in data science and machine learning require numeric data. And many algorithms tend to be very complex to implement (such as Support Vector Machines or Local Linear Embedding, which we previously discussed). But, association rule mining is perfect for categorical (non-numeric) data and it involves nothing more than simple counting! What we have here is a simple algorithm with not so simplistic results! The ratio of actionable insights discovery potential (high) to algorithm complexity (low) is quite large and atypical, IMHO.