An introduction to frequent pattern mining - The Data Mining Blog

In this blog post, I will give a brief overview of an important subfield of data mining that is called pattern mining. Pattern mining consists of using/developing data mining algorithms to discover interesting, unexpected and useful patterns in databases. Pattern mining algorithms can be applied on various types of data such as transaction databases, sequence databases, streams, strings, spatial data, graphs, etc. Pattern mining algorithms can be designed to discover various types of patterns: subgraphs, associations, indirect associations, trends, periodic patterns, sequential rules, lattices, sequential patterns, high-utility patterns, etc. But what is an interesting pattern? For example, some researchers define an interesting pattern as a pattern that appears frequently in a database. Other researchers wants to discover rare patterns, patterns with a high confidence, the top patterns, etc.