Re-Mining Association Mining Results Through Visualization, Data Envelopment Analysis, And Decision Trees

Ertek, G., Tunç, M.M., (2012) “Re-Mining Association Mining Results through Visualization, Data
Envelopment Analysis, and Decision Trees”, in Computational Intelligence Applications in
Industrial Engineering, Ed: C. Kahraman, Springer.

Note: This is the final draft version of this paper. Please cite this paper (or this final draft) as
above. You can download this final draft from http://research.sabanciuniv.edu.

RE-MINING ASSOCIATION MINING RESULTS THROUGH
VISUALIZATION, DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS,
AND DECISION TREES

Gurdal Ertek

Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University
Sabanci University, 34956, Orhanli, Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey

Murat Mustafa Tunc
Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University
Sabanci University, 34956, Orhanli, Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey

2 G. Ertek, M. M. Tunc

Abstract

Re-mining is a general framework which suggests the execution of additional
data mining steps based on the results of an original data mining process. This
study investigates the multi-faceted re-mining of association mining results,
develops and presents a practical methodology, and shows the applicability of
the developed methodology through real world data. The methodology suggests
re-mining using data visualization, data envelopment analysis, and decision
trees. Six hypotheses, regarding how re-mining can be carried out on
association mining results, are answered in the case study through empirical
analysis.

1. Introduction

This study investigates how the results of association mining analysis can be analyzed
further using data visualization, data envelopment analysis, and the computational
intelligence method of decision trees.

Association mining is a popular data mining technique for operations management and
industrial engineering, and reveals associations between item sets within a large item set1.
While extensive literature exists on how to carry out association mining in a more efficient
way, research on the interpretation of association mining results is relatively narrow. The
initial motivation for data mining and association mining, which is the discovery of
actionable insights, has been mostly neglected in theoretical and algorithmic studies. What
is therefore needed is a set of methodologies that enable further analysis of data mining
results, including association mining results that will yield further discoveries.

Re-mining is a general framework which suggests the execution of additional data mining
steps based on the results of a data mining analysis2. Re-mining extends post-mining: Post-
mining directly analyzes the data mining results, whereas re-mining suggests the
incorporation of new attributes into the initial data mining results, enabling richer analysis
and deeper insights. Even though re-mining suggests a general approach, there is
considerable opportunity with respect to how it can be executed for various domains, data
structures, and data mining goals.

This chapter suggests three types of analysis for re-mining of association mining outputs:
As a pre-processing step, graph theoretic metrics are computed. Then, as the first analysis,
graph visualization is used for the display of items and their associations and to discover
actionable insights. Secondly, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is adopted to formalize the

Re-mining Association Mining Results 3

insights from the first analysis, and to identify items that deserve most focus in planning.
Finally, decision tree analysis is carried out to obtain additional insights regarding how
domain attributes and graph metrics affect the tendency to get involved in only positive
associations.

Ceteris paribus, given that every other factor remains the same, positive associations are
highly soughtafter in business practice. A manager would be highly interested in not only
identifying the positive and negative associations in items, but also the percentages of the
positive and negative associations for an item. A frequent item that engages in positive
associations can be considered as an attractor item, which increases the sales of the items it
clusters with 3. This is the reason that the presented research focuses on the tendency of an
item to get involved in only positive associations.

The contribution of this chapter is three-folds: Firstly, this is the first study, to the best of
our knowledge, that analyzes association mining results using graph theoretical metrics. Our
study formalizes how this analysis can be carried out through visualization and machine
learning. Secondly, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is adopted for the first time in
literature as a part of re-mining. Thirdly, the applicability and the usefulness of the
proposed methodology is demonstrated through real world data coming from a case study.

The research questions explored in this study are as follows:

Question Q1. How can visual re-mining that considers both positive and negative
associations of an item be carried out visually?

Question Q2. How can DEA be incorporated into re-mining?

Question Q3. Can the tendency of an item to engage in only positive associations be
related to its domain-specific attributes?

Question Q4. Can the tendency of an item to engage in only positive associations be
related to its metric values computed from its association graphs?

Question Q5. Can the relation in Q3 be predicted?

Question Q6. Can the relation in Q4 be predicted?

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 1.2 provides a brief review of
some relevant literature as the background for conceptual development. Section 1.3
discusses the methodology developed. Section 1.4 is devoted to the demonstration of the


methodology through a case study with data from the real world. Finally, Section 1.5 draws
some conclusive remarks from the research.

2. Literature

2.1. Association Mining

Association mining is a highly popular and useful data mining technique that is used in
both academia and industry for both production and service systems4. The input to
association mining is a transaction data, where each transaction contains a subset of items
coming from a given set. The typical output of association mining, also referred to as
association mining results, is the list of item sets that appear together frequently in
transactions, and the rules that describe how these associations affect each other1. The first
output is referred to as frequent itemsets, and the second output is referred to as association
rules. The frequent itemsets and the association rules can be extremely numerous, and
hence it is typical to specify a threshold support value while computing these results.

Support of an itemset (e.g.: {A,B}) or a rule (e.g. A⇒B) is the percentage of transactions
that the items in the itemset or the rule appear in. Support is also the primary metric related
with an itemset or rule that signifies importance. Another common metric in association
mining is confidence, and is defined only for association rules (when only the above two
outputs are generated). Confidence of a rule A⇒B is the conditional probability of item B
appearing in a transaction, given that item A readily appears in that transaction. A
mathematical description of the aforementioned concepts can be found in Demiriz et al2.

The standard algorithm for association mining is the Apriori algorithm, which was first
introduced by Agrawal et al.5 and has gained increased popularity ever since (1991 citations
for the original paper as of February 2012).Association mining is a standard module in
almost every data mining platform6, 7, 8 and can also be conducted through specialized
software9, 10.

The term association mining is commonly used to refer to only positive association
mining. However, negative association rules are also essential in real world applications.
Negative association does not simply refer to two items not appearing together. It refers to
the situation of two items not appearing together in transactions as frequently as they
should, when they are expected to do so, due to their independent associations with another
mediator item. Two applicable methods for computing negative associations are introduced


in Savasereet al.11and Tan et al.12, and the latter is applied in our study due to its
convenience of implementation.

2.2. Graph Visualization

Graph drawing refers to the drawing of graphs, which consist of nodes and arcs, through
specialized algorithms so as to obtain actionable insights13, 14. Graph visualization is a sub-
field of information visualization15, 16, 17. Many successful applications of graph visualization
are listed in Ertek et al.4.

2.3. Association Graphs

In this chapter, the associations between items are represented as graphs, and are
visualized using grid layout algorithm. Since the graphs presented in this study exclusively
depict associations, rather than anything else, they will be referred to as association graphs3,
4, following the terminology in Erteket al.3. In the presented association graphs, items are
represented as nodes and the positive or negative associations between the items are
represented as arcs. Grid layout algorithm snaps the items that are laid out according to a
force-directed algorithm onto a grid, such that associated items are positioned closer to
each other on the grid. The knowledge discovery from the grid layouts is enhanced through
the mapping of additional attributes to the node colors and sizes.

2.4. Re-mining

Re-mining is a broadly applicable concept, which refers to the “mining of a newly formed
data that is constructed upon the results of an original data mining process”2. In re-mining,
the enriched data includes not only the results of the original data mining process, but also
additional attributes. The goal is to obtain new insights that couldn’t have been discovered
otherwise, and to characterize, describe, and explain the results of the original data mining
process. Re-mining is a generalized extension of post-mining, which only summarizes the
results of the original process. Re-mining can involve any type of data mining analysis,
including exploratory, descriptive, and predictive analysis. In Demiriz et al.2, the original
data mining process is association mining, and it is proven through complexity analysis that
the running time for re-mining is polynomial in problem size, whereas it is exponential in
the alternative quantitative association mining (QAM).


2.5. Re-mining on Association Graphs

While the concept of re-mining was first introduced in a journal paper by Demiriz et al.2,
Ertek et al.3 is the first study that formalizes visual re-mining on association graphs. Erteket
al.18suggest a visual data re-mining process, based on association graphs, where values of
additional attributes are mapped onto node colors. The authors demonstrate the
applicability of the approach through a market basket analysis (MBA) case study.
Specifically, the mentioned study maps statistics on the attributes of customers (such as
gender, knowledge of French language, and hunger level) linearly to the node colors. The
statistics displayed (through node color) within a node are computed only for the customers
that select the item/itemset represented in that node. It is demonstrated that visual re-
mining of association graphs enables the discovery of links between transactional patterns
and customer attributes.

In this chapter, the node colors and sizes are not related to customer attributes, but are
rather related to domain-specific item attributes and the tendency of the item to get
involved in positive associations, rather than negative ones.

The visual re-mining on the association graphs answers research question Q1.

2.6. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) 19 is a highly popular20 and effective methodology that
can be implemented to benchmark a group of entities through efficiency scores. Through
the results of DEA, managers can obtain a multi-dimensional benchmark of the entities they
are comparing, such as items, stores, suppliers, etc., and gain actionable insights on how to
improve inefficient entities. These entities being compared are referred to as DMUs
(Decision Making Units). In DEA, calculation of efficiency scores (the primary benchmark
metric) for the DMUs is based on their input and output values. Inputs are the resources
consumed by the DMUs, for generating desired outputs. Efficiency score, which takes a
value between 0 and 1, increases as a DMU generates higher values of any of the outputs
when the input values are the same, or when a DMU generates the same values of the
outputs when any of the input values is lower.

Our methodology suggests the use of DEA to integrate the results from multiple visual
analyses. In the presented case study, a DEA model was constructed to identify the most
“efficient” items, where efficiency was defined as appearing in many transactions, engaging
in mostly positive associations, and having a high price (specifically, a high end-of-season
price), within a short lifetime.


The DEA model, which constitutes part of our methodology, answers research question
Q2.

2.7. Graph Metrics

Graph theory is the field of mathematics that investigates problems related to graphs. A
graph is composed of two types of entities, nodes that represent discrete, distinct entities
and arcs that connect the nodes. The nodes in a graph and the graph itself can be
characterized through graph metrics. In this chapter, several novel research questions are
pursued as listed in introduction, where Q4 relates to graph theory. To this end, graph
metrics are computed for each item (node on the association graph), and a classification
model is used for prediction. The computations are done on two different association
graphs, the one that displays only positive associations, and the one that displays only
negative ones. The graph metric attributes are named with the suffix POS or NEG, based on
which association graph the metric is computed for.

The graph metrics computed and used in this chapter are given as follows:

• Degree shows the number of connections for each node. It is an integer value, and it is
the summation of in degrees and out degrees of the node.

• Betweenness centrality represents total number of shortest paths for each pair of nodes,
if the node is on that path. It can take values between 0 and 1.

• Closeness centrality shows the distance between the node and every other node. It only
takes values between 0 and 1.

• Eigenvector centrality shows the distance between the node and every other “special”
node. It is a value between 0 and 1.

• Page rank is the value which only increases if the node is closely related with “special”
nodes, in other words, its closeness-centrality of “special” nodes is higher21.

• Clustering coefficient represents the tendency of aggregation for several nodes22. It can
only take values between 0 and 1.

Detailed information about these and other graph metrics are explained in Opsahlet
al.23and Christensen and Reka24.


2.8. Decision Trees

Decision treessummarizerule-based information regarding classification as trees. In
decision tree models, each node is split (branched) according to a criterion. Then, a tree is
constructed with depth. At each level, the attribute that creates the most increase compared
to the previous level is observed. The algorithms for decision tree analysis are explained in
Chien and Chen25. In our study, ID3 algorithm26 is used, and branches are created in Orange
software27. In decision trees, identifying the nodes that differs considerably from its root
node are our main focus. By observing the shares of slices and comparing with the parent
nodes, one can discover classification rules.

The decision trees answer research questions Q3 and Q4.

2.9. Classification

In the classification models, the dataset is divided into two groups, namely learning
dataset and test dataset. Algorithms that are referred as classifiers (or learners) use the
learning dataset in order to learn from data and predict the class attributes in the test
dataset. The prediction success of each learner is measured throughclassification
accuracy(CA), which is the percentage of correct predictions among all1. The following
classification algorithms are among the most well-known classifiers in the machine learning
field: Naive Bayes, k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN), C4.5, Support Vector Machines (SVM), and
Decision Trees28.

The classification model searches for answersto two of the novel research questions posed
in this chapter: Q5 and Q6.

3. Methodology

The methodologies described in the literature reviewed in section 2 have already been
developed and shown to be applicable. Association mining, classification, and decision trees
are especially well established methodologies within data mining1, 29, and graph theory is a
very extensive field of mathematics that has found its applications in almost every field of
science30, 31,32.DEA is a well-researched and vastly applied methodology for benchmarking20.
Association graphs, re-mining, and re-mining on association graphs are relatively much
newer methodologies. However, to the best of our knowledge, there does not exist a
methodology that links these diverse methodologies in a unified framework. Specifically, our
research shows that insights can be obtained for items that engage in only positive
association (and no negative associations) based on their association graph metrics or


domain-specific attributes. Our research also shows that exploratory and descriptive re-
mining may be very successful, whereas predictive re-mining may not yield satisfactory
results.

The methodology that we propose consists of the following steps:

Step 1. Perform positive association mining on the transactions database for obtaining
frequent item pairs (2-itemsets).

Step 2. Find negatively associated item pairs, using the results of Step 1.

Step 3. For each item, compute the percentage of positive associations it gets involved in.

Step 4. Construct two association graphs; one that shows only positive associations, and
the other that shows only negative associations. Items are represented as nodes, and
associations (positive or negative) are represented as arcs.

Step 5.Compute the graph metrics for each node (each item) in each of the two
association graphs.

Step 6.Construct the dataset for re-mining, where each row is an item (that got involved
in at least one positive association), and the columns are support count (SupC), domain-
specific item attributes (StartWeek, EndWeek, ...), percentage of positive associations
(PercOfPositiveAssoc), class labels that are defined based on percentage of positive
associations (PositiveAssoc takes value of 1, if PercOfPositiveAssoc=1)and graph metrics
obtained from Step 4 (DegreePOS, BetweennessCentralityPOS, ..., DegreeNEG,
BetweennessCentralityNEG, ...).

Step 7.Apply grid layout for the association graph, and map domain-specific attributes to
node color and size. Visually analyze the graphs for discovering actionable insights.

Step 8.Construct a DEA model, to combine the insights from multiple visual analysis,
and to find the most important items.

Step 9.Construct a classification model, to predict the items that engage in only positive
associations (items that have PercOfPositiveAssoc = 1). Construct decision trees, using the
classification model of Step 8.

Step 10.Apply multiple classifiers in the classification model and evaluate classification
accuracy.


In the next section, the described methodology is applied to a real world dataset coming
from an apparel retail company.

4. Case Study

4.1. Problem Description

The company that we work with inour research projects is one of the largest apparel retail
chains in Eurasia. Headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, the company has more than 300 retail
stores in Turkey alone, as well as more than 30 stores in more than 10 other countries. The data
analyzed comes from the men’s clothes line (one of the merchandise groups) and belongs to the
2007 summer season. Earlier research with the data proved the applicability of the re-mining
methodology2, and focused on the analysis of item pairs. The findings in this chapter relate to the
items as single entities.

The selection of retail industry for the case study is highly relevant, because this is an industry
where the business is centered on customer transactions as the revenue stream. Therefore, novel
and applicable data mining and machine learning methodologies for association mining can be
incorporated into the retail operations. Yet, there is a bigger picture: As of November 2010, the
retail industry in U.S. alone exceeded $ 377.5 billion33. This is a huge industry, and even the
smallest percentage improvement in operations can correspond to significant financial gains.

4.2. Analysis Process

As Step 1 of the proposed methodology, positive association mining was carried out on the
transaction database for obtaining frequent item pairs. The minimum support count was taken as
100, which means that only the item pairs that appeared in at least 100 transactions were
considered. A total of 3930 such frequent item pairs have been identified, involving 538 items.

Next, in Step 2, negatively associated item pairs were identified based on the items that formed
the frequent item pairs. A total of 2433 negatively associated item pairs were identified, involving
537 items of Step 1 (all items except one of them).

In Step 3, the percentage of positive associations each item gets engaged in
(PercOfPositiveAssoc) was computed. For this, all the associations for that item were filtered and
the percentage was computed as the number of positive associations divided by the total number of
associations. The distribution of PercOfPositiveAssoc is shown in Figure 1.

In Step 4, positive and negative association graphs were constructed using the Fruchterman-


Reingold force-directed algorithm34. It was not possible to obtain any immediate insights from the
association graphs.

In Step 5, graph metrics were computed for each node in the association graph, using NodeXL
add-in35, 36for Microsoft Excel. The computed metrics were the ones listed earlier in the literature
review.

Fig. 1. The distribution of PercOfPositiveAssoc values for analyzed items.

Fig. 2. The positive and negative association graphs for the transactions data set.


In Step 6, a dataset was formed for re-mining, where each row is an item that got involved in at
least one positive association. The first column in the dataset (key attribute) is the unique item
number. The second column in the dataset is the support count (SupC), which is the number of
transactions the item appears in. The domain specific attributes are the following:

• StartWeek: The week within the season when the sale of that item was started.

• EndWeek: The week within the season when the sale of that item was ended.

• LifeTime: The number of week the item stayed on sale.

• MaxPrice: The initial price of the item (in apparel retail industry, item prices are subject to
continuous markdowns, without any increases throughout the season).

• MinPrice: The final price of the item.

• PriceDiff: The difference between MaxPrice and MinPrice.

• MerchSubGrp: The merchandise subgroup the item belongs to.

• Category: The category the item belongs to.

The next column in the dataset is PercOfPositiveAssoc which was computed in Step 5. This
continuous value was then discretized into a class attribute (PositiveAssoc), where the target class
is AllPositiveAssoc (meaning that the item engages only in positive association, and no negative
associations). The remaining columns are the graph metric values for the item.

In Step 7, grid layout was applied in NodeXL for visualizing the association graph, based on
snapping the nodes positioned by the Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm34 on a grid.The insights
obtained in here are described detail later.

In Step 8, a DEA model was constructed using the SmartDEA Solver software37, which
implements the basic CCR and BCC models, and enables the generation of DEA outputs in a
database format.

InStep 9, decision trees were constructed for descriptive re-mining using C4.5 algorithm
(Figure 3).


Finally in Step 10, a classification model was constructed (Figure 3) in Orange data mining
software27, 38, to predict the class attribute PositiveAssoc. In our model for classification accuracy,
learning dataset was taken from 70% of overall dataset, with 20 repetitive sampling. This means
that for each learner, 20 random sampling of 70% of the dataset were executed as the learning
dataset, and the remaining was experimented as the test dataset. In the classification models,
random sampling was applied with %70 of the rows being the training set (376 rows), and the
remaining %30 being the test set (162 rows).

In the classification step, three models, namely Model A, B, C, have been developed. In all three
models, PositiveAssoc is the class attribute, in Model A, only domain related attributes are used as
predictors; in Model B, only graph metric attributes are used as predictors; in Model C, both
domain-specific attributes and graph metric attributes are used as predictors.

Fig. 3. The machine learning model for decision tree analysis and classification.

4.3. Graph Visualization

The analysis of association graphs can yield significant insights4. This section presents the
analysis of association graph visualizations, where each node’s color, size, and shape represents


attributes of that item. Actionable and practical insights and policies are obtained through the
graph visualizations.

Each node in the visualizations shows a particular apparel item and each arc (connecting two
nodes) shows an association (Figures2, 4, 5, 6). Black arcs denote positive associations and red
arcs denote negative associations. The graph visualization is automatically constructed through the
NodeXL graph analysis software, with the constraint of snapping all the nodes a rectangular grid.
The color of a node can denote any selected variable. Since the focus of this research is the
investigation of percentage of positive associations, color of each node is based on the
PercOfPositiveAssoc value for that item. Yellow node color denotes items that engage in mostly
negative associations, and darker nodes denote items that engage in more positive associations
(higher PercOfPositiveAssoc values). Similarly, the size of can denote any selected variable. In our
visualizations(Figure 5 and 6), the size of that node denotes the minimum price of that item.

The first observation in Figure4 is that the upper left quadrant of the graph consists mostly of
nodes. A further examination of the node colors reveals that the node colors in general are lighter
compared to the remaining regions of the graph, suggesting items that have many associations
tend to get involved in more negative associations, as well. This is consistent with the definition
and the computation method of negative associations.

Figure 4 also highlights very dark-colored outlier items within the items on the upper left
region, which engage in not only many associations, but also mostly (or completely) positive ones.
Everything else being the same, these items are very important, because they engage in many
associations on the positive association graph, and do not engage in much negative associations.
They complement many other items, and do not substitute many or even any items.


Fig. 4.Node color denotes the PercOfPositiveAssoc value of each item.

Figure 5 appends an additional dimension to Figure 4: The end-of-season sales prices
(MinPrice) of the items, represented through the node sizes. Larger node sizes denote higher
MaxPrice values. These high priced items also reside in the region that contains many positive
associations, and are thus very important for the retailer. The suggestion for the retailer would be
to understand the characteristics on these particular items and also sell these high-priced items
throughout the season to maximize the revenue, both through their high-price and through the
sales that they trigger as complements.


Fig. 5. Node size denotes the item’s minimum price, and the node color denotes the item’s
PercOfPositiveAssoc value. The highlighted item triggers the sales of many items and also
brings more revenue itself.

Finally, Figure 6 adds a new dimension to Figure 5: The categories of the items (category),
represented through the node shapes. This analysis enables the identification of whether the
important items in Figure 4 and 5 belong to a particular category or not. Highlighted nodes are in
the upper left region of the positive association graph (involvement in positive associations with
many items), have dark colors (high percentage of positive associations), have relatively large sizes
(high end-of-season prices), and all come from only one of the three item categories (the category
shown with a square). It is easy to see that almost all the items with the desired characteristics are
from the same item category. The analysis in this section shows that exploratory visual re-mining
brought significant insights and has thus been successful in this case study. The research question
Q1 has been answered positively.


Fig. 6. The size of the nodes shows the minimum price of the items, the color of the nodes
illustrates PercOfPositiveAssoc values, and node shape denotes the category.

4.4. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

The DEA model was constructed so that the insights obtained from visual re-mining can be
integrated within a unified analytical method. Thus, DEA is introduced not as a data mining
method, but as a method to formally and analytically integrate the insights that can be obtained
through the above visual data analysis. The DEA model considers three criteria, and treats their
values as outputs. Since there were no inputs discussed in the visual re-mining section, there exists
only a single auxiliary input, which takes the value of 1 for all the DMUs. The outputs are the
support count (SupC), percentage of positive associations the items gets engaged in
(PercOfPositiveAssoc), and the end-of-season price (MinPrice) of the items. Since the values for all
the outputs are non-negative, the BCC models, which were introduced by Banker et al.39 were
found most appropriate selected, due to their allowance for variable returns to scale. Since the
input values are auxiliary, all equal to 1, and cannot be changed, the goal of a DMU is to increase
the values of its outputs (the values for performance criteria). This perspective is reflected in the
selected DEA model, which is the output-oriented BCC model (BCC-O).


Table 1. Results of the DEA model, together with the inputs and outputs.

I E Eff Inp Inp Perc Su Mi
tem ff1* 2** ut_Au ut_Lif OfPosi pC nPrice
xiliary eTime tiveAss
oc

0 Y Ye 1 16 91.6 41 19.
59 es s 7 57 99

0 Y Ye 1 26 92.3 89 14.
87 es s 1 47 90
1 11
0 Y Ye 75.0 46 41.
94 es s 1 32 0 47 57

1 Y Ye 30.0 34
06 es s 0 6933 9.25

1 N Ye 1 7 75.0 44 34.
69 o s 0 64 90

2 N Ye 1 8 87.5 43 23.
89 o s 0 17 06

4 Y Ye 1 13 88. 26 34.
12 es s 89 58 90

4 N Ye 1 10 91.6 49 14.
38 o s 7 99 90

5 N Ye 1 4 80. 511 13.
13 o s 00 5 80

The results of DEA for the described model generate 84 efficient items. However, all but one of
these items are efficient because they have PercOfPositiveAssoc=100, the highest value possible.
Therefore, a new DEA model was constructed, that excluded these 83 items that engage in only
positive associations. This time, five items were found to be efficient (first five items of Table 1).
Finally, a new, third DEA model was constructed, that treated LifeTime as the only input. This


time, nine items were found to be efficient (Table 1). This third model considers the effect of life
time of an item, and praises items that achieve more of the desired qualities in less time.The
research question Q2 of how DEA can be integrated into re-mining is now answered.

4.5. Decision Trees

In both decision tree analysis (for Q3 and Q4) and classification analysis (for Q5 and Q6), three
models, namely Model A, B, C, have been developed. In all three models, AllPositiveAssoc
(whether the item engages only in positive associations) is the class attribute. In Model A, only
domain related attributes are used as predictors; in Model B, only the graph metric attributes
computed from the positive association graph are used as predictors; in Model C, only the graph
metric attributes computed from the negative association graph are used as predictors. The list of
predictors in each model is given below:

Model A:StartWeek, EndWeek, LifeTime, MaxPrice, MinPrice, PriceDiff;

Model B:DegreePOS, BetweennessCentralityPOS, ClosenessCentralityPOS,
EigenvectorCentralityPOS, PageRankPOS, ClusteringCoefficientPOS

Model C:DegreeNEG, BetweennessCentralityNEG, ClosenessCentralityNEG,
EigenvectorCentralityNEG, PageRankNEG, ClusteringCoefficientNEG

Figures 7-9 show the decision trees constructed for Models A, B, and C, respectively. In these
decision trees, dark slices denote the share of items that engage in only positive associations
(AllPositiveAssoc=AllPositive).

In Figure 7, it can be observed that items that have large price differences (>26.490) through
the season have a higher chance of having only positive associations, as denoted by the larger share
of the dark-colored slice. This chance increases if the item is taken out of the market before week
37, and increases even more if the item is introduced before week 22. These three pieces of
information print out strategies on when an item should be introduced, until when it should be
sold in stores, and how much of a price difference (PriceDiff=MaxPrice-MinPrice), it should have
between its initial price (MaxPrice) and final end-of-season price (MinPrice).


Fig. 7.Decision Tree for Model A.

In Figure 8, it can be observed that items that have a BetweenCentralityPOS=0 in the positive
association graph have no chance of engaging in only positive associations. Among the other items,
ClusteringCoefficientPOS ≤ 5 and even more when EigenVectorCentralityPOS ≥ 0.

How can the findings of this decision tree be used in practice? The results obtained from
decision tree help us indentify the subgroup of items that have high chance of engaging in only
positive associations. So, without carrying negative association mining for new data sets (not a
readily available analysis type in many commercial software), one can obtain idea on how to search
for important items.

Figure 9 shows the decision tree for Model C. This decision tree summarizes the behavior of all-
positively associated items with respect to negative associations. Where would one find all-
positively associated items the most? The answer is “when DegreeNEG=3 or 4 and
ClusteringCoefficientNEG ≥ 0.4”.Research questions Q3 and Q4 have been answered in this
section.


Fig. 8.Decision Tree for Model B.

Fig. 9.Decision Tree for Model C.

4.6. Classification

The classification accuracies obtained for the three models using various learners are presented
in Table 2. In all three models, it is possible to achieve a classification accuracy of at most 83.57%.
However, the percentage of items with only positive associations is 15.45%, meaning that if a
classifier guessed none of the items to have all-positive associations, the average classifier accuracy
would still be 84.55%. Clearly, the classification models predict worse than a blind guess, and thus
predictive re-mining through classification was not successful in this case study, despite the


success of exploratory and descriptive re-mining. Furthermore, a stepwise regression analysis,
which is not described here, yielded a very low adjusted R2 value of 0.2180, suggesting that neither
the domain attributes nor the graph metrics cannot be used in a linear regression model to predict
PercOfPositiveAssoc. The answers to both Q5 and Q6 are “No”.

Table 2. Classification Results (Classification Accuracies).

Classifier Mode Mode Mod
lA lB el C

C4.5 0.82 0.80 0.756
04 00 2

SVM 0.83 0.80 0.80
57 63 94

kNN 0.759 0.74 0.70
2 06 94

Naïve 0.762 0.631 0.72
Bayes 2 3 81

5. Conclusion

In this chapter, a novel computational intelligence methodology was introduced for practical re-
mining. The methodology combines association mining, graph theory, classification, DEA, and re-
mining, for answering six novel research questions.

The application of the methodology in a case study demonstrates the applicability and
usefulness of exploratory and descriptive re-mining. The tendency of an item to engage in positive
associations is related to its graph metric values computed from the association graphs, and to its
domain-specific attributes. However, predictive re-mining through classification and stepwise
regression did not prove useful in the context of the case study.


Acknowledgement

The authors thank Ayhan Demiriz of Sakarya University for providing the data for this study.
The authors also thank Ilhan Karabulut for her work that inspiredthe visual re-mining approach
on association graphs.

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