Learning Data Mining with Python - Second Edition

Algorithms for affinity analysis

We introduced a basic method for affinity analysis in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Data Mining, which tested all of the possible rule combinations. We computed the confidence and support for each rule, which in turn allowed us to rank them to find the best rules.

However, this approach is not efficient. Our dataset in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Data Mining, had just five items for sale. We could expect even a small store to have hundreds of items for sale, while many online stores would have thousands (or millions!). With a naive rule creation, such as our previous algorithm from Chapter 1, Getting Started with Data Mining, the growth in the time needed to compute these rules increases exponentially. ...