Postdiffset: an Eclat-like algorithm for frequent itemset mining

Abstract

Frequent itemset mining is a major field in data mining techniques. This is because it deals with usual and normal occurrences of set of items in a database transaction. Originated from market basket analysis, frequent itemset generation may lead to the formulation of association rule as to derive correlation or patterns.  Association rule mining still remains as one of the most prominent areas in data mining that aims to extract interesting correlations, frequent patterns, association or casual structures among set of items in the transaction databases. Underlying structure of association rules mining algorithms are based upon horizontal or vertical data formats. These two data formats have been widely discussed by showing few examples of algorithm of each data formats. The works on horizontal approaches suffer in many candidate generation and multiple database scans that contributes to higher memory consumptions. In response to improve on horizontal approach, the works on vertical approaches are established. Eclat algorithm is one example of algorithm in vertical approach database format. Motivated to its ‘fast intersection’, in this paper, we review and analyze the fundamental Eclat and Eclat-variants such as tidset, diffset, and sortdiffset. In response to vertical data format and as a continuity to Eclat extension, we propose a postdiffset algorithm as a new member in Eclat variants that use tidset format in the first looping and diffset in the later looping. We present the performance of postdiffset results in time execution as to indicate some improvements has been achieved in frequent itemset mining.