Sequential pattern mining with time intervals

Abstract

Sequential pattern mining can be used to extract frequent sequences maintaining their transaction order. As conventional sequential pattern mining methods do not consider transaction occurrence time intervals, it is impossible to predict the time intervals of any two transactions extracted as frequent sequences. Thus, from extracted sequential patterns, although users are able to predict what events will occur, they are not able to predict when the events will occur. Here, we propose a new sequential pattern mining method that considers time intervals. Using Japanese earthquake data, we confirmed that our method is able to extract new types of frequent sequences that are not extracted by conventional sequential pattern mining methods. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.