Apriori

The Apriori algorithm is used for association rule discovery. Association rules are statements of the form, “if X, then Y “, given with some measure of confidence.

The main application for association rule discovery is market basket analysis, in which X and Y are products or groups of products, and the occurrences are individual transactions, or “market baskets.” The results help sellers learn relationships between the products they sell, supporting better marketing decisions.

Besides market basket analysis, association rule discovery has been used in the areas of text mining and bioinformatics. Function imsl.data_mining.frequent_itemsets() and classes imsl.data_mining.FrequentItemSets and imsl.data_mining.AssociationRule implement the Apriori algorithm. They can also be used to perform the Apriori algorithm on subsets of transactions and to aggregate the results.