New Approach for Market Intelligence Using Artificial and Computational Intelligence

Small and medium sized retailers are central to the private sector and a vital contributor to economic growth, but often they face enormous challenges in unleashing their full potential. Financial pitfalls, lack of adequate access to markets, and difficulties in exploiting technology have prevented them from achieving optimal productivity. Market Intelligence (MI) is the knowledge extracted from numerous internal and external data sources, aimed at providing a holistic view of the state of the market and influence marketing related decision-making processes in real-time. A related, burgeoning phenomenon and crucial topic in the field of marketing is Artificial Intelligence (AI) that entails fundamental changes to the skillssets marketers require. A vast amount of knowledge is stored in retailers’ point-of-sales databases. The format of this data often makes the knowledge they store hard to access and identify. As a powerful AI technique, Association Rules Mining helps to identify frequently associated patterns stored in large databases to predict customers’ shopping journeys. Consequently, the method has emerged as the key driver of cross-selling and upselling in the retail industry. At the core of this approach is the Market Basket Analysis that captures knowledge from heterogeneous customer shopping patterns and examines the effects of marketing initiatives. Apriori, that enumerates frequent itemsets purchased together (as market baskets), is the central algorithm in the analysis process. Problems occur, as Apriori lacks computational speed and has weaknesses in providing intelligent decision support. With the growth of simultaneous database scans, the computation cost increases and results in dramatically decreasing performance. Moreover, there are shortages in decision support, especially in the methods of finding rarely occurring events and identifying the brand trending popularity before it peaks. As the objective of this research is to find intelligent ways to assist small and medium sized retailers grow with MI strategy, we demonstrate the effects of AI, with algorithms in data preprocessing, market segmentation, and finding market trends. We show with a sales database of a small, local retailer how our Åbo algorithm increases mining performance and intelligence, as well as how it helps to extract valuable marketing insights to assess demand dynamics and product popularity trends. We also show how this results in commercial advantage and tangible return on investment. Additionally, an enhanced normal distribution method assists data pre-processing and helps to explore different types of potential anomalies.Små och medelstora detaljhandlare är centrala aktörer i den privata sektorn och bidrar starkt till den ekonomiska tillväxten, men de möter ofta enorma utmaningar i att uppnå sin fulla potential. Finansiella svårigheter, brist på marknadstillträde och svårigheter att utnyttja teknologi har ofta hindrat dem från att nå optimal produktivitet. Marknadsintelligens (MI) består av kunskap som samlats in från olika interna externa källor av data och som syftar till att erbjuda en helhetssyn av marknadsläget samt möjliggöra beslutsfattande i realtid. Ett relaterat och växande fenomen, samt ett viktigt tema inom marknadsföring är artificiell intelligens (AI) som ställer nya krav på marknadsförarnas färdigheter. Enorma mängder kunskap finns sparade i databaser av transaktioner samlade från detaljhandlarnas försäljningsplatser. Ändå är formatet på dessa data ofta sådant att det inte är lätt att tillgå och utnyttja kunskapen. Som AI-verktyg erbjuder affinitetsanalys en effektiv teknik för att identifiera upprepade mönster som statistiska associationer i data lagrade i stora försäljningsdatabaser. De hittade mönstren kan sedan utnyttjas som regler som förutser kundernas köpbeteende. I detaljhandel har affinitetsanalys blivit en nyckelfaktor bakom kors- och uppförsäljning. Som den centrala metoden i denna process fungerar marknadskorgsanalys som fångar upp kunskap från de heterogena köpbeteendena i data och hjälper till att utreda hur effektiva marknadsföringsplaner är. Apriori, som räknar upp de vanligt förekommande produktkombinationerna som köps tillsammans (marknadskorgen), är den centrala algoritmen i analysprocessen. Trots detta har Apriori brister som algoritm gällande låg beräkningshastighet och svag intelligens. När antalet parallella databassökningar stiger, ökar också beräkningskostnaden, vilket har negativa effekter på prestanda. Dessutom finns det brister i beslutstödet, speciellt gällande metoder att hitta sällan förekommande produktkombinationer, och i att identifiera ökande popularitet av varumärken från trenddata och utnyttja det innan det når sin höjdpunkt. Eftersom målet för denna forskning är att hjälpa små och medelstora detaljhandlare att växa med hjälp av MI-strategier, demonstreras effekter av AI med hjälp av algoritmer i förberedelsen av data, marknadssegmentering och trendanalys. Med hjälp av försäljningsdata från en liten, lokal detaljhandlare visar vi hur Åbo-algoritmen ökar prestanda och intelligens i datautvinningsprocessen och hjälper till att avslöja värdefulla insikter för marknadsföring, framför allt gällande dynamiken i efterfrågan och trender i populariteten av produkterna. Ytterligare visas hur detta resulterar i kommersiella fördelar och konkret avkastning på investering. Dessutom hjälper den utvidgade normalfördelningsmetoden i förberedelsen av data och med att hitta olika slags anomalier

Fuzzy-Granular Based Data Mining for Effective Decision Support in Biomedical Applications

Due to complexity of biomedical problems, adaptive and intelligent knowledge discovery and data mining systems are highly needed to help humans to understand the inherent mechanism of diseases. For biomedical classification problems, typically it is impossible to build a perfect classifier with 100% prediction accuracy. Hence a more realistic target is to build an effective Decision Support System (DSS). In this dissertation, a novel adaptive Fuzzy Association Rules (FARs) mining algorithm, named FARM-DS, is proposed to build such a DSS for binary classification problems in the biomedical domain. Empirical studies show that FARM-DS is competitive to state-of-the-art classifiers in terms of prediction accuracy. More importantly, FARs can provide strong decision support on disease diagnoses due to their easy interpretability. This dissertation also proposes a fuzzy-granular method to select informative and discriminative genes from huge microarray gene expression data. With fuzzy granulation, information loss in the process of gene selection is decreased. As a result, more informative genes for cancer classification are selected and more accurate classifiers can be modeled. Empirical studies show that the proposed method is more accurate than traditional algorithms for cancer classification. And hence we expect that genes being selected can be more helpful for further biological studies

Generating Knowledge in Maintenance from Experience Feedback

Knowledge is nowadays considered as a significant source of performance improvement, but may be difficult to identify, structure, analyse and reuse properly. A possible source of knowledge is in the data and information stored in various modules of industrial information systems, like CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management Systems) for maintenance. In that context, the main objective of this paper is to propose a framework allowing to manage and generate knowledge from information on past experiences, for improving the decisions related to the maintenance activity. In that purpose, we suggest an original Experience Feedback process dedicated to maintenance, allowing to capitalize on past interventions by i) formalizing the domain knowledge and experiences using a visual knowledge representation formalism with logical foundation (Conceptual Graphs); ii) extracting new knowledge thanks to association rules mining algorithms, using an innovative interactive approach; iii) interpreting and evaluating this new knowledge thanks to the reasoning operations of Conceptual Graphs. The suggested method is illustrated on a case study based on real data dealing with the maintenance of overhead cranes

A modified multi-class association rule for text mining

Classification and association rule mining are significant tasks in data mining. Integrating association rule discovery and classification in data mining brings us an approach known as the associative classification. One common shortcoming of existing Association Classifiers is the huge number of rules produced in order to obtain high classification accuracy. This study proposes s a Modified Multi-class Association Rule Mining (mMCAR) that consists of three procedures; rule discovery, rule pruning and group-based class assignment. The rule discovery and rule pruning procedures are designed to reduce the number of classification rules. On the other hand, the group-based class assignment procedure contributes in improving the classification accuracy. Experiments on the structured and unstructured text datasets obtained from the UCI and Reuters repositories are performed in order to evaluate the proposed Association Classifier. The proposed mMCAR classifier is benchmarked against the traditional classifiers and existing Association Classifiers. Experimental results indicate that the proposed Association Classifier, mMCAR, produced high accuracy with a smaller number of classification rules. For the structured dataset, the mMCAR produces an average of 84.24% accuracy as compared to MCAR that obtains 84.23%. Even though the classification accuracy difference is small, the proposed mMCAR uses only 50 rules for the classification while its benchmark method involves 60 rules. On the other hand, mMCAR is at par with MCAR when unstructured dataset is utilized. Both classifiers produce 89% accuracy but mMCAR uses less number of rules for the classification. This study contributes to the text mining domain as automatic classification of huge and widely distributed textual data could facilitate the text representation and retrieval processes

Utility-Based Data Mining Workshop Chairs:

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A holistic approach to information mining : internship experience at Oticon A/S

Internship report presented as partial requirement for obtaining the Master’s degree in Information Management, with a specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceIn our days, companies have the huge possibility to understand their customers like never before. They have access to numerous sources of customer related data. Insights that can’t be retrieved from secondary sources, can be gathered through market research. Data is the key element to create customer centric value through data-driven decisions. Making the right decisions based on empirical analysis can become a competitive advantage and a critical success factor for big industry players like Oticon A/S - one of the largest in the world manufacturer of hearing aid devices. This internship report will describe the author’s ten months internship experience in the Market Intelligence Team of Oticon. The description of the projects carried throughout the internship and especially their diversity in terms of tools and methodologies, aims to represent a holistic approach to data mining, showing how the latter should be performed considering it as a part of a larger ecosystem of actors and processes. Quantitative research, development of reporting solutions, database management, and application of frequent pattern mining algorithms, are all used to transform data into actionable knowledge

GENERIC FRAMEWORKS FOR INTERACTIVE PERSONALIZED INTERESTING PATTERN DISCOVERY

The traditional frequent pattern mining algorithms generate an exponentially large number of patterns of which a substantial portion are not much significant for many data analysis endeavours. Due to this, the discovery of a small number of interesting patterns from the exponentially large number of frequent patterns according to a particular user\u27s interest is an important task. Existing works on patter

Quality and interestingness of association rules derived from data mining of relational and semi-structured data

Deriving useful and interesting rules from a data mining system are essential and important tasks. Problems such as the discovery of random and coincidental patterns or patterns with no significant values, and the generation of a large volume of rules from a database commonly occur. Works on sustaining the interestingness of rules generated by data mining algorithms are actively and constantly being examined and developed. As the data mining techniques are data-driven, it is beneficial to affirm the rules using a statistical approach. It is important to establish the ways in which the existing statistical measures and constraint parameters can be effectively utilized and the sequence of their usage.In this thesis, a systematic way to evaluate the association rules discovered from frequent, closed and maximal itemset mining algorithms; and frequent subtree mining algorithm including the rules based on induced, embedded and disconnected subtrees is presented. With reference to the frequent subtree mining, in addition a new direction is explored based on utilizing the DSM approach capable of preserving all information from tree-structured database in a flat data format, consequently enabling the direct application of a wider range of data mining analysis/techniques to tree-structured data. Implications of this approach were investigated and it was found that basing rules on disconnected subtrees, can be useful in terms of increasing the accuracy and the coverage rate of the rule set.A strategy that combines data mining and statistical measurement techniques such as sampling, redundancy and contradictive checks, correlation and regression analysis to evaluate the rules is developed. This framework is then applied to real-world datasets that represent diverse characteristics of data/items. Empirical results show that with a proper combination of data mining and statistical analysis, the proposed framework is capable of eliminating a large number of non-significant, redundant and contradictive rules while preserving relatively valuable high accuracy rules. Moreover, the results reveal the important characteristics and differences between mining frequent, closed or maximal itemsets; and mining frequent subtree including the rules based on induced, embedded and disconnected subtrees; as well as the impact of confidence measure for the prediction and classification task