Database Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER FIVE:
ASSOCIATION RULES
CONTEXT AND PERSPECTIVE
Roger is a city manager for a medium-sized, but steadily growing, city. The city has limited
resources, and like most municipalities, there are more needs than there are resources. He feels
like the citizens in the community are fairly active in various community organizations, and
believes that he may be able to get a number of groups to work together to meet some of the
needs in the community. He knows there are churches, social clubs, hobby enthusiasts and other
types of groups in the community. What he doesn't know is if there are connections between the
groups that might enable natural collaborations between two or more groups that could work
together on projects around town. He decides that before he can begin asking community
organizations to begin working together and to accept responsibility for projects, he needs to find
out if there are any existing associations between the different types of groups in the area.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After completing the reading and exercises in this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain what association rules are, how they are found and the benefits of using them.
Recognize the necessary format for data in order to create association rules.
Develop an association rule model in RapidMiner.
Interpret the rules generated by an association rule model and explain their significance, if
any.
ORGANIZATIONAL UNDERSTANDING
Roger's goal is to identify and then try to take advantage of existing connections in his local
community to get some work done that will benefit the entire community. He knows of many of
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