Closure-based constraints in formal concept analysis

Radim Belohlavek, Vilem Vychodil
2013 Discrete Applied Mathematics  
We present a method of imposing constraints in extracting formal concepts (equivalently, closed itemsets or fixpoints of Galois connections) from a binary relation. The constraints are represented by closure operators and their purpose is to mimic background knowledge a user may have of the data. The idea is to consider relevant and thus to extract only these itemsets that are compatible with the background knowledge. As a result, the method extracts less clusters, those that are interesting
more » ... m the user point of view, in a shorter time. The method makes it also possible to extract minimal bases of attribute dependencies in the input data that are compatible with the background knowledge. We provide examples of several particular types of constraits including those that appeared in the literature in the past and present algorithms to compute the constrained formal concepts and attribute implications.
doi:10.1016/j.dam.2013.02.029 fatcat:3osrlm34fjd6lhpb3jjtbn6w3i