Finding association rules / frequent Itemsets - what are the application restrictions

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

What are the restrictions of application fields in searching for association rules (finding frequent itemsets)?

All examples I came across cover topic of 'true' basket-analysis in the sense of using a list of products which a sample of customers purchased with a goal to find rules such 'when one buys bread, it is likely butter is bought, too'.

What about more abstract applications? I mean finding any rules in dataset.

EXAMPLE. Let's assume I have a huge dataset with tourist-trip prices in 2013 year. The data includes trip-price and trip-features (such country of destination, days the travel lasts, accommodation condition elements, means of transport, extracurricular activities etc.). I want to find different associations between price and other trip features. My idea is to categorize price variable and find frequent itemsets among these trips (e.g. air conditioning=true, 5* hotel=true and Australia=true =>high price=true).

• Is this a good way to work with such problems?
• Would you suggest any other general way of dealing with searching for any types of assocciations in different data sets?