Conceptual Coverage Driven by Essential Concepts: A Formal Concept Analysis Approach

Formal concept analysis (FCA) is a mathematical theory that is typically used as a knowledge representation method. The approach starts with an input binary relation specifying a set of objects and attributes, finds the natural groupings (formal concepts) described in the data, and then organizes th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Amira Mouakher, Axel Ragobert, Sébastien Gerin, Andrea Ko
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-10-01
Series:Mathematics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/21/2694
Description
Summary:Formal concept analysis (FCA) is a mathematical theory that is typically used as a knowledge representation method. The approach starts with an input binary relation specifying a set of objects and attributes, finds the natural groupings (formal concepts) described in the data, and then organizes the concepts in a partial order structure or concept (Galois) lattice. Unfortunately, the total number of concepts in this structure tends to grow exponentially as the size of the data increases. Therefore, there are numerous approaches for selecting a subset of concepts to provide full or partial coverage. In this paper, we rely on the battery of mathematical models offered by FCA to introduce a new greedy algorithm, called <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Concise</span>, to compute minimal and meaningful subsets of concepts. Thanks to its theoretical properties, the <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Concise</span> algorithm is shown to avoid the sluggishness of its competitors while offering the ability to mine both partial and full conceptual coverage of formal contexts. Furthermore, experiments on massive datasets also underscore the preservation of the quality of the mined formal concepts through interestingness measures agreed upon by the community.
ISSN:2227-7390