Ignoring internal utilities in high-utility itemset mining

Abstract

High-utility itemset mining discovers a set of items that are sold together and have utility values higher than a given minimum utility threshold. The utilities of these itemsets are calculated by considering their internal and external utility values, which correspond, respectively, to the quantity sold of each item in each transaction and profit units. Therefore, internal and external utilities have symmetric effects on deciding whether an itemset is high-utility. The symmetric contributions of both utilities cause two major related challenges. First, itemsets with low external utility values can easily exceed the minimum utility threshold if they are sold extensively. In this case, such itemsets can be found more efficiently using frequent itemset mining. Second, a large number of high-utility itemsets are generated, which can result in interesting or important high-utility itemsets that are overlooked. This study presents an asymmetric approach in which the internal utility values are ignored when finding high-utility itemsets with high external utility values. The experimental results of two real datasets reveal that the external utility values have fundamental effects on the high-utility itemsets. The results of this study also show that this effect tends to increase for high values of the minimum utility threshold. Moreover, the proposed approach reduces the execution time.