Project 3 Association Rule Mining Solution

Goal

The goal of this assignment is for you to gain familiarity with association rule mining and (in the process) to also advance your Python skills.




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What to do -- armin.py

In this assignment you are asked to implement a simplified version of the A-Priori **a**ssociation **r**ule **min**ing algorithm, in Python.

You should name your program `armin.py`. It should be called as follows:




`python armin.py input_filename output_filename min_support_percentage min_confidence`




(or just `python` if python version 3 is your default python setup)




where:

* `input_filename` is the name of the file that contains market basket data that is the input to your program. The format for the input file is provided below. A sample file `input.txt` is provided together with this repository.




**Input Format:** The input data should be provided as a CSV file, in the following format:

`transaction_id, item_1, item_2, item_3, ...`

for example:

```

1, A100, A105, A207

2, A207

3, A100, A105

```

Notes:

* Item names could consist of either numbers (0-9) or characters (a-zA-z) or combinations of numbers and characters. No spaces or puncuation characters are allowed in item names.

* The CSV files may or may not contain whitespace between values.




* `output_filename` is the name of the file that will store the required output of your program. The file should contain the frequent item sets and the association rules that you discovered after processing the submitted input data. The required format for the output file is provided below. Sample output files (matching the input file provided) are provided together with this repository.




**Output Format:** The output data should be provided as a CSV file, where every row is in one of the following formats:

`S, support_percentage, item_1, item_2, item_3, ...`

to denote that this is a frequent item**s**et or:

`R, support_percentage, confidence, item_4, item_5, ..., ’=’, item_6, item_7, ... `

to denote that this is an association **r**ule. The keys "S" and "R" are verbatim and no other substitution is needed.

It should be noted that the items listed in the frequent itemset case (item 1, item 2, item 3, ...) should be in lexicographic order, the items listed to the left of the = sign in the association rule case (item 4, item 5, ...) should be in lexicographic order and so should the items listed in the right size of the = sign in the association rule case (item 6, item 7, ...).

The `support_percentage` should be the support percentage (expressed as a floating number between 0 and 1 with 4 decimal points) for the specific frequent itemset or for the specific association rule (and both should be above the user-specified min_support_percentage).

The `confidence` should be the confidence percentage (expressed as a floating number between 0 and 1 with 4 decimal points) for the specific association rule (and should be above the user-specified min_confidence).

You should list in the output file all the frequent itemsets that you discover in the input file (S) and all the association rules that you can generate using the A-Priori method (R), that satisfy the min support percentage and min confidence requirements.



Here’s an example output file:

```

S, 0.3000, A105

S, 0.2500, A100

S, 0.2000, A100, A207

S, 0.2000, A105, A207

S, 0.1500, A100, A105, A207

R, 0.1500, 0.5000, A105, ’=’, A100, A207

```




Important Note: You should print 4 decimal points for all floating point numbers (e.g., use %.4f in your print statement).

Note: Your program may print additional messages; these will not be considered. You are encouraged to use this mechanism for debugging or progress reporting purposes. Only the results contained in the output file, in the specified format, will be considered.

The repository contains three output files as follows:




| Input Filename | Output Filename | Minimum Support Percentage | Minimum Confidence |

| --- | --- | --- | --- |

| input.csv | output.sup=0.5,conf=0.7.csv | 0.5 | 0.7 |

| input.csv | output.sup=0.5,conf=0.8.csv | 0.5 | 0.8 |

| input.csv | output.sup=0.6,conf=0.8.csv | 0.6 | 0.8 |










* `min_support_percentage` is the minimum support percentage for an itemset / association rule to be considered frequent, e.g., 5%. This should be provided as a floating point number (out of 1), e.g., 0.05, 0.4, 0.5 are used to denote 5%, 40%, and 50% respectively. You should not include a percent symbol.

 

* `min_confidence` is the minimum confidence for an association rule to be significant, e.g., 50%. This should be provided as a floating point number (out of 1), e.g., 0.05, 0.4, 0.5 are used to denote 5%, 40%, and 50% respectively. You should not include a percent symbol.




An example call to your program could be as follows:

`python3 armin.py input.csv output.csv 0.5 0.7`




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What to do -- A-Priori Algorithm




The A-Priori algorithm utilizes the subset property for frequent itemsets, enabling significant pruning of the space of possible itemset combinations. Assuming a provided min support percentage and a min confidence, the i-th step of the algorithm works as follows:




**Step i:**




• Consider all the candidate frequent itemsets of size i. Let’s name them CFI(i).

• Count how many times each itemset in CFI(i) appears in our input data. This is the support count,

which is turned into the support percentage by dividing with the total number of transactions.

• The itemsets in CFI(i) whose support percentage is at least as much as the min support percentage

become the verified frequent itemsets, or VFI(i).

• Using itemsets in VFI(i) generate all plausible candidate itemsets of size +1, i.e., CFI(i + 1). This makes use of the subset property. For example, for ABC to be in CFI(3), all of AB, BC, and AB need to be in VFI(2).




This process starts with CFI(1) being all individual items and terminates on Step k, when CFI(k + 1) is empty.




The above process generates all the frequent itemsets, i.e., VFI(i), for 1 <= i <= k. For every frequent itemset we need to generate all possible association rules and keep only the rules whose support is greater or equal to the min support percentage and their confidence is greater or equal to the min confidence. To generate all possible rules from a frequent itemset, we generate all possible 2-partitions of the itemset (one will be the left-hand-side of the association rule and the other will be the right-hand-side), where neither partition is empty. For example, if {A,B,C} is a frequent itemset, then we should check the following association rules:

* A=B,C

* B=A,C

* C=A,B

* A,B=C

* A,C=B

* B,C=A




and compute their support and confidence. Note that the support of all these rules is the same as the support of the frequent itemset from which they came, i.e., {A,B,C}.




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Important notes about grading

It is absolutely imperative that your python program:

* runs without any syntax or other errors (using Python 3) -- we will run it using the following command:

`python3 armin.py ...`

* strictly adheres to the format specifications for input and output, as explained above.




Failure in any of the above will result in **severe** point loss.







Allowed Python Libraries

You are allowed to use the following Python libraries:

```

argparse

collections

csv

glob

itertools

math

os

pandas

re

requests

string

sys

```

More info on the itertools library at

[https://docs.python.org/3/library/itertools.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/itertools.html).




If you would like to use any other libraries, you must ask permission by Thursday, October 31, 2019, using [canvas](http://cs1656.org).




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How to submit your assignment

For this assignment, you must use the repository that was created for you after visiting the classroom link. You need to create the file `armin.py` as described above, and add other files that are needed for running your program. You need to make sure to commit your code to the repository provided.




The due date is **Tuesday, November 12, (23:59pm)**




You can submit your assignment:

* up to **24 hours later, for -5 points**, and

* up to **48 hours later, for -15 points**.




Our assumption is that everybody will submit on the first deadline. If you want us to grade a late submission, you need to email us at `cs1656-staff@cs.pitt.edu`







About your github account

It is very important that:

* Your github account can do **private** repositories. If this is not already enabled, you can do it by visiting <https://education.github.com/

* You use the same github account for the duration of the course.

* You use the github account that you specified on tophat.