Mining of Massive Datasets

Jure Leskovec, Anand Rajaraman, Jeff Ullman

Stanford University
http://www.mmds.org
Supermarket shelf management – Market-basket
model:
 Goal: Identify items that are bought together by
sufficiently many customers
 Approach: Process the sales data collected with
barcode scanners to find dependencies among
items
 A classic rule:
▪ If someone buys diaper and milk, then he/she is
likely to buy beer
▪ Don’t be surprised if you find six-packs next to diapers!
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 3
 Input:
 A large set of items TID Items
▪ e.g., things sold in a 1 Bread, Coke, Milk
supermarket 2 Beer, Bread
3 Beer, Coke, Diaper, Milk
 A large set of baskets 4 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Milk
 Each basket is a 5 Coke, Diaper, Milk

small subset of items

Output:
▪ e.g., the things one
customer buys on one day Rules Discovered:
{Milk} --> {Coke}
 Want to discover {Diaper, Milk} --> {Beer}
association rules
▪ People who bought {x,y,z} tend to buy {v,w}
▪ Amazon!

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 4

 Items = products; Baskets = sets of products
someone bought in one trip to the store
 Real market baskets: Chain stores keep TBs of
data about what customers buy together
▪ Tells how typical customers navigate stores, lets
them position tempting items
▪ Suggests tie-in “tricks”, e.g., run sale on diapers
and raise the price of beer
▪ Need the rule to occur frequently, or no $$’s
 Amazon’s people who bought X also bought Y
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 5
 Baskets = sentences; Items = documents
containing those sentences
▪ Items that appear together too often could
represent plagiarism
▪ Notice items do not have to be “in” baskets

 Baskets = patients; Items = drugs & side-effects

▪ Has been used to detect combinations
of drugs that result in particular side-effects
▪ But requires extension: Absence of an item
needs to be observed as well as presence
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 6
First: Define
Frequent itemsets
Association rules:
Confidence, Support, Interestingness
Then: Algorithms for finding frequent itemsets
Finding frequent pairs
A-Priori algorithm
PCY algorithm + 2 refinements
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 9
 Simplest question: Find sets of items that
appear together “frequently” in baskets
 Support for itemset I: Number of baskets
containing all items in I TID Items

▪ (Often expressed as a fraction 1

2
Bread, Coke, Milk
Beer, Bread

of the total number of baskets) 3

4
Beer, Coke, Diaper, Milk
Beer, Bread, Diaper, Milk
 Given a support threshold s, 5 Coke, Diaper, Milk

Support of
then sets of items that appear {Beer, Bread} = 2
in at least s baskets are called
frequent itemsets
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 10
 Items = {milk, coke, pepsi, beer, juice}
 Support threshold = 3 baskets
B1 = {m, c, b} B2 = {m, p, j}
B3 = {m, b} B4 = {c, j}
B5 = {m, p, b} B6 = {m, c, b, j}
B7 = {c, b, j} B8 = {b, c}
 Frequent itemsets: {m}, {c}, {b}, {j},
{m,b} , {b,c} , {c,j}.

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 11

 Association Rules:
If-then rules about the contents of baskets
 {i1, i2,…,ik} → j means: “if a basket contains
all of i1,…,ik then it is likely to contain j”
 In practice there are many rules, want to find
significant/interesting ones!
 Confidence of this association rule is the
probability of j given I = {i1,…,ik}
support( I  j )
conf( I → j ) =
support( I )
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 12
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 Not all high-confidence rules are interesting
▪ The rule X → milk may have high confidence for
many itemsets X, because milk is just purchased very
often (independent of X) and the confidence will be
high
 Interest of an association rule I → j:
difference between its confidence and the
fraction of baskets that contain j
Interest(I → j ) = conf( I → j ) − Pr[ j ]
▪ Interesting rules are those with high positive or
negative interest values (usually above 0.5)
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 14
 B1 = {m, c, b} B2 = {m, p, j}
B3 = {m, b} B4= {c, j}
B5 = {m, p, b} B6 = {m, c, b, j}
B7 = {c, b, j} B8 = {b, c}

 Association rule: {m, b} →c

▪ Confidence = 2/4 = 0.5
▪ Interest = |0.5 – 5/8| = 1/8
▪ Item c appears in 5/8 of the baskets
▪ Rule is not very interesting!

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 15

 Problem: Find all association rules with
support ≥s and confidence ≥c
▪ Note: Support of an association rule is the support
of the set of items on the left side
 Hard part: Finding the frequent itemsets!
▪ If {i1, i2,…, ik} → j has high support and
confidence, then both {i1, i2,…, ik} and
{i1, i2,…,ik, j} will be “frequent”

support(I  j )
conf( I → j ) =
support(I )
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 16
 Step 1: Find all frequent itemsets I
▪ (we will explain this next)

 Step 2: Rule generation

▪ For every subset A of I, generate a rule A → I \ A
▪ Since I is frequent, A is also frequent
▪ Variant 1: Single pass to compute the rule confidence
▪ confidence(A,B→C,D) = support(A,B,C,D) / support(A,B)
▪ Variant 2:
▪ Observation: If A,B,C→D is below confidence, so is A,B→C,D
▪ Can generate “bigger” rules from smaller ones!
▪ Output the rules above the confidence threshold
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 17
 B1 = {m, c, b} B2 = {m, p, j}
B3 = {m, c, b, n} B4= {c, j}
B5 = {m, p, b} B6 = {m, c, b, j}
B7 = {c, b, j} B8 = {b, c}
 Support threshold s = 3, confidence c = 0.75
 1) Frequent itemsets:
▪ {b,m} {b,c} {c,m} {c,j} {m,c,b}
 2) Generate rules:
▪ b→m: c=4/6 b→c: c=5/6 b,c→m: c=3/5
▪ m→b: c=4/5 … b,m→c: c=3/4
▪ b→c,m: c=3/6
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 18
 To reduce the number of rules we can
post-process them and only output:
▪ Maximal frequent itemsets:
No immediate superset is frequent
▪ Gives more pruning
or
▪ Closed itemsets:
No immediate superset has the same count (> 0)
▪ Stores not only frequent information, but exact counts

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 19

 Frequent, but
superset BC
Support Maximal(s=3) Closed also frequent.

A 4 No No Frequent, and
B 5 No Yes its only superset,
ABC, not freq.
C 3 No No Superset BC
AB 4 Yes Yes has same count.

AC 2 No No Its only super-

set, ABC, has
BC 3 Yes Yes smaller count.

ABC 2 No Yes

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  Back to finding frequent itemsets Item
Item

 Typically, data is kept in flat files Item

Item

rather than in a database system: Item

Item

▪ Stored on disk Item

Item

▪ Stored basket-by-basket Item

Item

▪ Baskets are small but we have Item

Item

many baskets and many items

▪ Expand baskets into pairs, triples, etc. Etc.
as you read baskets
▪ Use k nested loops to generate all
sets of size k
Items are positive integers,
Note: We want to find frequent itemsets. To find them, we and boundaries between
have to count them. To count them, we have to generate them. baskets are –1.
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 30
 The true cost of mining disk-resident data is
usually the number of disk I/Os

 In practice, association-rule algorithms read

the data in passes – all baskets read in turn

 We measure the cost by the number of

passes an algorithm makes over the data

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 31

 For many frequent-itemset algorithms,
main-memory is the critical resource
▪ As we read baskets, we need to count
something, e.g., occurrences of pairs of items

▪ The number of different things we can count

is limited by main memory

▪ Swapping counts in/out is a disaster (why?)

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 32

 The hardest problem often turns out to be finding
the frequent pairs of items {i1, i2}
▪ Why? Freq. pairs are common, freq. triples are rare
▪ Why? Probability of being frequent drops exponentially
with size; number of sets grows more slowly with size

 Let’s first concentrate on pairs, then extend to

larger sets

 The approach:
▪ We always need to generate all the itemsets
▪ But we would only like to count (keep track) of those
itemsets that in the end turn out to be frequent
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 33
 Naïve approach to finding frequent pairs
 Read file once, counting in main memory
the occurrences of each pair:
▪ From each basket of n items, generate its
n(n-1)/2 pairs by two nested loops
 Fails if (#items)2 exceeds main memory
▪ Remember: #items can be
100K (Wal-Mart) or 10B (Web pages)
▪ Suppose 105 items, counts are 4-byte integers
▪ Number of pairs of items: 105(105-1)/2 = 5*109
▪ Therefore, 2*1010 (20 gigabytes) of memory needed
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 34
Two approaches:
 Approach 1: Count all pairs using a matrix

 Approach 2: Keep a table of triples [i, j, c] = “the

count of the pair of items {i, j} is c.”
▪ If integers and item ids are 4 bytes, we need approximately 12
bytes for pairs with count > 0
▪ Plus some additional overhead for the hashtable

Note:
 Approach 1 only requires 4 bytes per pair

 Approach 2 uses 12 bytes per pair

(but only for pairs with count > 0)
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 35
 12 per
4 bytes per pair
occurring pair

Triangular Matrix Triples

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 36

 Approach 1: Triangular Matrix
▪ n = total number items
▪ Count pair of items {i, j} only if i<j
▪ Keep pair counts in lexicographic order:
▪ {1,2}, {1,3},…, {1,n}, {2,3}, {2,4},…,{2,n}, {3,4},…
▪ Pair {i, j} is at position (i –1)(n– i/2) + j –1
▪ Total number of pairs n(n –1)/2; total bytes= 2n2
▪ Triangular Matrix requires 4 bytes per pair

 Approach 2 uses 12 bytes per occurring pair

(but only for pairs with count > 0)
▪ Beats Approach 1 if less than 1/3 of
possible pairs actually occur

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 37

 Approach 1: Triangular Matrix
▪ n = total number items
▪ Count pair of items {i, j} only if i<j
▪ Keep pair counts in lexicographic order:
Problem is if we have too
▪ {1,2}, {1,3},…, {1,n}, {2,3}, {2,4},…,{2,n}, {3,4},…
▪ Pair {i,many items(iso
j} is at position thei/2)pairs
–1)(n– + j –1
▪ Total number of pairs n(n
do not fit into memory.–1)/2; total bytes= 2n2

▪ Triangular Matrix requires 4 bytes per pair

 ApproachCan we
2 uses 12 do better?
bytes per pair
(but only for pairs with count > 0)
▪ Beats Approach 1 if less than 1/3 of
possible pairs actually occur
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 38
 A two-pass approach called
A-Priori limits the need for
main memory
 Key idea: monotonicity
▪ If a set of items I appears at
least s times, so does every subset J of I
 Contrapositive for pairs:
If item i does not appear in s baskets, then no
pair including i can appear in s baskets

 So, how does A-Priori find freq. pairs?

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 40
 Pass 1: Read baskets and count in main memory
the occurrences of each individual item
▪ Requires only memory proportional to #items

 Items that appear ≥ 𝒔 times are the frequent items

 Pass 2: Read baskets again and count in main
memory only those pairs where both elements
are frequent (from Pass 1)
▪ Requires memory proportional to square of frequent
items only (for counts)
▪ Plus a list of the frequent items (so you know what must
be counted)
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 Frequent items
Item counts
Main memory

Counts of
pairs of
frequent items
(candidate
pairs)

Pass 1 Pass 2

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 44

 For each k, we construct two sets of
k-tuples (sets of size k):
▪ Ck = candidate k-tuples = those that might be
frequent sets (support > s) based on information
from the pass for k–1
▪ Lk = the set of truly frequent k-tuples
Count All pairs Count
All of items To be
the items the pairs explained
items from L1

C1 Filter L1 Construct C2 Filter L2 Construct C3

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 One pass for each k (itemset size)
 Needs room in main memory to count
each candidate k–tuple
 For typical market-basket data and reasonable
support (e.g., 1%), k = 2 requires the most memory
 Many possible extensions:
▪ Association rules with intervals:
▪ For example: Men over 65 have 2 cars
▪ Association rules when items are in a taxonomy
▪ Bread, Butter → FruitJam
▪ BakedGoods, MilkProduct → PreservedGoods
▪ Lower the support s as itemset gets bigger
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 Observation:
In pass 1 of A-Priori, most memory is idle
▪ We store only individual item counts
▪ Can we use the idle memory to reduce
memory required Itemin pass 2?
counts Frequent items

 Pass 1 of PCY: In addition to item counts,

maintain a hash table with as manyCounts of
Main memory

pairs of
buckets as fit in memory frequent items
▪ Keep a count for each bucket into which
(candidate
pairs)
pairs of items are hashed
▪ For each bucket just keep the count, not the actual
pairs that hash to the bucket!
Pass 1 Pass 2
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 78
 FOR (each basket/transaction) :
FOR (each item in the basket) :
add 1 to item’s count;
New FOR (each pair of items) :
in hash the pair to a bucket;
PCY add 1 to the count for that bucket;

 Few things to note:

▪ Pairs of items need to be generated from the input
file; they are not present in the file
▪ We are not just interested in the presence of a pair,
but we need to see whether it is present at least s
(support) times
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 79
 Observation: If a bucket contains a frequent pair, then
the bucket is surely frequent
 However, even without any frequent pair,
a bucket can still be frequent 
▪ So, we cannot use the hash to eliminate any
member (pair) of a “frequent” bucket

 But, for a bucket with total count less than s,

none of its pairs can be frequent ☺
▪ Pairs that hash to this bucket can be eliminated as candidates
(even if the pair consists of 2 frequent items)
 Pass 2:
Only count pairs that hash to frequent buckets

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 80

 Replace the buckets by a bit-vector:
▪ 1 means the bucket count exceeded the support s
(call it a frequent bucket); 0 means it did not

 4-byte integer counts are replaced by bits,

so the bit-vector requires 1/32 of memory

 Also, decide which items are frequent

and list them for the second pass

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 81

 Count all pairs {i, j} that meet the
conditions for being a candidate pair:
1. Both i and j are frequent items
2. The pair {i, j} hashes to a bucket whose bit in
the bit vector is 1 (i.e., a frequent bucket)

 Both conditions are necessary for the

pair to have a chance of being frequent

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 82

 Item counts Frequent items

Bitmap
Main memory

Hash
Hash table
table Counts of
for pairs candidate
pairs

Pass 1 Pass 2

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 83

 Transactions Items
T1 1,2,3
T2 4,5
T3 1,4,5
T4 1,2,4
T5 3,4,5
T6 2,4,5

Support 1

Example Credits to: PCY (Park-Chen-Yu) Algorithm with Solved Example | Big Data Analytics | #pcy #bigdata (youtube.com) 84
Item Freq
1 3
2 3
3 2
4 5
5 4

Eliminate those < 2

Candidate Item-set = {1,2,3,4,5}

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 85

 FOR (each basket/transaction) :
FOR (each item in the basket) :
add 1 to item’s count;
FOR (each pair of items) :
𝐻𝑎𝑠ℎ (𝑖 ∗ 𝑗) 𝑚𝑜𝑑 10 hash the pair to a bucket;
add 1 to the count for that bucket;
Pair Hash Count Bkt Cnt Bkt Cnt
1,2 2 2 0 5 0 1
1,3 3 1 1 0 1 0
1,4 4 2 2 3 2 1
1,5 5 1 3 1 3 0
2,3 6 1 4 2 4 2
2,4 8 2 5 1 5 0
2,5 0 1 6 1 6 0
3,4 2 1 7 0 7 0
3,5 5 1 8 2 8 1
4,5 0 4 9 0 9 0
86
 Buckets require a few bytes each:
▪ Note: we do not have to count past s
▪ #buckets is O(main-memory size)

 On second pass, a table of (item, item, count)

triples is essential (we cannot use triangular
matrix approach, why?)
▪ Thus, hash table must eliminate approx. 2/3
of the candidate pairs for PCY to beat A-Priori

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 87

 Limit the number of candidates to be counted
▪ Remember: Memory is the bottleneck
▪ Still need to generate all the itemsets but we only want to count/keep
track of the ones that are frequent

 Key idea: After Pass 1 of PCY, rehash only those pairs

that qualify for Pass 2 of PCY
▪ i and j are frequent, and
▪ {i, j} hashes to a frequent bucket from Pass 1

 On middle pass, fewer pairs contribute to buckets, so

fewer false positives

 Requires 3 passes over the data

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 88
 Item counts Freq. items Freq. items
Main memory

Bitmap 1 Bitmap 1

First Bitmap 2
hash table
First
Second Counts
hash table Counts of
of
hash table candidate
candidate
pairs
pairs

Pass 1 Pass 2 Pass 3

Hash pairs {i,j}
Count pairs {i,j} iff:
Count items into Hash2 iff:
i,j are frequent,
Hash pairs {i,j} i,j are frequent,
{i,j} hashes to
{i,j} hashes to
freq. bucket in B1
freq. bucket in B1
{i,j} hashes to
freq. bucket in B2
Tradeoff: More memory and Passes vs less candidate pairs
J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 89
 Count only those pairs {i, j} that satisfy these
candidate pair conditions:
1. Both i and j are frequent items
2. Using the first hash function, the pair hashes to
a bucket whose bit in the first bit-vector is 1
3. Using the second hash function, the pair hashes to
a bucket whose bit in the second bit-vector is 1

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 90

1. The two hash functions have to be
independent

2. We need to check both hashes on the third

pass – Reduces False Positives

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 91

 Pass 1
Hash1 = (i+j) mod 3
Min support =2 Pairs Hash1 Bkt Count
Trans Items Sr. Item Count A,B 1,2 0 Pairs
1 A, B, M No.
B,M 2,3 2 0 1
2 A,O 1 A 3
A,M 1,3 1 1 2
3 B,M 2 B 3
A,O 1,4 2 2 2
4 A,B 3 M 3
M,O 3,4 1
5 M,O 4 O 2

Pass 2 Hash2 = (i*j) mod 3 Pass 3

Pairs Hash1 Pairs Hash2

B,M 2,3 2 B,M 2,3 0 Selected candidate
Pair is (A, O)
A,M 1,3 1 A,M 1,3 0
A,O 1,4 2 A,O 1,4 1
M,O 3,4 1 M,O 3,4 0

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 92

 Key idea: Use several independent hash
tables on the first pass

 Risk: Halving the number of buckets doubles

the average count
▪ We have to be sure most buckets will still not
reach count s

 If so, we can get a benefit like multistage,

but in only 2 passes

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 93

 Item counts Freq. items

Bitmap 1
Main memory

First
First hash
hash table
table Bitmap 2

Counts
Countsofof
Second
Second candidate
candidate
hash table
hash table pairs
pairs

Pass 1 Pass 2

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 94

 Either multistage or multihash can use more
than two hash functions

 In multistage, there is a point of diminishing

returns, since the bit-vectors eventually
consume all of main memory

 For multihash, the bit-vectors occupy exactly

what one PCY bitmap does, but too many
hash functions makes all counts > s

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 95

 A-Priori, PCY, etc., take k passes to find
frequent itemsets of size k

 Can we use fewer passes?

 Use 2 or fewer passes for all sizes,

but may miss some frequent itemsets
▪ Random sampling
▪ SON (Savasere, Omiecinski, and Navathe)
▪ Toivonen (see textbook)

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 97

 Take a random sample of the market baskets

 Run a-priori or one of its improvements

in main memory
Copy of
▪ So we don’t pay for disk I/O each sample

Main memory
time we increase the size of itemsets baskets

▪ Reduce support threshold

proportionally Space
for
to match the sample size counts

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 98

 Optionally, verify that the candidate pairs are
truly frequent in the entire data set by a
second pass (avoid false positives)

 But you don’t catch sets frequent in the whole

but not in the sample
▪ Smaller threshold, e.g., s/125, helps catch more
truly frequent itemsets
▪ But requires more space

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 99

 Repeatedly read small subsets of the baskets
into main memory and run an in-memory
algorithm to find all frequent itemsets
▪ Note: we are not sampling, but processing the
entire file in memory-sized chunks

 An itemset becomes a candidate if it is found

to be frequent in any one or more subsets of
the baskets.

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 100

 On a second pass, count all the candidate
itemsets and determine which are frequent in
the entire set

 Key “monotonicity” idea: an itemset cannot

be frequent in the entire set of baskets unless
it is frequent in at least one subset.

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 101

 SON lends itself to distributed data mining

 Baskets distributed among many nodes

▪ Compute frequent itemsets at each node
▪ Distribute candidates to all nodes
▪ Accumulate the counts of all candidates

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 102

 Phase 1: Find candidate itemsets
▪ Map?
▪ Reduce?

 Phase 2: Find true frequent itemsets

▪ Map?
▪ Reduce?

J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, http://www.mmds.org 103