Lindig's Algorithm for Concept Lattices over Graded Attributes

摘要

Formal concept analysis (FCA) is a method of exploratory data analysis. The data is in the form of a table describing relationship between objects (rows) and attributes (columns), where table entries are grades representing degrees to which objects have attributes. The main output of FCA is a hierarchical structure (so-called concept lattice) of conceptual clusters (so-called formal concepts) present in the data. This paper focuses on algorithmic aspects of FCA of data with graded attributes. Namely, we focus on the problem of generating efficiently all clusters present in the data together with their subconcept-superconcept hierarchy. We present theoretical foundations, the algorithm, analysis of its efficiency, and comparison with other algorithms.