Compact fuzzy association rule-based classifier

Classification is one of the most popular data mining techniques applied to many scientific and industrial problems. The efficiency of a classification model is evaluated by two parameters, namely the accuracy and the interpretability of the model. While most of the existing methods claim their accurate superiority over others, their models are usually complex and hardly understandable for the users. In this paper, we propose a novel classification model that is based on easily interpretable fuzzy association rules and fulfils both efficiency criteria. Since the accuracy of a classification model can be largely affected by the partitioning of numerical attributes, this paper discusses several fuzzy and crisp partitioning techniques. The proposed classification method is compared to 15 previously published association rule-based classifiers by testing them on five benchmark data sets. The results show that the fuzzy association rule-based classifier presented in this paper, offers a compact, understandable and accurate classification model. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.