METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DERIVING AN OPTIMIZED CONFIDENCE RULE

A method is disclosed for determining the correlation among data sets having a numerical attribute and a 0-1 attribute. First, a numerical attribute is divided into a plurality of buckets, and each data set is placed into a single bucket according to the value of the numerical attribute. The number of data sets in each bucket and the number of data sets with a 0-1 attribute of 1 are counted. Second, an axis corresponding to the total number of data sets in a first through a particular buckets (X axis) and an axis corresponding to the total number of data sets with a 0-1 attribute of 1 in a first through a particular buckets (Y axis) are virtually established, and points corresponding to the respective values of the first through the particular buckets are virtually plotted. Third, after a plane is constructed in this manner, one of the pairs of points separated at an interval of T.times.N or T or larger which has the largest slope is found. This step is most important to fast processing, and this invention employs the nature of convex hulls to reduce the number of points to be considered. Finally, once this pair of points has been determined, the corresponding pair of buckets can be determined, resulting in the output of the corresponding segment. Also, once this process has been finished, the user can retrieve the required part of the data included in this section.