AN APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ANALYZING TIME SERIES DATA FOR A PLURALITY OF ITEMS

An association rule extraction apparatus extracts an association rule from time series data including events. A characteristic part extraction section extracts a characteristic change part from time series data of each event as an event sequence. The event sequence includes at least a start time of the characteristic change part as attribute data. An association rule extraction section extracts the association rule representing a tendency among the events in accordance with the attribute data.