Value of fuzzy logic for data mining and machine learning: A case study

In this paper, a case study on the role of fuzzy logic (FL) in data mining and machine learning is carried out. It is outlined that, in order to draw more attention of data-mining and machine-learning communities to FL, studies on FL could be more focused not on the activities that fuzzy methods can perform better but rather on the activities that fuzzy methods can perform and the non-fuzzy ones can’t. Such approach takes us away from discussing quantitative differences between fuzzy and non-fuzzy methods to discussing qualitative differences, which are possibly more favorable objects of scientific curiosity. Following the outlined suggestion, a novel speed-up technique is proposed in this paper to support association rule mining (ARM). The proposed technique is a clustering-based one and provides fusion of clustering and ARM. The catchy feature of this technique is that it works well if applied in fuzzy ARM and doesn’t work well if applied in non-fuzzy ARM. The proposed technique is put through experimental verification involving several real-world datasets, and the results substantiate its effectiveness.