Chapter 8 Pattern Discovery Association

1. Conducting an Association Analysis

A store is interested in determining the associations between items purchased from the Health and Beauty Aids Department and the Stationery Department. The store chose to conduct a market basket analysis of specific items purchased from these two departments. The TRANSACTIONSdata set contains information about more than 400,000 transactions made over the past three months. The following products are represented in the data set:

bar soap

bows

candy bars

deodorant

greeting cards

magazines

markers

pain relievers

pencils

pens

perfume

photo processing

prescription medications

shampoo

toothbrushes

toothpaste

wrapping paper

There are four variables in the data set:

Name	Model Role	Measurement Level	Description
STORE	Rejected	Nominal	Identification number of the store
TRANSACTION	ID	Nominal	Transaction identification number
PRODUCT	Target	Nominal	Product purchased
QUANTITY	Rejected	Interval	Quantity of this product purchased

2. Create a new diagram. Name the diagram Ch_08_Assoc_Transactions.

3. Create a new data source. Use the data set AAEM.TRANSACTIONS.

4. Assign the model role Rejected to the variables STORE and QUANTITY. These variables are not used in this analysis. Assign the ID model role to the variable TRANSACTION and the Target model role to the variable PRODUCT.

5. Add the node for the TRANSACTIONS data set and an Association node to the diagram.

6. Change the setting for Export Rule by ID to Yes.

7. Do not change the remaining default settings for the Association node and run the analysis.

8. Examine the results of the association analysis.

What is the highest lift value for the resulting rules?

Which rule has this value?

Identify all rules that have a Lift greater than 2.0. For each rule, provide the Support, Confidence, Expected Confidence, Lift, and the actual Rule.

For any two different rules (i.e., not symmetric) with a lift greater than 2.0, for each rule:

Provide an explanation of why you think this rule makes sense

Three different methods that a store manager can use this rule to increase their profit on the related products.

9. The submittal for this chapter will be a Word document containing the screen shots captured. Make sure to clearly label each of the screen shots to explain the purpose of the screen shot.

10. Additionally, as you generate results using SAS Enterprise Miner, you need to explain your results from a business perspective. This means that you need to explain the results in non-technical terms as well as the business implications of the results.