Frequent Sequential Pattern Mining Algorithm

A novel algorithm EFSPAN(Effective Frequent Sequential PAtterN mining algorithm)is introduced to solve the problem. When sequential patterns are long and the minimum support becomes low, the computational complexity of such algorithms may become very expensive. The search strategy of our algorithm integrates a depth-first traversal of the prefix sequence lattice with two effective pruning mechanisms. Experiments show that EFSPAN can avoid searching more than 60% of nodes in the search space when patterns are long and minimum support is low, which minimizes the search space greatly and decreases the high computational complexity.