A novel mining algorithm for periodic clustering sequential patterns

In knowledge discovery, data mining of time series data has many important applications. Especially, sequential patterns and periodic patterns, which evolved from the association rule, have been applied in many useful practices. This paper presents another useful concept, the periodic clustering sequential (PCS) pattern, which uses clustering to mine valuable information from temporal or serially ordered data in a period of time. For example, one can cluster patients according to symptoms of the illness under study, but this may just result in several clusters with specific symptoms for analyzing the distribution of patients. Adding time series analysis to the above investigation, we can examine the distribution of patients over the same or different seasons. For policymakers, the PCS pattern is more useful than traditional clustering result and provides a more effective support of decision-making.