The Apriori property of sequence pattern mining with wildcard gaps

Abstract

In biological sequence analysis, long and frequently occurring patterns tend to be interesting. Data miners try to obtain frequent patterns with periodical wildcard gaps. However, with the existing definition set, the Apriori property does not hold; consequently, state–of–the–art algorithms are rather complex. This paper proposes an alternative definition of the number of offset sequences by adding a number of dummy characters. With the new definition, the Apriori property holds, hence our Apriori algorithm can mine all frequent patterns with minimal endeavour. This study also serves as the foundation of further research works on sequence pattern mining.