Concept Drift

Abstract

Traditional approaches to data mining are based on an assumption that the process that generated or is generating a data stream is static. Although this assumption holds for many applications, it does not hold for many others. Consider systems that build models for identifying important e-mail. Through interaction with and feedback from a user, such a system might determine that particular e-mail addresses and certain words of the subject are useful for predicting the importance of e-mail. However, when the user or the persons sending e-mail start other projects or take on additional responsibilities, what constitutes important e-mail will change. That is, the concept of important e-mail will change or drift. Such a system must be able to adapt its model or concept description in response to this change. Coping with or tracking concept drift is important for other applications, such as market-basket analysis, intrusion detection, and intelligent user interfaces, to name a few.