Formal Concept Analysis and Information Retrieval – A Survey

Abstract

One of the first models to be proposed as a document index for retrieval purposes was a lattice structure, decades before the introduction of Formal Concept Analysis. Nevertheless, the main notions that we consider so familiar within the community ("extension", "intension", "closure operators", "order") were already an important part of it. In the '90s, as FCA was starting to settle as an epistemic community, lattice-based Information Retrieval (IR) systems smoothly transitioned towards FCA-based IR systems. Currently, FCA theory supports dozens of different retrieval applications, ranging from traditional document indices to file systems, recommendation, multi-media and more recently, semantic linked data. In this paper we present a comprehensive study on how FCA has been used to support IR systems. We try to be as exhaustive as possible by reviewing the last 25 years of research as chronicles of the domain, yet we are also concise in relating works by its theoretical foundations. We think that this survey can help future endeavours of establishing FCA as a valuable alternative for modern IR systems.

Generalization effect of quantifiers in a classification based on relational concept analysis

“…They also help in reformulating queries when the answer set is empty. All these qualities explain the spread of FCA in domains such as information retrieval [20], recommendation systems [21], or machine learning [22,23]. Furthermore, FCA emphasizes the visualization of concepts and their partial ordering which is meaningful for knowledge discovery and data exploration.…”

Concept coupling learning for improving concept lattice-based document retrieval

“…Concept lattices based on formal concept analysis (FCA) (Ganter and Wille, 1999) are important techniques for representing the conceptual hierarchies used in information retrieval (Priss, 2000;Carpineto and Romano, 2005;Poelmans et al, 2013;Codocedo and Napoli, 2015). They integrate the discovery, dependencies and reasoning with general/specific relationships between concepts.…”

“…Concept lattice-based retrieval methods are based on formal concept analysis (FCA) (Ganter and Wille, 1999), a type of unsupervised classification that provides an intentional description for clusters, which contributes to better understanding. The concept lattice generated by FCA has demonstrated its usefulness in document indexing and navigation strategy in the IR domain (Priss, 2000;Carpineto and Romano, 2005;Codocedo and Napoli, 2015). For instance, the concept lattice can be used to drive the transformation between the representation of a query and the representation of each document and provide the navigation in a conceptual document space (Carpineto and Romano, 2000;Messai et al, 2010).…”

Arquitetura Heterogênea CPU+FPGA para Análise Formal de Conceitos

“…A Análise Formal de Conceitos, do inglês Formal Concept Analysis (FCA)é um método para representação de dados que pode ser aplicado em váriasáreas do conhecimento para extrair padrões de inteligência computacional, como por exemplo, na recuperação de informações [Codocedo and Napoli 2015]. Devidoà importância da descoberta do conhecimento, outras abordagens, como FcaBedrock e In-Close [Andrews and Orphanides 2010], têm a capacidade de reestruturar conjuntos de dados para minimizar comparações desnecessárias em busca de um maior desempenho.…”