Mining for Unknown Unknowns

Abstract

Unknown unknowns are future relevant contingencies that lack an ex ante description. While there are numerous retrospective accounts showing that significant gains or losses might have been achieved or avoided had such contingencies been previously uncovered, getting hold of unknown unknowns still remains elusive, both in practice and conceptually. Using Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) -a subfield of lattice theory which is increasingly applied for mining and organizing data -this paper introduces a simple framework to systematically think out of the box and direct the search for unknown unknowns.There are only two kinds of campaign plans, good ones and bad ones.The good ones almost always fail through unforeseen circumstances that often make the bad ones succeed.-Napoleon Bonaparte -* I am grateful to the participants at several seminars for constructive questions and remarks. I also owe special thanks to