TUTORIAL SESSION

 

 

Title: Formal Concept Analysis and Its Applications

 

Purpose & Topics:

Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is a relatively new (approximately 20 years old) field of applied mathematics (as a branch of applied lattice theory) based on the mathematization of concept and conceptual hierarchy.  FCA thereby activates mathematical thinking for conceptual data analysis and knowledge processing and can be used as a foundation for tools for conceptual unfolding of data contexts. 

The goal of this tutorial is to introduce the basics of FCA and its potential applications in the computer science and information systems areas. 

The topics to be covered include formal contexts, formal concepts, hierarchical order of concepts, concept lattices, the basic theorem on concept lattices, line diagramming of a concept lattice with reduced labeling, many-valued contexts, conceptual scaling, computing concepts, and implications between attributes.  Applications of FCA in software engineering, software reengineering and software reuse, Web search, and data mining are surveyed and other potential areas are discussed. 

 

 

Targeted Audience:

Those who are interested in FCA as a mathematical tool and its application to the computer science and information systems areas. 

 

 

Prerequisites:

Introductory background in computer or Information systems.  Otherwise, the necessary mathematical foundations will be surveyed in the tutorial. 

 

 

Tutorial Duration :  2-3 Hours. 

 

 

The Instructor: Dr. Young Park

Department of Computer Science and Information Systems

Bradley University

Peoria, Illinois, USA

Email: young@bradley.edu

Homepage: http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~young

 

 

Presentation & Materials: PowerPoint slides presentation and handouts will be made available to all participants. 

 

 

Biographical Sketch:

Dr. Young Park is currently an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at Bradley University, Illinois, U.S.A.  He received his Ph.D. and MS degrees in computer science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, U.S.A.  His research interests include software reuse, component software and component-based software development, Formal Concept Analysis and its applications in WWW search, software engineering and data mining, and semantic-based program analysis and manipulation.