An Introduction to Formal Concept Analysis Christian Lindig, Harvard University Formal concept analysis is an algebraic theory that relates every binary relation with a so-called concept lattice. The lattice offers a new perspective on the binary relation such that many of its properties become more apparent. For example, software engineers use concept analysis to uncover structures in legacy software, or to assess object-oriented class hierarchies. Since binary relations between arbitrary objects and their attributes can be found everywhere concept analysis has become a powerful tool for data analysis.
Applications can use a simple and efficient algorithm to compute the concept lattice of a relation.
The size of such lattices can grow exponentially with the size of the underlying relation. However, experiments suggest that this is rarely a problem in practice. Finally, the talk tries to identify what makes a problem a good candidate for concept analysis.