Patent ID: 7475085

Claim:
A method of generating at least one output data set from at least one input data set for use in association with a data mining process, the input data set comprising at least one entry including each of a plurality of attributes, comprising the steps of: determining at least one relevance coefficient for at least a subset of the plurality of attributes; selecting at least one relevant attribute of the at least one input data set based at least in part on the at least one relevance coefficient; and generating the at least one output data set from the at least one input data set; wherein the at least one output data set comprises at least one entry not including at least one of the plurality of attributes; and wherein the at least one entry of the output data set has the at least one relevant attribute of the at least one input data set; wherein the at least one relevance coefficient is computed using a quantitative measure of an effect on the data mining process of a deletion of at least the given attribute from each entry of the input data set.