Patent ID: 8166064

Claim:
An article of manufacture, comprising: a non-transitory machine readable storage medium comprising instructions which when executed by a machine cause the machine to perform operations comprising: based on a query performed on a multidimensional data source, receiving a data set including a plurality of data patterns; identifying, by a processor, a pattern type of each data set, to determine corresponding pattern significance factors associated with the plurality of data patterns, the determining comprising: when the pattern type is an outlier pattern, calculating a percentage change of an identified outlier from a median; when the pattern type is a step change pattern, calculating a percentage of a step change between a last value of a step and a first value preceding the step, wherein the step corresponds to an outlier in a first difference on the data set; and when the pattern type is a trend pattern, calculating a degree of freedom factor, accepting a fitted curve approximation based on the degree of freedom factor and calculating a percentage change from a start value on the fitted curve to an end value on the fitted curve; and comparing the calculated pattern significance factors of the outlier pattern, the step change pattern and the trend pattern to display a ranked list of the pattern types based on their corresponding pattern significance factors on a user interface.