Patent ID: 8326760

Claim:
A method, comprising: obtaining, using one or more processing units, a set of historical data, wherein historical data includes one or more decision values and one or more features, wherein the one or more features are selected from a feature set, and wherein each feature has an associated feature value; determining, using the one or more processing units, whether any features in the feature set have been pre-selected, wherein pre-selected features are removed from the feature set; calculating, using the one or more processing units, a predictive value for each remaining feature in the feature set using decision values and feature values included with the set of historical data, wherein a predictive value is significant or insignificant; generating, using the one or more processing units, a relevant feature set including features having a significant predictive value; calculating, using the one or more processing units, association values using the feature values included with the set of historical data, wherein each association value corresponds to a feature combination from the relevant feature set; generating, using the one or more processing units, one or more feature combinations according to the association values; updating, using the one or more processing units, the relevant feature set by adding the one or more feature combinations to the relevant feature set, wherein individual features represented by the feature combinations are removed from the relevant feature set; generating, using the one or more processing units, a model by repeatedly selecting a feature or a feature combination from the updated relevant feature set until a stopping criteria has been satisfied, wherein the model is generated using the pre-selected features, the selected features, and the selected feature combinations; receiving, using the one or more processing units, new data, wherein the new data has one or more features, and wherein each feature has an associated feature value; and using, using the one or more processing units, the model and the new data to identify information associated with a subset of historical data from the set of historical data, wherein historical data within the subset has one or more features and feature values that are similar to the one or more features and feature values in the new data, and wherein similarities are based upon one or more predetermined similarity criteria.