Patent ID: 7979429

Claim:
A data analysis system for determining a correlation among data elements based on a comparison of (i) a number of occurrences, in stored data, of a first data element, and (ii) a number of simultaneous occurrences, in the stored data, of the first data element and a second data element, and for forming data elements into groups based on a multitude of predetermined conditions; the data analysis system comprising: a computing system, executing a data analysis program, for calculating dependence ratios for each pair of the data elements based on the number of simultaneous occurrences in the stored data of said pair of the data elements, the dependence ratio for each pair of first and second of the data elements being equal to a ratio of the number of simultaneous occurrences of the first and second data elements in the stored data to the number of occurrences of the first data element in the stored data, wherein in each of said simultaneous occurrences, the first data element and the second data element coexist in a defined sample or subset of the stored data, and for forming into groups all of the data elements that have a dependence ratio with at least one of the other data elements greater than a first threshold by: i) forming a first group; and ii) putting selected ones of the data elements into the first group based on the dependence ratios of the data elements; for the remaining data elements that are not put in the first group, continuing to form one or more additional groups of the data elements, based on the dependence ratios of the data elements, until all of the data elements that have a dependence ratio with at least one of the other data elements, greater than the first threshold are placed into one of the formed groups; and output means for outputting results provided by the analysis processing means.