Patent ID: 7464060

Claim:
An apparatus for extracting a time series pattern, comprising: an input unit inputting a plurality of time series data, each time series data being an electronic daily report including a plurality of data elements, each data element including a time and a text; a data memory storing the plurality of time series data; an extraction rule memory storing a correspondence relation between a key concept and a text expression; a time series pattern generation unit configured to extract key concepts corresponding to the text of each data element of the plurality of time series data from said extraction rule memory, and to generate a plurality of time series patterns from the plurality of time series data, each pattern including data elements each having a time and a key concept; a colony generation unit configured to unify a plurality of data elements having the same key concept and substantially the same time duration, and to generate colonies of unified data elements; a select unit selecting a first colony from the colonies in response to a user's operation, the first colony having a first key concept; a colony extraction unit configured to specify a second colony having a second key concept contrary to the first key concept, and to extract colonies each having a time earlier than the first colony and the second colony; a time reason extraction unit configured to extract a time reason as a divergence condition of the first colony from the second colony from the extracted colonies; and a display unit displaying the first colony, the second colony, the extracted colonies, and the time reason.