Patent Document ID: 7788200
Application ID: 11670656
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A system that facilitates goal seeking in tabular data, comprising: a processor; system memory; a receiver component that receives a desired goal based on tabular data, the goal comprising a substantially increased likelihood that the tabular data of a target column has a target value, wherein the receiver component is configured to receive and process both categorical goals comprising at least a target column that contains a finite set of categorical values and continuous goals comprising the target column that contains values in a range or interval; an optimization component that optimizes goal seeking for at least one degree of freedom, wherein optimizing includes determining patterns for a selected row that determine a value of a target column as a function of the other columns within the tabular data, the determined patterns providing at least one row value that increases the likelihood of reaching the desired goal in the target column, the row values being inferred using probabilistic inference, wherein the probabilistic inference includes computing a probability distribution over states of interest based on a consideration of data and events of rows other than the selected row, wherein the row values are based on the probability they yield for the goal value if categorical goals were received and are based on the closest estimation to the goal if continuous goals were received; and an output component that presents recommended actions within the tabular data to achieve the desired goal.