Using concepts from rough set theory we investigate the existence of approximative descriptions of collections of objects that can be extracted from data sets, a problem of interest for biologists that need to find succinct descriptions of families of taxonomic units. Our algorithm is based on an anti-monotonicity of borders of object sets and makes use of an approach that is, in a certain sense, a dual of the Apriori algorithm used in identifying frequent item sets.
Dan A. Simovici, Selim Mimaroglu