Editing Association rule learning (section)

== Lore ==
A famous story about association rule mining is the "beer and diaper" story. A purported survey of behavior of supermarket shoppers discovered that customers (presumably young men) who buy diapers tend also to buy beer. This anecdote became popular as an example of how unexpected association rules might be found from everyday data. There are varying opinions as to how much of the story is true.<ref name="dss">{{Cite web | url=http://www.dssresources.com/newsletters/66.php | title=DSS News: Vol. 3, No. 23}}</ref> Daniel Powers says:<ref name="dss" />

<blockquote>In 1992, Thomas Blischok, manager of a retail consulting group at [[Teradata]], and his staff prepared an analysis of 1.2 million market baskets from about 25 Osco Drug stores. Database queries were developed to identify affinities. The analysis "did discover that between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. that consumers bought beer and diapers". Osco managers did NOT exploit the beer and diapers relationship by moving the products closer together on the shelves.</blockquote>