Integer Matrix Approximation and Data Mining

Integer datasets frequently appear in many applications in science and engineering. To analyze these datasets, we consider an integer matrix approximation technique that can preserve the original dataset characteristics. Because integers are discrete in nature, to the best of our knowledge, no previously proposed technique developed for real numbers can be successfully applied. In this study, we first conduct a thorough review of current algorithms that can solve integer least squares problems, and then we develop an alternative least square method based on an integer least squares estimation to obtain the integer approximation of the integer matrices. We discuss numerical applications for the approximation of randomly generated integer matrices as well as studies of association rule mining, cluster analysis, and pattern extraction. Our computed results suggest that our proposed method can calculate a more accurate solution for discrete datasets than other existing methods.