A survey on the semantics of sequential patterns with negation
Thomas Guyet
A sequential pattern with negation, or negative sequential pattern, takes the
form of a sequential pattern for which the negation symbol may be used in front
of some of the pattern's itemsets. Intuitively, such a pattern occurs in a
sequence if negated itemsets are absent in the sequence. Recent work has shown
that different semantics can be attributed to these pattern forms, and that
state-of-the-art algorithms do not extract the same sets of patterns. This
raises the important question of the interpretability of sequential pattern
with negation. In this study, our focus is on exploring how potential users
perceive negation in sequential patterns. Our aim is to determine whether
specific semantics are more "intuitive" than others and whether these align
with the semantics employed by one or more state-of-the-art algorithms. To
achieve this, we designed a questionnaire to reveal the semantics' intuition of
each user. This article presents both the design of the questionnaire and an
in-depth analysis of the 124 responses obtained. The outcomes indicate that two
of the semantics are predominantly intuitive; however, neither of them aligns
with the semantics of the primary state-of-the-art algorithms. As a result, we
provide recommendations to account for this disparity in the conclusions drawn.