Other

1997

@misc{GaW1997,
	vgclass =	{other},
	author =	{Bernhard Ganter and Rudolf Wille},
	title =	{Applied Lattice Theory: Formal Concept Analysis},
	howpublished =	{On-line preprint: http://www.math.tu-dresden.de/\~{}ganter/psfiles/concept.ps},
	year =	{1997},
	note =	{Last accessed: 14 November 2003},
	abstract =	{The ``Formal Concept Analysis'' project was born around
	1980, when a re�search group in Darmstadt, Germany, begun to
	systematically develop a frame�work for lattice theory applications. It
	was first presented to the mathematical re�search g public in a
	programmatic lecture given at the 1981 Banff conference on Ordered Sets
	[5]. Since then, several hundred articles [1] have been published,
	includin g a textbook on the mathematical foundations [2]. The
	Darmstadt group alone has participated in more than a hundred
	application cooperation projects. For�mer members of that team have
	founded a small firm and now make their living from such applications.

	The sophisticated name of ``Formal Concept Analysis'' needs to be
	explained.  The method is mainly used for the analysis of data, i.e.
	for investigating and processing explicitly given information. Such
	data will be structured into units which are formal abstractions of
	concepts of human thought allowing meaningful and comprehensible
	interpretation. We use the prefix formal to emphasize that these formal
	concepts are mathematical entities and must not be identified with
	concepts of the mind. The same prefix indicates that the basic data
	format, that of a formal context, is merely a formalization that
	encodes only a small portion of what is usually referred to as a
	``context''. 

	Much of the mathematics required for the applications has been borrowed
	directly from lattice theory. The basic construction of a complete
	lattice from a binary relation is explained already in the first
	edition of Birkhoff's Lattic e Theory. But the new goal made it also
	necessary to extend and to smoothen the theory. Thereby, Formal Concept
	Analysis has created results that may be of interest even without
	considering the applications by which they were motivated.
	
	For proofs, citations, and further details we refer to [2].},
}