Date of Award

3-22-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Operations Research

Department

Department of Operational Sciences

First Advisor

Christopher M. Smith, PhD.

Abstract

Market research is an indispensable part of an organization's ability to understand market dynamics in an area. Over the past 20 years data collection and analysis through Knowledge Discovery through Databases (KDD) has arisen to supplement the traditional methods of surveys and focus groups. Market Basket Analysis is an area of KDD that identifies associations between commonly purchased items. As social media use has grown, link shortening companies help users share links in a constrained space environment and, in exchange, collect data about each user when a link is clicked. This research applies market basket analysis techniques with graph mining to shortened web link data to identify communities of co-visited websites to help analysts better understand web traffic for an area during a time range. Patterns within clusters of web domains regarding hardware platforms, operating systems, or referral sources are then identified and used to gain a better understanding of an area.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENS-MS-18-M-123

DTIC Accession Number

AD1056329

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