Abstract
In this paper, we present the epistomological problem of induction, illustrated by the metaphor of the black swan, and its relevance for Process Mining. The quality of mined models is typically measured in terms of four dimensions, namely fitness, precision, simplicity, and generalization. Both precision and generalization rely on the definition of “unobserved behavior”, i.e. traces not contained in the log. This paper is intended to analyze the influence of unobserved behavior, the potential black swan, has on the quality of mined models. We conduct an empirical analysis to investigate the relation between a system, its observed and unobserved behavior and the mined models. The results show that the unobserved behavior, mainly determined by the nature of the unknown system, can have a significant impact on the quality assessment of mined models, hence eliciting the need to explicate and discuss the assumptions underlying the notions of unobserved behavior in more depth.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
van Dongen, B.F., Carmona, J., Chatain, T.: A unified approach for measuring precision and generalization based on anti-alignments. In: La Rosa, M., Loos, P., Pastor, O. (eds.) BPM 2016. LNCS, vol. 9850, pp. 39–56. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45348-4_3
Buijs, J., van Dongen, B., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Quality dimensions in process discovery: the importance of fitness, precision, generalization and simplicity. Int. J. Coop. Inf. Syst. 23(01), 1440001 (2014)
Janssenswillen, G., Jouck, T., Creemers, M., Depaire, B.: Measuring the quality of models with respect to the underlying system: an empirical study. In: La Rosa, M., Loos, P., Pastor, O. (eds.) BPM 2016. LNCS, vol. 9850, pp. 73–89. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45348-4_5
Popper, K.: The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge, London (2005)
Buijs, J.: Flexible evolutionary algorithms for mining structured process models. Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (2014)
Weber, P., Bordbar, B., Tiňo, P., Majeed, B.: A framework for comparing process mining algorithms. In: GCC Conference and Exhibition (GCC), pp. 625–628. IEEE (2011)
vanden Broucke, S., De Weerdt, J., Vanthienen, J., Baesens, B.: A comprehensive benchmarking framework (coBeFra) for conformance analysis between procedural process models and event logs in prom. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining (CIDM 2013), pp. 254–261. IEEE (2013)
vanden Broucke, S., De Weerdt, J., Vanthienen, J., Baesens, B.: An improved process event log artificial negative event generator. Feb research report, KU Leuven - Faculty of Economics and Business, Leuven, Belgium (2012)
Weijters, A., van Der Aalst, W.M.P., De Medeiros, A.: Process mining with the heuristics miner-algorithm. Technical Report 166, TU Eindhoven (2006)
Leemans, S.J.J., Fahland, D., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Discovering block-structured process models from event logs containing infrequent behaviour. In: Lohmann, N., Song, M., Wohed, P. (eds.) BPM 2013. LNBIP, vol. 171, pp. 66–78. Springer, Cham (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06257-0_6
van der Werf, J.M.E.M., van Dongen, B.F., Hurkens, C.A.J., Serebrenik, A.: Process discovery using integer linear programming. In: van Hee, K.M., Valk, R. (eds.) PETRI NETS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5062, pp. 368–387. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68746-7_24
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Adriansyah, A., van Dongen, B.: Replaying history on process models for conformance checking and performance analysis. Wiley Interdisc. Rev. Data Min. Knowl. Discov. 2(2), 182–192 (2012)
vanden Broucke, S., De Weerdt, J., Vanthienen, J., Baesens, B.: Determining process model precision and generalization with weighted artificial negative events. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 26(8), 1877–1889 (2014)
Rozinat, A., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Conformance checking of processes based on monitoring real behavior. Inf. Syst. 33(1), 64–95 (2008)
Adriansyah, A., Munoz-Gama, J., Carmona, J., van Dongen, B.F., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Alignment based precision checking. In: La Rosa, M., Soffer, P. (eds.) BPM 2012. LNBIP, vol. 132, pp. 137–149. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36285-9_15
van der Aalst, W.M.P: Mediating between modeled and observed behavior: the quest for the “right” process. In: IEEE International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2013), pp. 31–43 (2013)
Rogge-Solti, A., Senderovich, A., Weidlich, M., Mendling, J., Gal, A.: In log and model we trust? A generalized conformance checking framework. In: La Rosa, M., Loos, P., Pastor, O. (eds.) BPM 2016. LNCS, vol. 9850, pp. 179–196. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45348-4_11
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Rehse, JR., Fettke, P., Loos, P. (2018). Process Mining and the Black Swan: An Empirical Analysis of the Influence of Unobserved Behavior on the Quality of Mined Process Models. In: Teniente, E., Weidlich, M. (eds) Business Process Management Workshops. BPM 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 308. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74029-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74030-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)