Interpretable Sequence Classification via Decision Set

Sequence classification is a fundamental research issue in data mining and machine learning. However, existing sequence classification methods primarily focus on improving the prediction performance. Although a few methods attempt to enhance the interpretability, they often fail to provide intuitive model explanations and come with high computational costs. To fill this gap, we propose an interpretable sequence classification algorithm based on decision set. Each rule in the decision set is only associated with one discriminative pattern (subsequence) and the classification decision is made based on one best-matched rule. Hence, the proposed method has good interpretablility since the classification decision is solely determined by one simple intuitive rule. Experimental results on real-world data sets demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms the state-ofthe- art interpretable sequence classification methods in terms of both interpretability and classification accuracy.