MODELS, TECHNIQUES, AND ALGORITHMS FOR FINDING, SELECTING, AND DISPLAYING PATTERNS IN STRINGS AND OTHER DISCRETE OBJECTS

The objectives of this paper are to (1) demonstrate that pattern disco very in discrete objects is an important intellectual task performed b y humans that would benefit from automation. We do this by presenting ''everyday'' examples from software engineering and other areas such a s document preparation, molecular biology, computer vision, and comput er graphics; (2) propose a general methodology for a system that autom ates pattern discovery. This methodology has three components: (a) dis covery: find all common patterns in objects; (b) selection: determine which of these patterns is important by taking into account criteria t hat are important to a particular application or user; (c) display: di splaying the selected patterns. The methodology was developed by takin g into account a number of practical considerations in the areas of co mputer-human interaction and visualization. (3) Outline efficient algo rithms for some of the problems that must be solved in order to implem ent the proposed methodology. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.