Developing an agile recommender system for nomadic users has been regarded as a promising application in mobile and ubiquitous settings. To increase the quality of personalized recommendation in terms of accuracy and elapsed time, estimating future context of the user in a correct way is highly crucial. Traditionally, time series analysis and Makovian process have been adopted for such forecasting. However, these methods are not adequate in predicting context data, only because most of context data are represented as nominal scale. To resolve these limitations, the alignment-prediction algorithm has been suggested for context prediction, especially for future context from the low-level context. Recently, an ontological approach has been proposed for guided context prediction without context history. However, due to variety of context information, acquiring sufficient context prediction knowledge a priori is not easy in most of service domains. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a novel context prediction methodology, which does not require a priori knowledge, and to increase accuracy and decrease elapsed time for service response. To do so, we have newly developed pattern-based context prediction approach. First of ail, a set of individual rules is derived from each context attribute using context history. Then a pattern consisted of results from reasoning individual rules, is developed for pattern learning. If at least one context property matches, say R, then regard the pattern as right. If the pattern is new, add right pattern, set the value of mismatched properties = 0, freq = 1 and w(R, 1). Otherwise, increase the frequency of the matched right pattern by 1 and then set w(R,freq). After finishing training, if the frequency is greater than a threshold value, then save the right pattern in knowledge base. On the other hand, if at least one context property matches, say W, then regard the pattern as wrong. If the pattern is new, modify the result into wrong answer, add right pattern, and set frequency to 1 and w(W, 1). Or, increase the matched wrong pattern's frequency by 1 and then set w(W, freq). After finishing training, if the frequency value is greater than a threshold level, then save the wrong pattern on the knowledge basis. Then, context prediction is performed with combinatorial rules as follows: first, identify current context. Second, find matched patterns from right patterns. If there is no pattern matched, then find a matching pattern from wrong patterns. If a matching pattern is not found, then choose one context property whose predictability is higher than that of any other properties. To show the feasibility of the methodology proposed in this paper, we collected actual context history from the travelers who had visited the largest amusement park in Korea. As a result, 400 context records were collected in 2009. Then we randomly selected 70% of the records as training data. The rest were selected as testing data. To examine the performance of the methodology, prediction accuracy and elapsed time were chosen as measures. We compared the performance with case-based reasoning and voting methods. Through a simulation test, we conclude that our methodology is clearly better than CBR and voting methods in terms of accuracy and elapsed time. This shows that the methodology is relatively valid and scalable. As a second round of the experiment, we compared a full model to a partial model. A full model indicates that right and wrong patterns are used for reasoning the future context. On the other hand, a partial model means that the reasoning is performed only with right patterns, which is generally adopted in the legacy alignment-prediction method. It turned out that a full model is better than a partial model in terms of the accuracy while partial model is better when considering elapsed time. As a last experiment, we took into our consideration potential privacy problems that might arise among the users. To mediate such concern, we excluded such context properties as date of tour and user profiles such as gender and age. The outcome shows that preserving privacy is endurable. Contributions of this paper are as follows: First, academically, we have improved sequential matching methods to predict accuracy and service time by considering individual rules of each context property and learning from wrong patterns. Second, the proposed method is found to be quite effective for privacy preserving applications, which are frequently required by B2C context-aware services; the privacy preserving system applying the proposed method successfully can also decrease elapsed time. Hence, the method is very practical in establishing privacy preserving context-aware services. Our future research issues taking into account some limitations in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, user acceptance or usability will be tested with actual users in order to prove the value of the prototype system. Second, we will apply the proposed method to more general application domains as this paper focused on tourism in amusement park.
The prediction of bankruptcy has been extensively studied in the accounting and finance field. It can have an important impact on lending decisions and the profitability of financial institutions in terms of risk management. Many researchers have focused on constructing a more robust bankruptcy prediction model. Early studies primarily used statistical techniques such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and logit analysis for bankruptcy prediction. However, many studies have demonstrated that artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, such as artificial neural networks (ANN), decision trees, case-based reasoning (CBR), and support vector machine (SVM), have been outperforming statistical techniques since 1990s for business classification problems because statistical methods have some rigid assumptions in their application. In previous studies on corporate bankruptcy, many researchers have focused on developing a bankruptcy prediction model using financial ratios. However, there are few studies that suggest the specific types of bankruptcy. Previous bankruptcy prediction models have generally been interested in predicting whether or not firms will become bankrupt. Most of the studies on bankruptcy types have focused on reviewing the previous literature or performing a case study. Thus, this study develops a model using data mining techniques for predicting the specific types of bankruptcy as well as the occurrence of bankruptcy in Korean small- and medium-sized construction firms in terms of profitability, stability, and activity index. Thus, firms will be able to prevent it from occurring in advance. We propose a hybrid approach using two artificial neural networks (ANNs) for the prediction of bankruptcy types. The first is a back-propagation neural network (BPN) model using supervised learning for bankruptcy prediction and the second is a self-organizing map (SOM) model using unsupervised learning to classify bankruptcy data into several types. Based on the constructed model, we predict the bankruptcy of companies by applying the BPN model to a validation set that was not utilized in the development of the model. This allows for identifying the specific types of bankruptcy by using bankruptcy data predicted by the BPN model. We calculated the average of selected input variables through statistical test for each cluster to interpret characteristics of the derived clusters in the SOM model. Each cluster represents bankruptcy type classified through data of bankruptcy firms, and input variables indicate financial ratios in interpreting the meaning of each cluster. The experimental result shows that each of five bankruptcy types has different characteristics according to financial ratios. Type 1 (severe bankruptcy) has inferior financial statements except for EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) to sales based on the clustering results. Type 2 (lack of stability) has a low quick ratio, low stockholder's equity to total assets, and high total borrowings to total assets. Type 3 (lack of activity) has a slightly low total asset turnover and fixed asset turnover. Type 4 (lack of profitability) has low retained earnings to total assets and EBITDA to sales which represent the indices of profitability. Type 5 (recoverable bankruptcy) includes firms that have a relatively good financial condition as compared to other bankruptcy types even though they are bankrupt. Based on the findings, researchers and practitioners engaged in the credit evaluation field can obtain more useful information about the types of corporate bankruptcy. In this paper, we utilized the financial ratios of firms to classify bankruptcy types. It is important to select the input variables that correctly predict bankruptcy and meaningfully classify the type of bankruptcy. In a further study, we will include non-financial factors such as size, industry, and age of the firms. Thus, we can obtain realistic clustering results for bankruptcy types by combining qualitative factors and reflecting the domain knowledge of experts.