Chapter 3. Predicting Customer Shopping Trends with Market Basket Analysis

After the previous Chapter 2, Let's Help Machine Learn, you now know how to make machines learn from observations and data points so that they can find out interesting patterns, trends, and make predictions. In this chapter, we will be dealing with one of the complex problems faced by retailers, stores, and e-commerce marketplaces today. With the advent of modern technology and innovations, shopping has become a relatively pleasant and enjoyable experience which we can enjoy from the comfort of our home, without even venturing to an actual store, using the web or dedicated apps which provide shopping facilities. With a humongous number of retailers, stores, marketplaces, and sellers, competition is pretty stiff, and to attract customers, they have to use all the data they can gather from consumers about their personal traits and shopping patterns, and use machine learning techniques to try and make...