I'm analyzing the GDELT dataset and I want to determine thematic clusters. Simplifying considerably, GDELT parses news articles and extracts events. As part of that, it recognizes, let's say, 250 "themes" and tags each "event" it records in a column a semi-colon separated list of all themes identified in the article.
With that preamble, I've extracted, for 2016, a list of approximately 350,000 semi-colon separated theme lists, such as these two:
- TAX_FNCACT;TAX_FNCACT_QUEEN;CRISISLEX_T11_UPDATESSYMPATHY;CRISISLEX_CRISISLEXREC;MILITARY;TAX_MILITARY_TITLE;TAX_MILITARY_TITLE_SOLDIER;TAX_FNCACT_SOLDIER;USPEC_POLITICS_GENERAL1;WB_1458_HEALTH_PROMOTION_AND_DISEASE_PREVENTION;WB_1462_WATER_SANITATION_AND_HYGIENE;WB_635_PUBLIC_HEALTH;WB_621_HEALTH_NUTRITION_AND_POPULATION;MARITIME_INCIDENT;MARITIME;MANMADE_DISASTER_IMPLIED;
- CRISISLEX_CRISISLEXREC;EDUCATION;SOC_POINTSOFINTEREST;SOC_POINTSOFINTEREST_COLLEGE;TAX_FNCACT;TAX_FNCACT_MAN;TAX_ECON_PRICE;SOC_POINTSOFINTEREST_UNIVERSITY;TAX_FNCACT_JUDGES;TAX_FNCACT_CHILD;LEGISLATION;EPU_POLICY;EPU_POLICY_LAW;TAX_FNCACT_CHILDREN;WB_470_EDUCATION;
As you can see, both of these lists both contain "TAX_FNACT" and "CRISISLEX_CRISISLEXREC". Thus, "TAX_FNACT;CRISISLEX_CRISISLEXREC" is a 2-item cluster. A better understanding of GDELT informs us that it isn't a particularly useful cluster, but it is one nevertheless.
What I'd like to do, ideally, is compose a dictionary of lists. The key for the dictionary is the number of items in the cluster and value is a list of tuples of all theme clusters with that "key" number of elements paired with the number of times that cluster appeared. This ideal algorithm would run until it identified the largest cluster.
Does an algorithm already exist that I can use for this purpose and if so, what is it named? If I had to guess, I would imagine we've created something to extract x-item clusters and then I would just loop from 2->? until I don't get any results.
