On Open Problem - Semantics of the Clone Items

There was presented a list of open problems in the Formal Concept Analysis area at the conference ICFCA 2006. The problem number seven deals with the semantics of the clone items. Namely, for whom can clone items make sense and for whom can make sense the item, which can cause, that clones disappear in the collection of itemsets. In this paper we propose the semantics behind clone items with the couple of examples. Definition of the clone items is very strict and theirs use could be very limited in the real datasets. We introduce method, how to deal with items, which properties are very near to the clones. We also have a look on the items, which causes the disappearing of the clones, or decrease (increase) the degree of property ”to be clone”. In the experiment part we analyze some known datasets from the clone items point of view. The results bring a couple of new questions for the future research.