OIE: An Interpretable System for Outlier Explanation and Summarization

Jingzhe Xu, Yuhao Deng, Chengliang Chai*, Zequn Li, Yuping Wang, Lei Cao

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Outlier detection is crucial for preventing financial fraud, network intrusions, and device failures. However, while existing methods excel at identifying outliers, they often fall short of providing clear and interpretable explanations. This limitation forces users to manually analyze numerous outliers, making the process both time-consuming and inefficient. Additionally, current summarization approaches often focus only on data attributes, ignoring that outliers in the same subspace may have different causes. Consequently, these methods produce broad summaries that make quick diagnosis difficult. To address these challenges, we propose OIE, a system that generates interpretable, fine-grained rules to summarize and explain outlier detection results. OIE leverages decision trees to generate concise rules, balancing simplicity and classification accuracy. Additionally, it employs dynamic data partitioning and a boundary stabilizer to efficiently handle high-dimensional and complex datasets. Through multiple real-world scenarios, OIE demonstrates effective anomaly detection and summarization, providing actionable insights and enhancing the efficiency of outlier analysis. A demonstration video of OIE is available at:http://youtu.be/YzfDdF9f5HI.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSIGMOD-Companion 2025 - Companion of the 2025 International Conference on Management of Data
EditorsAmol Deshpande, Ashraf Aboulnaga, Babak Salimi, Badrish Chandramouli, Bill Howe, Boon Thau Loo, Boris Glavic, Carlo Curino, Daisy Zhe Wang, Dan Suciu, Daniel Abadi, Divesh Srivastava, Eugene Wu, Faisal Nawab, Ihab Ilyas, Jeffrey Naughton, Jennie Rogers, Jignesh Patel, Joy Arulraj, Jun Yang, Karima Echihabi, Kenneth Ross, Khuzaima Daudjee, Laks Lakshmanan, Minos Garofalakis, Mirek Riedewald, Mohamed Mokbel, Mourad Ouzzani, Oliver Kennedy, Oliver Kennedy, Paolo Papotti, Peter Alvaro, Peter Bailis, Renee Miller, Senjuti Basu Roy, Sergey Melnik, Stratos Idreos, Sudeepa Roy, Theodoros Rekatsinas, Viktor Leis, Wenchao Zhou, Wolfgang Gatterbauer, Zack Ives
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages259-262
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9798400715648
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Jun 2025
Event2025 ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data, SIGMOD-Companion 2025 - Berlin, Germany
Duration: 22 Jun 202527 Jun 2025

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
ISSN (Print)0730-8078

Conference

Conference2025 ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data, SIGMOD-Companion 2025
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityBerlin
Period22/06/2527/06/25

Keywords

  • decision tree
  • interpretable machine learning
  • outlier explanation

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