Abstract: In order to advance the performance of association rules mining algorithm when disposing big dataset, a novel UEP based on Niche (NUEP) was presented to solve the probleme. The procedure of NUEP began with the niche evolution and then fused some of the sub-niches according to the similarity of best individuals. Then Cartesian product was nested in the kernel set of niches to generate better outcomes. The experimental results show that our algorithm performs better than the other similar evolutionary algorithm in terms of diversity of population and precision; besides, it can discover more association rules.

Key words: Data mining, Association rule, Gene expression programming, Niche