Chance discovery is to become aware of a chance and to explain its significance, especially if the chance is rare and its significance is unnoticed. This direction matches with various real requirements in human life. This paper presents the significance, viewpoints, theories, methods, and future work of chance discovery. Three keys for the progress are extracted from fundamental discussions on how to realize chance discovery: (1) communication, (2) imagination, and (3) data mining. As an approach to chance discovery, visualized data mining methods are formalized as tools aiding chance discoveries on the basis of these keys.Keywords: Chance Discovery, Rare Events, Human Awareness.
w Introduction to Chance DiscoveryChance discovery is the discovery of chance, not by chance. Here, a "chance" is defined as an event or a situation which gives significant impact on human decision making (to follow the second meaning of "chance"-a suitable time or occasion to do something -in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2) considering that the situation or event occurred at a certain time is more significant than the time itself, and that a decision to do something precedes the action of doing it). In other words, a chance here is a new event or situation that can be conceived either as an opportunity or as a risk. The word "discovery" also has some ambiguity. In the process of discovering a law ruling the nature, sometimes we "learn" frequent patterns in the observation. This restriction of meaning of "discovery" to "learning" is established in the machine-learning community of artificial intelligence, yet the general meaning of discovery is to explain events which have never been explained on explicit theory or hypotheses. Chance discovery is defined as the awareness of a chance and the explanation of its significance, especially if the chance is rare and its significance is unnoticed. By understanding explicitly what actions can be taken to turn an opportunity into one's benefit, desirable effects of opportunities can be actively promoted. Whereas, explicit preventive measures will come to be taken for discovered risks.An essential aspect of a chance is that it can be a new seed of significant future changes. The discovery of a new opportunity may lead to an unusual benefit, because they are not known yet by anyone including one's business rivals, who are accustomed to frequent past opportunities. The discovery of a new hazard risk is indispensable to minimize damage, because existing solutions worked on frequent past hazards may not work. Chance discovery aims at solving problems by noticing (becoming aware of) and explaining 9 new products worth promoting sales and consumptions, 9 side-effect risks of a new drug, 9 signs of great earthquakes in the future, 9 words on WWW, to attract potential desires of many people, etc.In each example, being aware of the significance of a rare event, not ignoring it as noise, and breeding it up to create new trends can be more essential than predictions based on past frequent pa...