US Patent 9087294 Prediction method, prediction system and program

A method for predicting an output variable from explanatory values provided as sets of combinations of discrete variables and continuous variables includes receiving input data that contains the explanatory variables to predict the output variable; searching for each element in the combinations for elements in a plurality of sets with matching discrete variables using training data which the output variable has been observed; applying a function giving the degree of similarity between two sets weighed by a scale variable to each element in the input data, and to one or more elements found in the elements of the input data to calculate function values, and calculating the sum of the function values for all of the elements in the input data; and applying the calculated sum for each element to a prediction equation for predicting the output variable to calculate a prediction value of the output variable for each element.