Generation of prototypes from sets of linguistic summaries

Linguistic summarization of time series can glean meaningful information from huge amounts of data. However, in situations like continuous monitoring, even linguistic summaries become difficult for a person to understand. In this paper, we develop an approach to generate linguistic prototypes from a group of time blocks that represent a normal condition. Then the set of summaries for new time blocks are compared to the prototypes to flag anomalous conditions, thereby reducing the burden on the human. Case studies from an eldercare environment demonstrate the utility of this approach.