**2. Inconsistencies in patterns**

Any inconsistent data associated to a pattern reduces the quality of findings presented by the analyst about the pattern. An assessment of such inconsistent data can increase the trustworthiness of the findings from the analyst. There are everyday instances of inconsistent data in identified patterns which are likely to mar the patterns. Meade and Craig in [15] explain how inconsistent data from careless respondents of students' survey can be identified among data patterns common among respondents of the survey. Patterns derived from survey data can be associated to contradictory or incomplete responses. Also, patterns discovered in biological investigations can be associated to inconsistent and incomplete data. A gene expression dataset whose columns includes gene name, tissue name, expression and experiment ID can contain inconsistent data in an identified pattern where many experiments are performed for a particular gene in a particular tissue. An expression can be detected,

not detected, or not available. If one of the interesting patterns is that a gene "xxx" is "detected" in experiments on tissue "yyy" of an organism at a particular developmental stage, then inconsistency of the pattern from the dataset will exist where there are data that shows that the gene "xxx" is "not detected" in other experiments that investigates the tissue "yyy" of the same organism at the same developmental stage. Also, uncertainty about the presence of the gene "xxx" can exist in the dataset where the information about the presence of the gene in the experiment about the tissue "yyy" at the same developmental stage is missing. Such missing information can be denoted by "unavailable" or empty space, among others. Inconsistent data relating to gene expressions in tissues of different developmental stages are reported in [17, 19]. Finally, a Radiologist chest x-ray report can be used to detect aortic unfolding which is mostly associated with systemic hypertension. However, there are instances of aortic unfolding which are not associated with systemic hypertension. There are also, some instances of aortic unfolding which it is not known if they are associated with systemic hypertension. These instances are inconsistent in a pattern involving systemic hypertension as a cause of aortic unfolding.
