The document discusses association rule mining and the Apriori algorithm. It provides an overview of association rule mining, which aims to discover relationships between variables in large datasets. The Apriori algorithm is then explained as a popular algorithm for association rule mining that uses a bottom-up approach to generate frequent itemsets and association rules, starting from individual items and building up patterns by combining items. The key steps of Apriori involve generating candidate itemsets, counting their support from the dataset, and pruning unpromising candidates to create the frequent itemsets.