Entropy-Weighted Apriori Mining and Eye-Tracking Analysis of Furniture Co-Occurrence Patterns in Ming-Style Studies

The Ming-style study served as the spatial embodiment of the lives of Chinese literati. Research into the patterns of furniture arrangement within these spaces has long relied on physical artifacts and textual records, lacking systematic quantitative analysis. This study collected data from visual sources, such as Ming Dynasty paintings and book illustrations, as well as textual records from historical documents and classical texts, to catalog Ming-style study furniture and construct a database of furniture arrangements. To address differences in the quantity and completeness of information across various sample sources, the study introduced the information entropy method to calculate source weights and incorporated these weights into the Apriori association rule mining process, thereby identifying strong association rules within Ming-style study furniture arrangements. Finally, eye-tracking experiments were conducted to examine the allocation of visual attention among furniture objects within selected representative combinations. The study ultimately identified three sets of patterns for Ming-style study furniture arrangements, while the eye-tracking experiment provided supplementary evidence regarding the visual attention hierarchy and visual organization of furniture objects in selected contemporary Ming-style study scenes. From a scientific perspective, this research offers theoretical references and practical pathways for the quantitative study of Ming-style study furniture arrangements and contemporary Chinese-style study design, providing a practical method that combines cultural and scientific elements for the transformation and development of traditional cultural resources.