Computational methods and systems described herein manage alerts generated by event sources that run in a distributed computing system. Methods and system provide a graphical user interface that enables a user to define a dominant alert and select subsumed alerts generated by the event sources. Methods and systems may also compute a relative fraction that represents a number of times each alert is triggered with respect to a number of times another alert is triggered for each pair of alerts. The relative fractions may be displayed in the graphical user interface to allow a user to select dominant and subsumed alerts based on the relative fractions. Methods and systems identify log messages that correspond to user-identified subsumed alerts, suppress subsumed alerts and generate the dominant alert. Methods and systems may also execute remedial action to correct the problem represented by the dominant alert.