Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing

3 primary works

Aggregation Functions: A Guide for Practitioners

by Gleb Beliakov, Ana Pradera, and Tomasa Calvo

Published 12 February 2008

A broad introduction to the topic of aggregation functions is to be found in this book. It also provides a concise account of the properties and the main classes of such functions. Some state-of-the-art techniques are presented, along with many graphical illustrations and new interpolatory aggregation functions. Particular attention is paid to identification and construction of aggregation functions from application specific requirements and empirical data.

A Practical Guide to Averaging Functions

by Gleb Beliakov, Humberto Bustince Sola, and Tomasa Calvo

Published 23 October 2015

This book offers an easy-to-use and practice-oriented reference guide to mathematical averages. It presents different ways of aggregating input values given on a numerical scale, and of choosing and/or constructing aggregating functions for specific applications. Building on a previous monograph by Beliakov et al. published by Springer in 2007, it outlines new aggregation methods developed in the interim, with a special focus on the topic of averaging aggregation functions. It examines recent advances in the field, such as aggregation on lattices, penalty-based aggregation and weakly monotone averaging, and extends many of the already existing methods, such as: ordered weighted averaging (OWA), fuzzy integrals and mixture functions. A substantial mathematical background is not called for, as all the relevant mathematical notions are explained here and reported on together with a wealth of graphical illustrations of distinct families of aggregation functions. The authors mainly focus on practical applications and give central importance to the conciseness of exposition, as well as the relevance and applicability of the reported methods, offering a valuable resource for computer scientists, IT specialists, mathematicians, system architects, knowledge engineers and programmers, as well as for anyone facing the issue of how to combine various inputs into a single output value.

Discrete Fuzzy Measures

by Gleb Beliakov, Simon James, and Jian-Zhang Wu

Published 27 March 2019

This book addresses computer scientists, IT specialists, mathematicians, knowledge engineers and programmers, who are engaged in research and practice of multicriteria decision making. Fuzzy measures, also known as capacities, allow one to combine degrees of preferences, support or fuzzy memberships into one representative value, taking into account interactions between the inputs. The notions of mutual reinforcement or redundancy are modeled explicitly through coefficients of fuzzy measures, and fuzzy integrals, such as the Choquet and Sugeno integrals combine the inputs. Building on previous monographs published by the authors and dealing with different aspects of aggregation, this book especially focuses on the Choquet and Sugeno integrals. It presents a number of new findings concerning computation of fuzzy measures, learning them from data and modeling interactions. The book does not require substantial mathematical background, as all the relevant notions are explained. It is intended as concise, timely and self-contained guide to the use of fuzzy measures in the field of multicriteria decision making.