Series:

Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing

2 primary works

Book 118

Cover of Cardinalities of Fuzzy Sets
Counting is one of the basic elementary mathematical activities. It comes with two complementary aspects: to determine the number of elements of a set - and to create an ordering between the objects of counting just by counting them over. For finite sets of objects these two aspects are realized by the same type of num bers: the natural numbers. That these complementary aspects of the counting pro cess may need different kinds of numbers becomes apparent if one extends the process of counting to infinite sets. As general tools to determine numbers of elements the cardinals have been created in set theory, and set theorists have in parallel created the ordinals to count over any set of objects. For both types of numbers it is not only counting they are used for, it is also the strongly related process of calculation - especially addition and, derived from it, multiplication and even exponentiation - which is based upon these numbers. For fuzzy sets the idea of counting, in both aspects, looses its naive foundation: because it is to a large extent founded upon of the idea that there is a clear distinc tion between those objects which have to be counted - and those ones which have to be neglected for the particular counting process.

Book 292

Cover of Intelligent Counting Under Information Imprecision

Counting belongs to the most elementary and frequent mental activities of human beings. Its results are a basis for coming to a decision in a lot of situations and dimensions of our life. This book presents a novel approach to the advanced and sophisticated case, called intelligent counting, in which the objects of counting are imprecisely, fuzzily specified.

Formally, this collapses to counting in fuzzy sets, interval-valued fuzzy sets or I-fuzzy sets (Atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy sets).

The monograph is the first one showing and emphasizing that the presented methods of intelligent counting are human-consistent: are reflections and formalizations of real, human counting procedures performed under imprecision and, possibly, incompleteness of information. Other applications of intelligent counting in various areas of intelligent systems and decision support will be discussed, too.

The whole presentation is self-contained, systematic, and equipped with many examples, figures and tables. Computer and information scientists, researchers, engineers and practitioners, applied mathematicians, and postgraduate students interested in information imprecision are the target readers.