Covering rough sets based on neighborhoods: An approach without using neighborhoods

Rough set theory, a mathematical tool to deal with inexact or uncertain knowledge in information systems, has originally described the indiscernibility of elements by equivalence relations. Covering rough sets are a natural extension of classical rough sets by relaxing the partitions arising from equivalence relations to coverings. Recently, some topological concepts such as neighborhood have been applied to covering rough sets. In this paper, we further investigate the covering rough sets based on neighborhoods by approximation operations. We show that the upper approximation based on neighborhoods can be defined equivalently without using neighborhoods. To analyze the coverings themselves, we introduce unary and composition operations on coverings. A notion of homomorphismis provided to relate two covering approximation spaces. We also examine the properties of approximations preserved by the operations and homomorphisms, respectively.Comment: 13 pages; to appear in International Journal of Approximate Reasonin

Rough analysis in lattices

An outline of an algebraie generalization of the rough set theory is presented in the paper. It is shown that the majority of the basic concepts of this theory has an immediate algebraic generalization, and that some rough set facts are true in general algebraic structures. The formalism employed is that of lattice theory. New concepts of rough order, approximation space and rough (quantitative) approximation space are introduced and investigated. It is shown that the original Pawlak's theory of rough sets and information systems is a model of this general approach