Consensus, dissension and precision in group decision making by means of an algebraic extension of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets

Present measures of the degree of agreement in group decision-making using hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets allow consensus or agreement measurement when decision makers’ assessments involve hesitance. Yet they do not discriminate with different degrees of consensus among situations with discordant or polarized assessments. The visualization of differences among groups for which there is no agreement but different possible levels of disagreement is an important issue in collective decision-making situations. In this paper, we propose new collective and individual consensus measures that explicitly consider the hesitance of the decision makers’ hesitance in giving an opinion and also the gap between non-overlapping assessments, thus allowing the measurement of the polarization present within the group's opinions. In addition, an expert's profile is defined by considering the expert's behavior in previous assessments in group decision-making processes in terms of precision and dissension.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A contribution to consensus modeling in decision-making by means of linguistic assessments

Decision-making is an active field of research. Specifically, in recent times, a lot of contributions have been presented on decision-making under linguistic assessments. To tackle this kind of processes, hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets have been introduced to grasp the uncertainty inherent in human reasoning when expressing preferences. This thesis introduces an extension of the set of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets to capture differences between non-compatible assessments. Based on this extension, a distance between linguistic assessments is defined to quantify differences between several opinions. This distance is used in turn to present a representative opinion from a group in a decision-making process. In addition, different consensus measures are introduced to determine the level of agreement or disagreement within a decision-making group and are used to define a decision maker’s profile to keep track of their dissension with respect to the group as well as their level of hesitancy. Furthermore, with the aim of allowing decision makers to choose the linguistic terms that they feel more comfortable with, the concept of free double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set is developed in this thesis. Finally, a new approach of the TOPSIS methodology for processes in which the assessments are given by means of free double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy information is presented to rank alternatives under these circumstances.Postprint (published version

A contribution to consensus modeling in decision-making by means of linguistic assessments

Decision-making is an active field of research. Specifically, in recent times, a lot of contributions have been presented on decision-making under linguistic assessments. To tackle this kind of processes, hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets have been introduced to grasp the uncertainty inherent in human reasoning when expressing preferences. This thesis introduces an extension of the set of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets to capture differences between non-compatible assessments. Based on this extension, a distance between linguistic assessments is defined to quantify differences between several opinions. This distance is used in turn to present a representative opinion from a group in a decision-making process. In addition, different consensus measures are introduced to determine the level of agreement or disagreement within a decision-making group and are used to define a decision maker’s profile to keep track of their dissension with respect to the group as well as their level of hesitancy. Furthermore, with the aim of allowing decision makers to choose the linguistic terms that they feel more comfortable with, the concept of free double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set is developed in this thesis. Finally, a new approach of the TOPSIS methodology for processes in which the assessments are given by means of free double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy information is presented to rank alternatives under these circumstances

Fusing hotel ratings and reviews with hesitant terms and consensus measures

People have come to refer to reviews for valuable information on products before making a purchase. Digesting relevant opinions regarding a product by reading all the reviews is challenging. An automated methodology which aggregates opinions across all the reviews for a single product to help differentiate any two products having the same overall rating is defined. In order to facilitate this process, rating values, which capture the overall satisfaction, and written reviews, which contain the sentiment of the experience with a product, are fused together. In this manner, each reviewer’s opinion is expressed as an interval rating by means of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets. These new expressions of opinion are then aggregated and expressed in terms of a central opinion and degree of consensus representing the agreement among the sentiment of the reviewers for an individual product. A real case example based on 2506 TripAdvisor reviews of hotels in Rome during 2017 is provided. The efficiency of the proposed methodology when discriminating between two hotels is compared with the TripAdvisor rating and median of reviews. The proposed methodology obtains significant differentiation between product rankings.This research has been partially supported by the Secretary of Universities and Research of the Department of Enterprise and Knowledge of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2017 DI 086) and by the INVITE Research Project (TIN2016-80049-C2-1-R and TIN2016-80049-C2-2-R (AEI/FEDER, UE)), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Information Technology.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

Cultural Citizenship and the Politics of Censorship in Post-Colonial India: Media, Power, and the Making of the Citizen

With postcolonial India as its case study, the thesis explores the role of culture in the process of citizen-making. If the nation is an imagined community constructed through discourse, then belonging-the feeling of being part of that nation can only arise when citizens have the option of entering into the media discourse and modifying it, thus making it pluralistic to reflect the cultural diversity inherent in the nation. Linking political science and cultural studies to explore the mutually constitutive role of discourse and institutions in the realm of power, the thesis claims that citizenship is an ongoing discursive project susceptible to changes through conceptual flow. In highlighting the central role of culture for any citizenship regime, the thesis moves beyond the legalistic understanding of the concept to show how the monopolization of interpretation on the one hand, and the discursive plurality on the other, are the poles of the negotiation of inclusion in- and exclusion from the national community. In doing so, the thesis makes a case for conceptual stretching to include hybrid categories. It investigates into subaltern counter-publics that are constituted outside the institutional realm in response to exclusion from dominant publics, and in the process, arrives at a changed self-understanding of the discipline of political science, enhanced by analytical factors like culture, memory and identity, which lie beyond the positivist reach

An Exploratory Study Of Perceived Complexity In IT Projects

The considerable failure rate of information technology (IT) projects remains a problem for many organisations and impacts their ability to successfully participate in the digital economy. Previous root cause analysis identified project complexity as one of the key factors in and of IT project failure. The purpose of this research was therefore to critically examine complexity in IT projects. In contrast to earlier positivist research on complexity, this study was built on a critical realist perspective to better understand the underlying structures and mechanisms behind what individuals within IT projects perceive as being “complex”.A qualitative research design was chosen with a series of semistructured in-depth interviews with IT project practitioners as the data collection method. The research identified four internal variables (experience, stress, frustration, and motivation) and three external variables (communication, expectations, and support) which interact with perceived complexity. These findings were synthesised into a conceptual model of perceived complexity in IT projects. In addition, the findings indicated that the role of an individual (project sponsor, project manager, project team member) influences perceived complexity.Through the identification of previously hidden mechanisms within IT projects, the study extends the body of knowledge about IT project complexity. In addition, the identified mechanisms were combined with typical situations in IT projects. The outcome, which represents the study’s contribution to practice, are practice-orientated guidelines for handling complexity in IT projects which aims to support IT project professionals and organisations to better manage complexity. The study therefore provides valuable contributions to the theory and practice of IT project complexity

Bowdoin Orient v.96, no.1-24 (1966-1967)

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