Comparación entre el Índice de Yager y el Centroide para Reducción de tipo de un Número Difuso Tipo-2 de Intervalo

Context: There is a need for ranking and defuzzification of Interval Type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FS), in particular Interval Type-2 fuzzy numbers (IT2FN). To do so, we use the classical Yager Index Rank (YIR) for fuzzy sets to IT2FNs in order to find an alternative to the centroid of an IT2FN.Method: We use a simulation strategy to compare the results of the centroid and the YIR of an IT2FN. This way, we simulate 1000 IT2FNs of the following three kinds: gaussian, triangular, and non symmetrical in order to compare their centroids and YIRs.Results: After performing the simulations, we compute some statistics about its behavior such as the degree of subsethood, equality and the size of the Footprint of Uncertainty (FOU) of an IT2FN. A description of the obtained results shows that the YIR is less wide than centroid of an IT2FN.Conclusions: In general, YIR is less complex to obtain than the centroid of an IT2FN, which is highly desirable in practical applications such as fuzzy decision making and control. Some other properties regarding its size and location are also discussed.Contexto: Hay una necesidad por defuzzificar y rankear Conjuntos Difusos Tipo-2 de Intervalo (IT2FS), en particular Números Difusos Tipo-2 de Intervalo (IT2FN). Para ello, usamos el Índice de Yager (YIR) para conjuntos difusos aplicado a IT2FNs con el fin de encontrar una alternativa al centroide de un IT2FN.Método: Usamos una estrategia de simulación para comparar los resultados del centroide y del YIR de un IT2FN. Así pues, simulamos 1000 IT2FNs de cada uno de los siguientes tres tipos: gausianos, triangulares y asimétricos para comparar sus centroides y YIRs.Resultados: Después de realizar las simulaciones, se calculan algunas estadísticas de su comportamiento como el grado de cobertura y de igualdad relativas del YIR respecto al centroide así como el tamaño de la Huella de Incertidumbre (FOU) de un IT2FN. La descripción de los resultados obtenidos muestra que el YIR es menos amplio que el centroide.Conclusiones: En general, el YIR es menos complejo de obtener que el centroide de un IT2FN, lo cual es altamente deseable en aplicaciones prácticas como toma de decisiones y control. Otras propiedades relacionadas con su tamaño y ubicación también son discutidas

An effective similarity measurement under epistemic uncertainty

The epistemic uncertainty stems from the lack of knowledge and it can be reduced when the knowledge increases. Such inter-pretation works well with data represented as a set of possible states and therefore, multivalued similarity measures. Unfortunately, set-valued extensions of similarity measures are not computationally feasible even when the data is finite. Measures with properties that allow efficient calculation of their extensions, need to be found. Analysis of various similarity measures indicated logic-based (additive) measures as an excellent candidate. Their unique properties are discussed and efficient algorithms for computing set-valued extensions are given. The work presents results related to various classes of fuzzy set families: general ones, intervals of fuzzy sets, and their finite sums. The first case is related to the concept of the Fuzzy Membership Function Family, the second corresponds to the Interval-Valued Fuzzy Sets, while the third class is equivalent to the concept of Typical Interval-Valued Hesitant Fuzzy Sets

Type-2 Fuzzy Alpha-cuts

Systems that utilise type-2 fuzzy sets to handle uncertainty have not been implemented in real world applications unlike the astonishing number of applications involving standard fuzzy sets. The main reason behind this is the complex mathematical nature of type-2 fuzzy sets which is the source of two major problems. On one hand, it is difficult to mathematically manipulate type-2 fuzzy sets, and on the other, the computational cost of processing and performing operations using these sets is very high. Most of the current research carried out on type-2 fuzzy logic concentrates on finding mathematical means to overcome these obstacles. One way of accomplishing the first task is to develop a meaningful mathematical representation of type-2 fuzzy sets that allows functions and operations to be extended from well known mathematical forms to type-2 fuzzy sets. To this end, this thesis presents a novel alpha-cut representation theorem to be this meaningful mathematical representation. It is the decomposition of a type-2 fuzzy set in to a number of classical sets. The alpha-cut representation theorem is the main contribution of this thesis. This dissertation also presents a methodology to allow functions and operations to be extended directly from classical sets to type-2 fuzzy sets. A novel alpha-cut extension principle is presented in this thesis and used to define uncertainty measures and arithmetic operations for type-2 fuzzy sets. Throughout this investigation, a plethora of concepts and definitions have been developed for the first time in order to make the manipulation of type-2 fuzzy sets a simple and straight forward task. Worked examples are used to demonstrate the usefulness of these theorems and methods. Finally, the crisp alpha-cuts of this fundamental decomposition theorem are by definition independent of each other. This dissertation shows that operations on type-2 fuzzy sets using the alpha-cut extension principle can be processed in parallel. This feature is found to be extremely powerful, especially if performing computation on the massively parallel graphical processing units. This thesis explores this capability and shows through different experiments the achievement of significant reduction in processing time.The National Training Directorate, Republic of Suda

Towards Better Performance in the Face of Input Uncertainty while Maintaining Interpretability in AI

Uncertainty is a pervasive element of many real-world applications and very often existing sources of uncertainty (e.g. atmospheric conditions, economic parameters or precision of measurement devices) have a detrimental impact on the input and ultimately results of decision-support systems. Thus, the ability to handle input uncertainty is a valuable component of real-world decision-support systems. There is a vast amount of literature on handling of uncertainty through decision-support systems. While they handle uncertainty and deliver a good performance, providing an insight into the decision process (e.g. why or how results are produced) is another important asset in terms of having trust in or providing a ‘debugging’ process in given decisions. Fuzzy set theory provides the basis for Fuzzy Logic Systems which are often associated with the ability for handling uncertainty and possessing mechanisms for providing a degree of interpretability. Specifically, Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems are essential in dealing with uncertainty that affects input which is one of the main sources of uncertainty in real-world systems. Therefore, in this thesis, we comprehensively explore enhancing non-singleton fuzzy logic systems capabilities considering both capturing-handling uncertainty and also maintaining interpretability. To that end the following three key aspects are investigated; (i) to faithfully map input uncertainty to outputs of systems, (ii) to propose a new framework to provide the ability for dynamically adapting system on-the-fly in changing real-world environments. (iii) to maintain level of interpretability while leveraging performance of systems. The first aspect is to leverage mapping uncertainty from input to outputs of systems through the interaction between input and antecedent fuzzy sets i.e. firing strengths. In the context of Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems, recent studies have shown that the standard technique for determining firing strengths risks information loss in terms of the interaction of the input uncertainty and antecedent fuzzy sets. This thesis explores and puts forward novel approaches to generating firing strengths which faithfully map the uncertainty affecting system inputs to outputs. Time-series forecasting experiments are used to evaluate the proposed alternative firing strength generating technique under different levels of input uncertainty. The analysis of the results shows that the proposed approach can also be a suitable method to generate appropriate firing levels which provide the ability to map different uncertainty levels from input to output of FLS that are likely to occur in real-world circumstances. The second aspect is to provide dynamic adaptive behaviours to systems at run-time in changing conditions which are common in real-world environments. Traditionally, in the fuzzification step of Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems, approaches are generally limited to the selection of a single type of input fuzzy sets to capture the input uncertainty, whereas input uncertainty levels tend to be inherently varying over time in the real-world at run-time. Thus, in this thesis, input uncertainty is modelled -where it specifically arises- in an online manner which can provide an adaptive behaviour to capture varying input uncertainty levels. The framework is presented to generate Type-1 or Interval Type-2 input fuzzy sets, called ADaptive Online Non-singleton fuzzy logic System (ADONiS). In the proposed framework, an uncertainty estimation technique is utilised on a sequence of observations to continuously update the input fuzzy sets of non-singleton fuzzy logic systems. Both the type-1 and interval type-2 versions of the ADONiS frameworks remove the limitation of the selection of a specific type of input fuzzy sets. Also this framework enables input fuzzy sets to be adapted to unknown uncertainty levels which is not perceived at the design stage of the model. Time-series forecasting experiments are implemented and results show that our proposed framework provides performance advantages over traditional counterpart approaches, particularly in environments that include high variation in noise levels, which are common in real-world applications. In addition, the real-world medical application study is designed to test the deployability of the ADONiS framework and to provide initial insight in respect to its viability in replacing traditional approaches. The third aspect is to maintain levels of interpretability, while increasing performance of systems. When a decision-support model delivers a good performance, providing an insight of the decision process is also an important asset in terms of trustworthiness, safety and ethical aspects etc. Fuzzy logic systems are considered to possess mechanisms which can provide a degree of interpretability. Traditionally, while optimisation procedures provide performance benefits in fuzzy logic systems, they often cause alterations in components (e.g. rule set, parameters, or fuzzy partitioning structures) which can lead to higher accuracy but commonly do not consider the interpretability of the resulting model. In this thesis, the state of the art in fuzzy logic systems interpretability is advanced by capturing input uncertainty in the fuzzification -where it arises- and by handling it the inference engine step. In doing so, while the performance increase is achieved, the proposed methods limit any optimisation impact to the fuzzification and inference engine steps which protects key components of FLSs (e.g. fuzzy sets, rule parameters etc.) and provide the ability to maintain the given level of interpretability

Fuzzy-Rough Sets Assisted Attribute Selection

Attribute selection (AS) refers to the problem of selecting those input attributes or features that are most predictive of a given outcome; a problem encountered in many areas such as machine learning, pattern recognition and signal processing. Unlike other dimensionality reduction methods, attribute selectors preserve the original meaning of the attributes after reduction. This has found application in tasks that involve datasets containing huge numbers of attributes (in the order of tens of thousands) which, for some learning algorithms, might be impossible to process further. Recent examples include text processing and web content classification. AS techniques have also been applied to small and medium-sized datasets in order to locate the most informative attributes for later use. One of the many successful applications of rough set theory has been to this area. The rough set ideology of using only the supplied data and no other information has many benefits in AS, where most other methods require supplementary knowledge. However, the main limitation of rough set-based attribute selection in the literature is the restrictive requirement that all data is discrete. In classical rough set theory, it is not possible to consider real-valued or noisy data. This paper investigates a novel approach based on fuzzy-rough sets, fuzzy rough feature selection (FRFS), that addresses these problems and retains dataset semantics. FRFS is applied to two challenging domains where a feature reducing step is important; namely, web content classification and complex systems monitoring. The utility of this approach is demonstrated and is compared empirically with several dimensionality reducers. In the experimental studies, FRFS is shown to equal or improve classification accuracy when compared to the results from unreduced data. Classifiers that use a lower dimensional set of attributes which are retained by fuzzy-rough reduction outperform those that employ more attributes returned by the existing crisp rough reduction method. In addition, it is shown that FRFS is more powerful than the other AS techniques in the comparative study

Exploring the Boundary Region of Tolerance Rough Sets for Feature Selection

Of all of the challenges which face the effective application of computational intelli-gence technologies for pattern recognition, dataset dimensionality is undoubtedly one of the primary impediments. In order for pattern classifiers to be efficient, a dimensionality reduction stage is usually performed prior to classification. Much use has been made of Rough Set Theory for this purpose as it is completely data-driven and no other information is required; most other methods require some additional knowledge. However, traditional rough set-based methods in the literature are restricted to the requirement that all data must be discrete. It is therefore not possible to consider real-valued or noisy data. This is usually addressed by employing a discretisation method, which can result in information loss. This paper proposes a new approach based on the tolerance rough set model, which has the abil-ity to deal with real-valued data whilst simultaneously retaining dataset semantics. More significantly, this paper describes the underlying mechanism for this new approach to utilise the information contained within the boundary region or region of uncertainty. The use of this information can result in the discovery of more compact feature subsets and improved classification accuracy. These results are supported by an experimental evaluation which compares the proposed approach with a number of existing feature selection techniques. Key words: feature selection, attribute reduction, rough sets, classification

Spectral Pattern Recognition and Fuzzy Artmap Classification: Design Features, System Dynamics and Real World Simulation

Classification of terrain cover from satellite radar imagery represents an area of considerable current interest and research. Most satellite sensors used for land applications are of the imaging type. They record data in a variety of spectral channels and at a variety of ground resolutions. Spectral pattern recognition refers to classification procedures utilizing pixel-by-pixel spectral information as the basis for automated land cover classification. A number of methods have been developed in the past to classify pixels [resolution cells] from multispectral imagery to a priori given land cover categories. Their ability to provide land cover information with high classification accuracies is significant for work where accurate and reliable thematic information is needed. The current trend towards the use of more spectral bands on satellite instruments, such as visible and infrared imaging spectrometers, and finer pixel and grey level resolutions will offer more precise possibilities for accurate identification. But as the complexity of the data grows, so too does the need for more powerful tools to analyse them. It is the major objective of this study to analyse the capabilities and applicability of the neural pattern recognition system, called fuzzy ARTMAP, to generate high quality classifications of urban land cover using remotely sensed images. Fuzzy ARTMAP synthesizes fuzzy logic and Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) by exploiting the formal similarity between the computations of fuzzy subsethood and the dynamics of category choice, search and learning. The paper describes design features, system dynamics and simulation algorithms of this learning system, which is trained and tested for classification (8 a priori given classes) of a multispectral image of a Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper scene (270 x 360 pixels) from the City of Vienna on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Fuzzy ARTMAP performance is compared with that of an error-based learning system based upon the multi-layer perceptron, and the Gaussian maximum likelihood classifier as conventional statistical benchmark on the same database. Both neural classifiers outperform the conventional classifier in terms of classification accuracy. Fuzzy ARTMAP leads to out-of-sample classification accuracies, very close to maximum performance, while the multi-layer perceptron--like the conventional classifier--shows difficulties to distinguish between some land use categories