A definition for I-fuzzy partitions

In this paper, we define I-fuzzy partitions (or intuitionistic fuzzy partitions as called by Atanassov or interval-valued fuzzy partitions). As our ultimate goal is to compare the results of standard fuzzy clustering algorithms (e.g. fuzzy c-means), we define a method to construct them from a set of fuzzy clusters obtained from several executions of fuzzy c-means. From a practical point of view, the approach presented here tries to solve the difficulty of comparing the results of fuzzy clustering methods and, in particular, the difficulty of finding the global optimal. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.Partial support by the Spanish MEC (projects ARES – CONSOLIDER INGENIO 2010 CSD2007-00004 – and eAEGIS – TSI2007-65406-C03-02) is acknowledged.Peer Reviewe