Gleb Beliakov

Recent Developments in the Ordered Weighted Averaging Operators: Theory and Practice

This volume presents the state of the art of new developments, and some interesting and relevant applications of the OWA (ordered weighted averaging) operators. The OWA operators were introduced in the early 1980s by Ronald R. Yager as a conceptually and numerically simple, easily implementable, yet extremely powerful general aggregation operator. That simplicity, generality and implementability of the OWA operators, combined with their intuitive appeal, have triggered much research both in the foundations and extensions of the OWA operators, and in their applications to a wide variety of problems in various fields of science and technology.Part I: Methods includes papers on theoretical foundations of OWA operators and their extensions. The papers in Part II: Applications show some more relevant applications of the OWA operators, mostly means, as powerful yet general aggregation operators. The application areas are exemplified by environmental modeling, social networks, image analysis, financial decision making and water resource management.

On averaging operators for Atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy sets

Atanassovs intuitionistic fuzzy set (AIFS) is a generalization of a fuzzy set. There are various averaging operators defined for AIFSs. These operators are not consistent with the limiting case of ordinary fuzzy sets, which is undesirable. We show how such averaging operators can be represented by using additive generators of the product triangular norm, which simplifies and extends the existing constructions. We provide two generalizations of the existing methods for other averaging operators. We relate operations on AIFS with operations on interval-valued fuzzy sets. Finally, we propose a new construction method based on the Lukasiewicz triangular norm, which is consistent with operations on ordinary fuzzy sets, and therefore is a true generalization of such operations.

Generalized Bonferroni mean operators in multi-criteria aggregation

In this paper we provide a systematic investigation of a family of composed aggregation functions which generalize the Bonferroni mean. Such extensions of the Bonferroni mean are capable of modeling the concepts of hard and soft partial conjunction and disjunction as well as that of k-tolerance and k-intolerance. There are several interesting special cases with quite an intuitive interpretation for application.

Aggregation functions based on penalties

This article studies a large class of averaging aggregation functions based on minimizing a distance from the vector of inputs, or equivalently, minimizing a penalty imposed for deviations of individual inputs from the aggregated value. We provide a systematization of various types of penalty based aggregation functions, and show how many special cases arise as the result. We show how new aggregation functions can be constructed either analytically or numerically and provide many examples. We establish connection with the maximum likelihood principle, and present tools for averaging experimental noisy data with distinct noise distributions.

A Practical Guide to Averaging Functions

This book offers an easy-to-use and practice-oriented reference guide to mathematical averages. It presents different ways of aggregating input values given on a numerical scale, and of choosing and/or constructing aggregating functions for specific applications. Building on a previous monograph by Beliakov et al. published by Springer in 2007, it outlines new aggregation methods developed in the interim, with a special focus on the topic of averaging aggregation functions. It examines recent advances in the field, such as aggregation on lattices, penalty-based aggregation and weakly monotone averaging, and extends many of the already existing methods, such as: ordered weighted averaging (OWA), fuzzy integrals and mixture functions. A substantial mathematical background is not called for, as all the relevant mathematical notions are explained here and reported on together with a wealth of graphical illustrations of distinct families of aggregation functions. The authors mainly focus on practical applications and give central importance to the conciseness of exposition, as well as the relevance and applicability of the reported methods, offering a valuable resource for computer scientists, IT specialists, mathematicians, system architects, knowledge engineers and programmers, as well as for anyone facing the issue of how to combine various inputs into a single output value.

Appropriate choice of aggregation operators in fuzzy decision support systems

Fuzzy logic provides a mathematical formalism for a unified treatment of vagueness and imprecision that are ever present in decision support and expert systems in many areas. The choice of aggregation operators is crucial to the behavior of the system that is intended to mimic human decision making. The paper discusses how aggregation operators can be selected and adjusted to fit empirical data: a series of test cases. Both parametric and nonparametric regression are considered and compared. A practical application of the proposed methods to electronic implementation of clinical guidelines is presented.

How to build aggregation operators from data

This article discusses a range of regression techniques specifically tailored to building aggregation operators from empirical data. These techniques identify optimal parameters of aggregation operators from various classes (triangular norms, uninorms, copulas, ordered weighted aggregation (OWA), generalized means, and compensatory and general aggregation operators), while allowing one to preserve specific properties such as commutativity or associativity.

Learning Weights in the Generalized OWA Operators

This paper discusses identification of parameters of generalized ordered weighted averaging (GOWA) operators from empirical data. Similarly to ordinary OWA operators, GOWA are characterized by a vector of weights, as well as the power to which the arguments are raised. We develop optimization techniques which allow one to fit such operators to the observed data. We also generalize these methods for functional defined GOWA and generalized Choquet integral based aggregation operators.

Construction of aggregation functions from data using linear programming

This article examines the construction of aggregation functions from data by minimizing the least absolute deviation criterion. We formulate various instances of such problems as linear programming problems. We consider the cases in which the data are provided as intervals, and the outputs ordering needs to be preserved, and show that linear programming formulation is valid for such cases. This feature is very valuable in practice, since the standard simplex method can be used.

Uncertainties with Atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy sets: Fuzziness and lack of knowledge

We review the existing measures of uncertainty (entropy) for Atanassovs intuitionistic fuzzy sets (AIFSs). We demonstrate that the existing measures of uncertainty for AIFS cannot capture all facets of uncertainty associated with an AIFS. We point out and justify that there are at least two facets of uncertainty of an AIFS, one of which is related to fuzziness while the other is related to lack of knowledge or non-specificity. For each facet of uncertainty, we propose a separate set of axioms. Then for each of fuzziness and non-specificity we propose a generating family (class) of measures. Each family is illustrated with several examples. In this context we prove several interesting results about the measures of uncertainty. We prove some results that help us to construct new measures of uncertainty of both kinds.