Product Description: Soft computing comprises various paradigms dedicated to approximately solving real-world problems, e.g. in decision making, classification or learning; among these paradigms are fuzzy sets, rough sets, neural networks, genetic algorithms, and others...read more

The monograph offers a view on Rough Mereology, a tool for reasoning under uncertainty, which goes back to Mereology, formulated in terms of  parts by Lesniewski, and borrows from Fuzzy Set Theory and Rough Set Theory ideas of the containment to a degree. The result is a theory based on the notion of a part to a degree. One can invoke here a formula Rough: Rough Mereology : Mereology = Fuzzy Set Theory : Set Theory. As with Mereology, Rough Mereology finds important applications in problems of Spatial Reasoning, illustrated in this monograph with examples from Behavioral Robotics. Due to its involvement with concepts, Rough Mereology offers new approaches to Granular Computing, Classifier and Decision Synthesis, Logics for Information Systems, and are--formulation of  well--known ideas of Neural Networks and Many Agent Systems. All these approaches are discussed in this monograph. To make the exposition self--contained,  underlying notions of Set Theory, Topology, and Deductive and Reductive Reasoning with emphasis on Rough and Fuzzy Set Theories along with a thorough exposition of Mereology both in Lesniewski and Whitehead--Leonard--Goodman--Clarke versions are discussed at length. It is hoped that the monograph offers researchers in various areas of Artificial Intelligence a  new tool to deal with analysis of relations among concepts.

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The papers on rough set theory and its applications placed in this volume present a wide spectrum of problems representative to the present. stage of this theory. Researchers from many countries reveal their rec.ent results on various aspects of rough sets. The papers are not confined only to mathematical theory but also include algorithmic aspects, applications and information about software designed for data analysis based on this theory. The volume contains also list of selected publications on rough sets which can be very useful to every one engaged in research or applications in this domain and sometimes perhaps unaware of results of other authors. The book shows that rough set theory is a vivid and vigorous domain with serious results to its credit and bright perspective for future developments. It lays on the crossroads of fuzzy sets, theory of evidence, neural networks, Petri nets and many other branches of AI, logic and mathematics. These diverse connec­ tions seem to be a very fertile feature of rough set theory and have essentially contributed to its wide and rapid expansion. It is worth mentioning that its philosophical roots stretch down from Leibniz, Frege and Russell up to Popper. Therefore many concepts dwelled on in rough set theory are not entirely new, nevertheless the theory can be viewed as an independent discipline on its own rights. Rough set theory has found many interesting real life applications in medicine, banking, industry and others.

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