Granule Description based on Compound Concepts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new type of compound concept called common-and-necessary concept to improve granule descriptions in granular computing, providing unified conditions for definable and indefinable granules.

Contribution

It proposes a novel compound concept and derives logical formulas and unified conditions for describing granules in granular computing.

Findings

Derived logical formulas for various concept types.

Unified conditions for definable and indefinable granules.

Enhanced granule description methods.

Abstract

Concise granule descriptions for definable granules and approaching descriptions for indefinable granules are challenging and important issues in granular computing. The concept with only common attributes has been intensively studied. To investigate the granules with some special needs, we propose a novel type of compound concepts in this paper, i.e., common-and-necessary concept. Based on the definitions of concept-forming operations, the logical formulas are derived for each of the following types of concepts: formal concept, object-induced three-way concept, object oriented concept and common-and-necessary concept. Furthermore, by utilizing the logical relationship among various concepts, we have derived concise and unified equivalent conditions for definable granules and approaching descriptions for indefinable granules for all four kinds of concepts.