A methodology for computing with words

✍ Scribed by Jonathan Lawry

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 339 KB
• Volume: 28
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0888-613X
• DOI: 10.1016/s0888-613x(01)00042-1

✦ Synopsis

An alternative interpretation of linguistic variable is introduced together with the notion of a linguistic description of a value or set of values. The latter is taken to be a fuzzy set on words where the membership values quantify the suitability of a particular word as a label for the value or values being considered. This concept is then applied to reasoning with linguistic quanti®ers these being de®ned as linguistic descriptions of probability values. From this viewpoint linguistic quanti®ers are constraints on probability values and hence using the voting model and Bayesian methods infer second order densities. In this respect such quanti®ers can be view as an alternative form of imprecise probability. These ideas are then used in our proposed methodology for converting probabilistic inference rules into linguistic inference rules and a computationally cheap approximation algorithm for such rules is then introduced. The approach is illustrated in a number of worked examples using various types of rules including linguistic syllogisms and a linguistic version of Jerey's rule. Finally a number of methods for information fusion with linguistically quanti®ed statements are discussed.