S-Score Table-Based Parameter-Reduction Approach for Fuzzy Soft Sets

Abstract

A fuzzy soft set is a mathematical tool used to deal with vagueness and uncertainty. Parameter reduction is an important issue when applying a fuzzy soft set to handle decision making. However, existing methods neglect newly added parameters and have higher computational complexities. In this paper, we propose a new S-Score table-based parameter-reduction approach for fuzzy soft sets. Compared with two existing methods of parameter reduction for a fuzzy soft set, our method takes newly added parameters into account, which brings about greater flexibility and is beneficial to the extension of fuzzy soft sets and a combination of multiple fuzzy soft sets. Additionally, our method accesses fewer elements from the dataset, which results in lower computation compared with the two existing approaches. The experimental results from two applications show the availability and feasibility of our approach.

Keywords

• soft set
• fuzzy soft set
• redundancy
• parameter reduction