Classification of Volcanic Rocks based on Rough Set Theory

Abstract

Classification of volcanic rocks is a fundamental task in the geologic studies. Volcanic rocks are igneous rocks that cooled rapidly above the surface of the Earth's crust. They are classified according to their oxide chemical content. Furthermore, volcanic rocks can also be classified numerically by statistical means. But these methods are mostly dependent on human expert decision making and have a high cost. In this paper, a novel approach in the classification of volcanic rocks is proposed. This method is based on the rough set mathematical theory. The continuous data of the information system are firstly discretized using the information loss method. Secondly, the discretized decision table is reduced and the decision rule sets are extracted. The results are consistent with previous methods and show that the proposed method reduces time and calculation costs.