NEIGHBORHOOD SYSTEM BASED ROUGH SET: MODELS AND ATTRIBUTE REDUCTIONS

Abstract

The neighborhood system based rough set is a generalization of Pawlak's rough set model since the former uses the neighborhood system instead of the partition for constructing target approximation. In this paper, the neighborhood system based rough set approach is employed to deal with the incomplete information system. By the coverings induced by the maximal consistent blocks and the support sets of the descriptors, respectively, two neighborhood systems based rough sets are explored. By comparing with the original maximal consistent block and descriptor based rough sets, the neighborhood system based rough sets hold the same lower approximations and the smaller upper approximations. Furthermore, the concept of attribute reduction is introduced into the neighborhood systems and the corresponding rough sets. The judgement theorems and discernibility functions to compute reducts are also presented. Some numerical examples are employed to substantiate the conceptual arguments.