Aggregation Operators with Undefined Inputs or Outputs

Abstract

We consider a generalization of aggregation and fusion functions when some of their inputs or outputs are undefined. For simplicity, we represent undefined values by a single NaN (not-a-number) value. We define four main methods of treating undefined values, observe some of their properties, and compare them with several mainstream implementations and norms for handling NaN values. Finally, as a case study demonstrating the apparatus's usefulness, the formalism is applied to the discrete fuzzy transform technique. The formalism allows us to prove a generalized approximation theorem for fuzzy transforms, which removes previously required restrictions on fuzzy partitions for sparse input data.