Fuzzy Systems

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Properties of Max and Min Fuzzy Operators

Part I - 1
Nasim MirArmandehi
86702311

Instructor Dr. Saeed Bagheri Shouraki

Fall 2007 Sharif University of Technology

1. Union and Intersection of Fuzzy Sets

The classical union () and intersection () of ordinary subsets of where extended to fuzzy union and intersection by Zadeh (1965) by the following formulas: , = , , = , (1) (2)

where , are respectively the membership functions of and . In the case of the crisp sets these formulas give the usual union and intersections. The min and max are not the only operators that could have been chosen to model the intersection or union of fuzzy sets. Bellman and Giertz (1973) give a justification of this choice. They argue from a logical point of view, interpreting the intersection as "logical and", the union as "logical or", and the fuzzy set as the statement "The element belongs to set ," which can be accepted as more or less true. Consider two statements and , for which the truth values are and , respectively. The truth value of the "and" and "or" combination of these statements, and and or , both from the interval [0, 1], are interpreted as the values of the membership functions of the intersection and union, respectively, of and . We are now looking for two real-valued functions and such that and

= ,

(3) (4)

or = ,

Bellman and Giertz assume that the following restrictions are consistent and sufficient to ensure the uniqueness of the choice of union and intersection operators. i. ii. and are nondecreasing and continuous in and . and are symmetric, that is, , = , , = , iii. iv. (5) (6)

v. vi.

, and , are strictly increasing in . , min , and , max , . This implies that accepting the truth of the statement " and " requires more, and accepting the truth of the statement " or " less than accepting or alone as true. 1,1 = 1 and 0,0 = 0. Logically equivalent statements must have equal truth values, and fuzzy sets with the same convents must have the same membership functions, that is, 1 and 2 or3 is equivalent to 1 and 2 or 1 and 3 and therefore must be equally true.

Bellman and Giertz mathematically prove that min and max are the only functions that satisfy these conditions.

2. References
[1]. Zadeh, L. A., Fuzzy sets, Inf. Control 8, 338353, 1965. [2]. Bellman, R. E., Giertz, M., On the analytic formalism of the theory of fuzzy sets, Inf. Sci. 5, 149 157, 1973. [3]. Dubois, D., Prade, H., Fuzzy Sets and Systems: Theory and Applications, Academic Press, Inc., Orlando, FL, 1997.