CLASSIFYING THROUGH AN ALGEBRAIC FUZZY STRUCTURE - THE RELEVANCE OF THE ATTRIBUTES

An appropriate fuzzy structure was previously defined to generate appr opriate classifications in a universe of discourse in which the charac teristics of the elements are defined through attributes whose values are linguistic labels. The way the structure operates depends upon sui table operations on fuzzy attributes represented by fuzzy numbers. How ever, this classification method suffers from a main disadvantage, i.e ., the inherent rigidity deriving from the circumstance that all the a ttributes share the same weight and, consequently, are taken into acco unt completely disregarding the fact that usually some attributes are more relevant than others. In this article we analyze a suitable weigh ting rule allowing us to treat in a different way attributes whose rel evance is different. The validity of the approach was checked by means of a case study concerning diets for breast-feeding women. (C) 1995 J ohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.