Flexible Indiscernibility Relations for Missing Attribute Values

Issue title: Concurrency Specification and Programming (CS&P 2004)

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Latkowski, Rafał

Affiliations: Institute of Computer Science, Warsaw University, ul. Banacha 2, 02-097 Warsaw, Poland. E-mail: R.Latkowski@mimuw.edu.pl

Abstract: The indiscernibility relation is a fundamental concept of the rough set theory. The original definition of the indiscernibility relation does not capture the situation where some of the attribute values are missing. This paper tries to enhance former works by proposing an individual treatment of missing values at the attribute or value level. The main assumption of the theses presented in this paper considers that not all missing values are semantically equal. We propose two different approaches to create an individual indiscernibility relation for a particular information system. The first relation assumes variable, but fixed semantics of missing attribute values in different columns. The second relation assumes different semantics of missing attribute values, although this variability is limited with expressive power of formulas utilizing descriptors. We provide also a comparison of flexible indiscernibility relations and missing value imputation methods. Finally we present a simple algorithm for inducing sub-optimal relations from data.

Keywords: Rough Sets, Missing Attribute Values, Incomplete Information Systems

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 67, no. 1-3, pp. 131-147, 2005