Chapter II

REDUCTION OF INFORMATION
SYSTEM VALUES
“RISV”
Introduction:
Granular computing "GrC" is a label of theories,
methodologies, techniques, and tools that makes use of
granules, i.e., groups, classes, or clusters of a
universes, in the process of problem solving [2,14].
Most papers which concerned with reduction of
information systems made a reduction for attributes,
some of them made a reduction into two sides,
reduction of objects and reduction of attributes. The
aim of this work is to suggest a new approach for
reduction of information system values. By using the
three sides of reduction "objects, attributes and
values", we get to the minimal information system
table.
 B.1. Indiscernibility Relation
For a subset B  A, the indiscernibility relation
[10,12] is :
IND(B)={(x,y)  U2 /  aB, a(x)=a(y)}
Which groups the objects that posses the same
features (the values of the attributes) with respect
to B, i.e. the objects that are indiscernible.
The IND(B) is an equivalence relation that
partitions U and divides it into equivalence
classes.
B.2. Discernibility Matrix
An information system S defines a matrix
MA called discernibility matrix. Each entry
MA(x,y)  A consists of a set of attributes
that can be used to discern between objects
x,y  U [10] :
MA(x,y) = {a  A / a(x)  a(y)}
 B.3. Discernibility Function
The discernibility function is a Boolean function
representation of the discernibility matrix [10].
A(a1,a2,…..,an) = {Mij : 1  j < i  n, Mij}
Which use the product of sums (P.O.S.), n=|U|.
This expression is used for reduction of attributes.
In [3] the discernibility function for each object is:
A(x) =  yU{ a : aMA(x,y) }
which is used for decision making.
C. Reduction of knowledge
Reduction of knowledge is divided to
reduction of objects, reduction of attributes
and in this work reduction of values.
C.1. Reduction of Objects
We can reduce the objects by using the
discernibility matrix, where if we find an
empty set () between two objects in
discernibility matrix, then we can eliminate
one of them.
C.2. Reduction of Attributes
Let B  A, a  B, then a is supperfluous
attributes [10] in B if:

U/IND(B)=U/IND(B-{a}).

The set M is called a minimal reduct of B iff:

(i) U/IND(M)=U/IND(B).
(ii) U/IND(M) U/IND(M-{a}),  aM
D. Reduction of Condition Attributes Relative
to Decision Attributes.

Attributes can be divided into condition attributes C and decision

attributes D. An attribute a  C is called superfluous with respect
to D if (C,D) = (C-{a},D), otherwise a is indispensable in C. [10]
Eliminating a superfluous C-attribute will not decrease or increase
the degree of dependency. This means that this attribute is not
necessary for the decision.
A subset M of the condition attributes is called a minimal reduct of
C with respect to D if:
(i) (C,D) = (M,D).
(ii) (M,D)  (M-{a},D)  a  M
III. reduction of information system values

In the following examples, we will get the reduction of

SVIS and MVIS with and without decision attribute.
By converting each column of condition attribute into
number of columns equals to number of its values, if its
value exist "it takes 1" else "it takes 0". If the value of
an attribute is only two values, then we put it as a single
column "one of its value takes 1 and other takes 0"
instead of increasing the columns without any
usefulness. If the value of an attribute is only one value,
we delete its column.
The following example is used as SVIS
By using the technique of reduction as
discussed in section 2, we get the
following:
RED(A)={ {IG, IE, V},{C4, IF, V},{C4,
C5, N},{IG, N, V},{IF, N, V},{IF, IG,
V},{C2, C4, N},{C5, N, V},{C2, C5,
N},{C2, IF, N},{IF, IE, V},{C5, IF,
V},{C2, IG, IE, N}},
and CORE(A)=
There are 13 choices, one of them is
shown in the following table:
The following example is used as MVIS

A1=Languages = {English, German, Arabic}={E,G,A},

A2=Sports = {Tennis, Handball, Basketball}={T,H,B},
A3=Skills = {Swimming, Running, Fishing}={S,R,F}.
By using the technique of reduction as
discussed in section 2, we get the
following:
RED(A)= {{E, G, H},{G, H, R},{G, A,
B},{G, H, S},{G, A, S},{E, G, F},{G, R,
F},{G, S, F},{G, B, F},{E, G, A},{G, H,
B},{G, A, R}}, and COR(A)={G}
There are 12 choices, tow of them are
shown in the following tables
 Chapter I’
REDUTION OF CONTINUOUS
VALUES
“RCV”
Introduction:
In some information systems, we can't
eliminate any of its attributes. But we need to
eliminate one or more of them with some
approximation depending on the
characteristics of attributes such as its
dangerous, cost, long time of measuring, etc.
The aim of this work is to suggest a new
approach for reduction of information system
attributes with an approximation "some
error" depending on the degree of dependency
of attributes.
B.2. Lower and upper approximations
Let XU. X can be approximated using
only the information contained within P by
constructing the P-lower and P-upper
approximations of X:
PX = {x: [x]P X}
PX = {x: [x]P X  Ø}
B.3. Positive, negative, and boundary regions
Let C and D be equivalence relations over U, then the
positive, negative and boundary regions can be defined as:

The positive region contains all objects of U that can be

classified to classes of U/D using the information in
attributes C. The boundary region, BND(C,D), is the set of
objects that can possibly, but not certainly, be classified in
this way. The negative region, NEG(C,D), is the set of
objects that cannot be classified to classes of U/D.
III. Degree of dependency and reduction

In rough set theory, degree of dependency is

defined in the following way: For C, D  A, it is
said that D depends on C in a degree K (0  K 
1), if
K(C,D) = ||POS(C,D)||/||U||

If k=1, D depends totally on C, if 0< k <1, D

depends partially (in a degree k) on C, and if
k = 0 then D does not depend on C.
A. Reduction of attributes without error ratio

For condition attributes

Let B  A, a  B, then a is superfluous attributes in B
if:
U/IND(B)=U/IND(B-{a}).

The set M is called a minimal reduct of B iff:

(i) U/IND(M)=U/IND(B).
(ii) U/IND(M) U/IND(M-{a}),  aM
Attributes can be divided into condition attributes C
and decision attributes D. An attribute a  C is called
superfluous with respect to D if K(C-{a},D)/K(C,D)=1,
otherwise a is indispensable in C.

Eliminating a superfluous C-attribute will not decrease

or increase the degree of dependency. This means that
this attribute is not necessary for the decision.
A subset M of the condition attributes is called a
minimal reduct of C with respect to D if:
(i) K(M,D)/K(C,D)=1
(ii) K(M-{a},D)/K(M,D)1  a  M
B. Reduction of attributes with error ratio

For an information system which has condition

and decision attributes, we can eliminate one of its
condition attributes ci if

K(C-{ci},D)/K(C,D)=.

 = 0.5, ….. 0.9,0.95,0.99,…

 For an information system which has condition
attributes only, we make a clustering of all objects
according to all condition attributes.
E={E1,E2,….,En} is the set of all equivalence
classes. By eliminating the similar objects except
one of them in each equivalence class, then the
number of remaining objects will equal to the
number of equivalence classes.
New definition of degree of dependency as follow:

K(C,E) = ||POS(C,E)||/||E||=1,

this means that E must be totally depending on C.

 If K(C-{ci},E)=1, then ci is a superfluous
attribute, else ci is a core attribute " without
error ratio".
If K(C-{ci},E)1, then ci is a superfluous
attribute, else ci is a core attribute " with
error ratio depending on the value of K, ".
We can change the number  according to
the limit of error ratio. The following
example indicates the above notion.
Example
In the following information system, we give
some mechanical properties of some alloys "29
alloys" according to system in weight percentage
as follows
U={Bi55.5Pb44.5, Bi50Pb28Sn22, ……………}
And 5 mechanical properties
A={Young’s modulus E (109) Pa, Melting Point,
Internal friction Q-1 (10-3), Resistivity μΩ.cm ,
hardness}.
Let U={1,2,3,………...,29}, A={a1,a2,a3,a4,a5},
As shown in the following tables
 90.00%
85.00%
80.00%
75.00%
70.00%

)
,A

,A

,A

,A

,A
1}

2}

3}

4}

5}
{a

{a

{a

{a

{a
A-

A-

A-

A-

A-
K(

K(

K(

K(

K(
we can eliminate one of the attributes a1, a2 or a5 with
error ratio 14.29%, eliminate the attribute a3 with error
ratio 28.57%, or eliminate a4 with error ratio 21.43%.
The selection of attribute which can be eliminated
depends on the degree of dependency and its characteristic
" d a n g e r o u s , c o s t , … e t c "
Thank you