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Neutrosophic Soft Sets With Applications in Decision Making
Neutrosophic Soft Sets With Applications in Decision Making
4(2): 1-20,
2015
Abstract
In this study, we firstly present definitions and properties in study of Maji [10] on neutrosophic
soft sets. We then give a few notes on his study. Next, based on aman [5], we redefine the
notion of neutrosophic soft set and neutrosophic soft set operations to make more functional. By
using these new definitions we construct a decision making method and a group decision making
method which selects a set of optimum elements from the alternatives. We finally present
examples which shows that the methods can be successfully applied to many problems that
contain uncertainties.
Keywords: Neutrosophic Set; Soft Set; Neutrosophic Soft Set; Decision Making.
Martin Science Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
1. Introduction
Many problems including uncertainties are a major issue in many fields of real life such as
economics, engineering, environment, social sciences, medical sciences and business
management. Uncertain data in these fields could be caused by complexities and difficulties in
classical mathematical modeling. To avoid difficulties in dealing with uncertainties, many tools
have been studied by researchers. Some of these tools are fuzzy sets [16], rough sets [14] and
intuitionistic fuzzy sets [1]. Fuzzy sets and intuitionistic fuzzy sets are characterized by
membership functions, membership and non-membership functions, respectively. In some real
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life problems for proper description of an object in uncertain and ambiguous environment, we
need to handle the indeterminate and incomplete information. But fuzzy sets and intuitionistic
fuzzy sets dont handle the indeterminant and inconsistent information. Smarandache [13]
defined the notion of neutrosophic set which is a mathematical tool for dealing with problems
involving imprecise and indeterminant data.
Molodtsov introduced concept of soft sets [8] to solve complicated problems and various types
of uncertainties. In [9], Maji et al. introduced several operators for soft set theory: equality of two
soft sets, subsets and superset of soft sets, complement of soft set, null soft sets and absolute soft
sets. But some of these definitions and their properties have few gaps, which have been pointed
out by Ali et al. [11] and Yang [15]. In 2010, aman and Enginolu [4] made some
modifications the operations of soft sets and filled in these gap. In 2014, aman [5] redefined
soft sets using the single parameter set and compared definitions with those defined before.
Maji [10] combined the concept of soft set and neutrosophic set together by introducing a new
concept called neutrosophic soft set and gave an application of neutrosophic soft set in decision
making problem. Recently, the properties and applications on the neutrosophic sets have been
studied increasingly [2, 3, 6, 7]. The propose of this paper is to fill the gaps of the Majis
neutrosophic soft set [11] definition and operations redefining concept of neutrosophic soft set
and operations between neutrosophic soft sets. First, we present Majis definitions and operations
and we verify that some propositions are incorrect by a counterexample. Then based on aman
s [5] study we redefine neutrosophic soft sets and their operations. Also, we investigate
properties of neutrosophic soft sets operations. Finally we present an application of a
neutrosophic soft set in decision making.
2. Preliminary
In this section, we will recall the notions of neutrosophic sets [13] and soft sets [8]. Then, we
will give some properties of soft sets and neutrosophic soft sets [10]. Throughout this paper X ,
E and P(X ) denote initial universe, set of parameters and power set of X , respectively.
Defintion 1:[13] A neutrosophic set A on the universe of discourse X is defined as
A = { x, TA ( x), I A ( x), FA ( x) : x X }
where TA , I A , FA : X ] 0,1+ [ and 0 TA ( x) + I A ( x) + FA ( x) 3+ . From philosophical point of
view, the neutrosophic set takes the value from real standard or non-standard subsets of ] 0,1+ [ .
But in real life application in scientific and engineering problems it is difficult to use
neutrosophic set with value from real standard or non-standard subset of ] 0,1+ [ . Hence we
consider the neutrosophic set which takes the value from the subset of [0,1].
Definition 2:[8] Let consider a nonempty set A , A E . A pair ( F , A) is called a soft set over
X , where F is a mapping given by F : A P( X ) .
From now on, we will use f A instead of ( F , A) .
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Example 1: Let X = {xl , x2 , x3 , x4 , x5 , x6 , x7 , x8 } be the universe which are eight houses and
E = {e1 , e2 , e3 , e4 , e5 , e6 } be the set of parameters. Here, ei (i = 1,2,3,4,5, 6) stand for the
parameters modern, with parking, expensive, cheap, large and near to city
respectively. Then, following soft sets are described respectively Mr. A and Mr. B who are going
to buy
f A = {(e1 , {x1 , x3 , x4 }), (e2 , {x1 , x4 , x7 , x8 }), (e3 ,{x1 , x2 , x3 , x8 })}
f B = {(e2 {x1 , x3 , x6 }), (e3 , X ), (e5 ,{x2 , x4 , x4 , x6 })}.
From now on, we will use definitions and operations of soft sets which are more suitable for
pure mathematics based on study of aman [5].
Definition 3:[5] A soft set f over X is a set valued function from E to P(X ) . It can be written
a set of ordered pairs
f = {(e, f (e)) : e E}.
Note that if f (e) = , then the element (e, f (e)) is not appeared in f . Set of all soft sets over
X is denoted by S .
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f c = {(e1 , {x2 , x5 , x6 , x7 , x8 }), (e2 , {x2 , x3 , x5 , x6 }), (e3 , {x4 , x5 , x6 , x7 }), (e4 , X ), (e5 , X ), (e6 , X )}.
Definition 5:[10] Let X be an initial universe set and E be a set of parameters. Consider
A E . Let P(X ) denotes the set of all neutrosophic sets of X . The collection f A is termed to
be the neutrosophic soft set over X , where F is a mapping given by F : A P( X ).
For illustration we consider an example.
Example 3:[10] Let X be the set of houses under consideration and E is the set of parameters.
Each parameter is a neutrosophic word or sentence involving neutrosophic words. Consider
E={beautiful, wooden, costly, very costly, moderate, green surroundings, in good repair, in bad
repair, cheap, expensive}. In this case, to define a neutrosophic soft set means to point out
beautiful houses, wooden houses, houses in the green surroundings and so on. Suppose that, there
are five houses in the universe X given by, U = {h1 , h2 , h3 , h4 , h5 } and the set of parameters
A = {e1 , e2 , e3 , e4 } , where e1 stands for the parameter beautiful, e2 stands for the
parameter wooden, e3 stands for the parameter costly and the parameter e4 stands
for moderate. Suppose that,
f (beautiful ) = { h1 ,0.5,0.6,0.3 , h2 ,0.4,0.7,0.6 , h3 ,0.6,0.2,0.3 ,
h4 ,0.7,0.3,0.2 , h5 ,0.8,0.2,0.3},
f ( wooden) = { h1 ,0.6,0.3,0.5 , h2 ,0.7,0.4,0.3 , h3 ,0.8,0.1,0.2 ,
h4 ,0.7,0.1,0.3 , h5 ,0.8,0.3,0.6},
f (costly ) = { h1 ,0.7,0.4,0.3 , h2 ,0.6,0.7,0.2 , h3 ,0.7,0.2,0.5 , h4 ,0.5,0.2,0.6 , h5 ,0.7,0.3,0.4},
f (moderate) = { h1 ,0.8,0.6,0.4, h2 ,0.7,0.9,0.6 , h3 ,0.7,0.6,0.4 , h4 ,0.7,0.8,0.6 , h5 ,0.9,0.5,0.7}.
The neutrosophic soft set (NSS ) f E is a parameterized family { f E (ei ); i = 1,2,...,10} of all
neutrosophic sets of X and describes a collection of approximation of an object.
Thus we can view the neutrosophic soft set (NSS) f A as a collection of approximation as
below:
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h3 ,0.7,0.6,0.4 ,
Definition 6:[10] Let f A and g B be two neutrosophic sets over the common universe X . f A is
said to be neutrosophic soft subset of g B is A B , and T f ( e ) ( x ) Tg ( e ) ( x ) , I f ( e ) ( x ) I g ( e ) ( x )
F f ( e ) ( x ) Fg ( e ) ( x ) , e A , x U . We denote it by f A g B . f A is said to be neutrosophic
Definition 7:[10] NOT set of a parameters. Let E = {e1 , e2 ,...en } be a set of parameters. The NOT
set of E , denoted by E is defined by E = {e1 , e2 ,...en } , where ei = not ei i (it may be
noted that and are different operators).
f ( x)
f ( x)
Definition 9:[10] (Empty or null neutrosophic soft set with respect to a parameter.) A
neutrosophic soft set hA over the universe X is termed to be empty or null neutrosophic soft set
with respect to the parameter e if Th ( e ) ( m) = 0, Fh ( e ) = 0 and I h ( e ) ( m ) = 0 m X , e A
In this case the null neutrosophic soft set (NNSS ) is denoted by A .
Definition 10:[10] (Union of two neutrosophic soft sets.) Let hA and g B be two NSSs over the
common universe X . Then the union of hA and g B is defined by hA g B = kC , where
C = A B and the truth-membership, indeterminacy-membership and falsity-membership of kC
are as follow.
Tk ( e ) (m) = Th ( e ) ( m), if e A B
= Tg ( e ) ( m), if
eB A
e A B
= I g ( e ) ( m), if e B A
I h ( e ) ( m ) + I g ( e ) ( m)
2
if
e A B.
e A B
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Fk ( e ) (m) = Fh ( e ) ( m), if e A B
= Fg ( e ) (m),ife B A
Definition 11:[10] Let hA and g B be two NSSs over the common universe X . Then,
intersection of hA and g B is defined by hA g B = kC , where C = A B and the truthmembership, indeterminacy-membership and falsity-membership of kC are as follow.
Tk ( e ) ( m) = min (Th ( e ) ( m), Tg ( e ) ( m)), if e A B
I k ( e ) ( m) =
I h ( e ) ( m) + I g ( e ) ( m)
2
, if
e A B.
Proposition 1:[10] Let hA and g B be two NSSs over the common universe X . Then,
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
hA hA = hA
hA g B = g B hA
hA hA = hA
hA g B = g B hA
hA = hA
hA =
[hAc ]c = hA
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Example 5: Let us consider neutrosophic soft set f A in Example 3 and null neutrosophic soft set
. Then,
and
where, N (X ) denotes all neutrosophic sets over X . Note that if f (e) = { x,0,1,1 : x X } , the
element (e, f (e)) is not appeared in the neutrosophic soft set f . Set of all ns-sets over X is
denoted by NS .
Definition 13: Let f , g NS . f is said to be neutrosophic soft subset of g , if T f ( e ) ( x) Tg ( e ) ( x) ,
I f ( e ) ( x) I g ( e ) ( x) F f ( e ) ( x) Fg ( e ) ( x ) , e E , x U . We denote it by f g . f is said to be
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Definition 16: Let f , g NS . Then union and intersection of ns-sets f and g denoted by
f g and f g respectively, are defined by as follow,
f g = {(e, { x, T f ( e ) ( x) Tg ( e ) ( x), I f ( e ) ( x) I g ( e ) ( x), F f ( e ) ( x) Fg ( e ) ( x) : x X }) : e E}
Proof : The proof is obvious from Definition 13, 14 and Definition 15.
Proposition 3: Let f NS . Then,
~~ ~
1. c = X
~~ ~
2. X c =
~ ~
3. ( f c ) c = f .
Proof:
Proof. The proof is clear from definition and operations of neutrosophic soft sets.
Theorem 1: Let f , g NS . Then, De Morgans law is valid.
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1. ( f g ) c = f c g c
2. ( f g ) c = f c g c
Proof: f , g NS is given
1. From Definition 3, we have
~
= f c gc .
2. It can be proved similar way (1)
Definition 18: Let f , g NS . Then, difference of f and g , denoted by f \ g is defined by the
set of ordered pairs
f \ g = {(e, { x, T f \ g ( e ) ( x), I f \ g ( e ) ( x), F f \ g ( e ) ( x) : x X }) : e E}
T ( x) Tg ( e ) ( x), T f ( e ) ( x) > Tg ( e ) ( x)
T f \ g ( e ) ( x) = f ( e )
otherwise
0,
I ( x) I f ( e ) ( x), I f ( e ) ( x) < I g ( e ) ( x)
I f \ g ( e ) ( x) = g ( e )
otherwise
0,
F ( x) Ff ( e ) ( x), G f ( e ) ( x) < Gg ( e ) ( x)
F f \ g ( e ) ( x) = g ( e )
otherwise
0,
Definition 19: Let f , g NS . Then OR product of ns-sets f and g denoted by f g , is
defined as follow
f
g = {((e, e),{ x, T
f (e)
( x ) Tg ( e ) ( x ), I f ( e ) ( x ) I g ( e ) ( x ), F f ( e ) ( x ) Fg ( e ) ( x ) : x X }) : (e, e) E E}.
g = {((e, e),{ x, T
f (e)
10
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g)
c~
= fc
c~
d E (e1 , e2 ) d E (e1 , en )
1
d (e , e )
d E (e2 , en )
1
E 2 1
dE =
d E (en , e1 ) d E (en , e2 )
d
21 1 d 2 n
d E =
1
d n1 d n 2
.
Here, d12 means that how much important e1 by e2 . For example, if e1 is much more
important by e2 , then we can write d12 = 5 from Table 1.
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11
Definition
Explanation
Equal importance
slightly
strongly
2,4,6,8
Intermediate values
Definition 22: Let f be a neutrosophic soft set and d E be a relative parameter matrix of f .
Then, score of parameter ei , denoted by ci and is calculated as follows
n
ci = dij
j =1
Definition 23: Normalized relative parameter matrix ( nd E for short) of relative parameter
matrix d , denoted by d , is defined as follow
E
1
c
1
d 21
nd E = c
2
d
n1
c n
If
d ij
ci
d12
c1
1
c2
d n2
cn
d1n
c1
d 2n
c2
c n
12
d11 d12
d
d 22
d = 21
d n1 d n 2
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d1n
d 2 n
d nn
Definition 24: Let f be a neutrosophic soft set and d be a normalized parameter matrix of f .
Then, weight of parameter e j E , denoted by w(e j ) and is formulatred as follow,
Definition 25: Let E be a parameter set and f be a neutrosophic soft set over X. Then, for all e
E, compression matrices of f, denoted X f (e ) is defined as follow
such that
1 m
xij
| X | i =1
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13
Definition 27: Let E be a parameter set, X be an initial universe and w(e) and W f ( e ) ( x j ) be
where
1 n
w(e j ) W f (e) ( x j )
| E | j =1
Now, we construct a neutrosophic soft set decision making method by the following algorithm;
F (x j ) =
Algorithm 1
Step 1: Input the neutrosophic soft set f ,
Step 2: Construct the normalized parameter matrix,
Step 3: Compute the weight of each parameters,
Step 4: Construct the compare matrix for each parameter,
Step 5: Compute membership degree, for all x j X
Step 6: Construct decision set DE
Step 7: The optimal decision is to select xk = maxF ( x j ) .
Example 6: Let X be the set of blouses under consideration and E is the set of parameters.
Each parameters is a neutrosophic word or sentence involving neutrosophic words. Consider
E = {bright, cheap, colorful, cotton } . Suppose that, there are five blouses in the universe X
given by X = {x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 , x5 } . Suppose that,
Step 1: Let us consider the decision making problem involving the neutrosophic soft set in [2]
f ( Bright ) = { x1 ,.5,.6,.3 , x 2 ,.4,.7,.2 , x3 ,.6,.2,.3 , x 4 ,.7,.3,.2 , x5 ,.8,.2,.3 , }
f (Cheap ) = { x1 ,.6,.3,.5 , x 2 ,.7,.4,.3 , x3 ,.8,.1,.2 , x 4 ,.7,.1,.3, x5 ,.8,.3,.4 , }
f (Colorful ) = { x1 ,.7,.4,.3 , x 2 ,.6,.1,.2 , x3 ,.7,.2,.5 , x 4 ,.5,.2,.6 , x5 ,.7,.3,.2 , }
f (Cotton) = { x1 ,.4,.3,.7 , x 2 ,.5,.4,.2, x3 ,.7,.4,.3 , x 4 ,.2,.4,.5, x5 ,.6,.4,.4 , }
Step 2:
14
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1 1/3 5 1/3
3
1
2
3
d E = 1/5 1/2 1
2
3 1/3 1/2 1
d E = .05
.62
Step 3: From normalized matrix, weight of parameters are obtained as w(e1 ) = .29 ,
w(e2 ) = .09 , w(e3 ) = .34 and w(e4 ) = .28 .
Step 4: For each parameter, compare matrices and normalized compare matrices are
constructed as follow
X f (bright )
.50
.45
.75
=
.80
.85
X f ( cheap )
.50
.50
.85
=
.75
.65
X f ( cotton )
.50
.75
.65
=
.50
.85
and
.65 .40
.18 .55
.65 .40
,
.50 .25
.75 .50
W f (bright ) ( x1 ) = .67, W f ( bright ) ( x2 ) = .63, W f (bright ) ( x3 ) = .42, W f ( bright ) ( x4 ) = .37, W f (bright ) ( x5 ) = .32
W f ( cheap ) ( x1 ) = .80, W f ( cheap ) ( x2 ) = .57, W f ( cheap ) ( x3 ) = .33, W f ( cheap ) ( x4 ) = .42, W f ( cheap ) ( x5 ) = .52
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15
W f ( colorful ) ( x1 ) = .48, W f ( colorful ) ( x2 ) = .39, W f ( colorful ) ( x3 ) = .49, W f ( colorful ) ( x4 ) = .55, W f ( colorful ) ( x5 ) = .42
W f ( cotton ) ( x1 ) = .65, W f ( cotton ) ( x2 ) = .40, W f ( cotton ) ( x3 ) = .50, W f ( cotton ) ( x4 ) = .65, W f ( cotton ) ( x5 ) = .30
Step 7: Note that, membership degree of x1 is greater than the other. Therefore, optimal
decision is x1 for this decision making problem.
the Saaty Rating Scale. Decision-maker d i gives his/her evaluations separately and
independently according to his/her own preference based on Saaty Rating Scale. In this way, each
decision-maker d i presents a relative parameter matrix.
here d ipr
i
i
i
d k1 d k 2 d kk
Step 3: Arithmetic mean matrix is constructed by using the the relative parameter matrix of
each decision-maker d i . It will be denoted by [i pr ] and will be computed as in follow
i pr =
1 m i
d pr
| d | i =1
16
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Step 4: Normalized parameter matrix, is constructed using the arithmetic mean matrix [i pr ] , it
If = f
d
i =1
di
Step 6: Based on the matrix I f , for each element of e E compare matrix, denoted by I f
d
d (e)
is constructed.
Step 7: By the I f
d (e)
fd (e)
( xi ) , are computed.
Step 8: Decision set DE is constructed by using values of w(e) and WI (x) . Namely;
fd
DE = {( xi , F ( xi )) : xi X }
and
F ( xi ) =
1 n
w(e j ) WI f ( e) ( xi )
| E | j =1
f 1 = d
d
f 1 (e3 ) = { x1 ,.7,.4,.3 , x2 ,.6,.1,.5, x3 ,.5,.2,.4 , x4 ,.2,.2,.6 , x5 ,.3,.3,.6},
d
d2
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= d
f (e ) = { x1 ,.6,.2,.5 , x2 ,.4,.4,.6 , x3 ,.2,.5,.4 , x4 ,.3,.5,.4 , x5 ,.3,.3,.6},
d2 3
and
d3
= d
f (e ) = { x1 ,.4,.3,.2 , x2 ,.6,.7,.2 , x3 ,.3,.5,.2, x4 ,.6,.6,.4 , x5 ,.6,.5,.5},
d3 3
3
6
1/5 1 1/2 6
[d 1pr ] = 5 1/3 1 1/5 [d pr2 ] = 7
2
1 1/3
1
1
1/2 1/6 5
1/2 1/6 3
and
1
1/3
[d 3pr ] = 3
1/4
3 1/3 4
1 1/3 1/6
3 1 1/2
6 2
1
[i pr ] = 5 1.78
1
.34
1
.42 4.06 3.33
17
18
If
d2
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.35
.61
.04
.11
and f
d3
is as follow;
f 2
= d
I (e ) = { x1 ,.6,.5,.5 , x 2 ,.4,.7,.6 , x 3 ,.2,.5,.4 , x 4 ,.2,.6,.6 , x 5 ,.3,.5,.6 },
fd 3
I f (e 4 ) = { x1 ,.3,.4,.5 , x 2 ,.2,.5,.3 , x 3 ,.2,.5,.4 , x 4 ,.4,.2,.5 , x 5 ,.2,.5,.6 }
and
.50 .75 .65 .80 .70
.50
.25 .50 .40 .55 .45
.50
d 3
d 4
.20 .45 .35 .50 .45
.65
.30 .55 .45 .55 .50
.35
d ( e1 )
( x1 ) = .57 , W f
d ( e1 )
( x2 ) = .56 , W f
Wf
d ( e2 )
( x1 ) = .61 , W f
d ( e2 )
( x2 ) = .48 , W f
Wf
d ( e3 )
( x1 ) = .32 , W f
d ( e3 )
( x2 ) = .57 , W f
Wf
d ( e4 )
( x1 ) = .49 , W f
d ( e4 )
( x2 ) = .50 , W f
d ( e1 )
( x3 ) = .37 , W f
d ( e2 )
d ( e3 )
d ( e4 )
d ( e1 )
( x3 ) = .71 , W f
d ( e2 )
( x3 ) = .47 , W f
( x3 ) = .52 , W f
( x4 ) = .40 and W f
d ( e3 )
d ( e4 )
d ( e1 )
( x5 ) = .66
( x4 ) = .39 and W f
d ( e2 )
( x5 ) = .31
( x4 ) = .61 and W f
d ( e3 )
( x5 ) = .53
d ( e4 )
( x5 ) = .64
( x4 ) = .35 and W f
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19
Step 8:
F ( x1 ) =
1 n
w(e j ) W f d (e j ) ( x1 )
| E | j =1
1
(.21 .57 + .33 .61 + .18 .32 + .28 .49)
4
= .126
=
Step 9: Note that, membership degree of x3 is greater than membership degrees of the others.
Therefore, optimal decision is x3 for this decision making problem.
7. Conclusion
In this paper, we firstly investigate neutrosophic soft sets given paper of Maji [10] and then we
redefine notion of neutrosophic soft set and neutrosophic soft set operations. Finally, we present
two applications of neutrosophic soft sets in decision making problem.
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