Outline of a new approach to the Analysis of Complex Systems and

Decision Processes article revision

Introduction

The article starts saying that the methods employed for dealing with humanistic (human
related) systems, such as economic, urban, sociological and biological, are just adaptations of
the methods employed a long time for dealing with mechanistic systems, such as systems
governed under the laws of mechanics, electromagnetism or thermodynamics.

After this, it says that after a deeply entrenched scientific thinking, with uses to analyze all in
quantitative terms, questioning the growing tendency to treat the humanistic systems as
mechanistic ones is something very strange, and that is the intention of this article.

The opinion of the writer is that the conventional quantitative techniques are unsuited for
dealing with humanistic systems, or for any system with a comparable complexity, since when
the complexity of a system increases, our ability to take precise and significant states
decreases, until a threshold where this 2 characteristics become mutually exclusive.

An alternate approach covered in this article is based on the premise of the fuzzy sets and
labels as a key element of the human thinking, in which the transition between membership
and not membership is gradual. This can be a big step in our approach to the human thinking,
being a part of this the ability to summarize information (and many other important tasks in
the human thought).

So exposing all these ideas, it reaches the conclusion that it is needed a framework tolerant to
precision and partial truths to work with this kind of systems.

Then, we are introduced to the linguistic variables, which are essential to the summarizing
ability of the human thought of which we talked before. The main objective of the linguistic
variables is to provide a set of meanings to a approximate characterization. For example, if we
are talking about the fuzzy variable tall, it can get values such as not tall, very tall, somewhat
tall, very very tall, not very tall, being in this sense the height as described above a linguistic
variable.

As the linguistic variables, the relations and statements such as if A then B but being A and B
fuzzy variables are often used in the everyday language. The problem is that the meaning of
this relations and statements are defined very poorly and we will need a precise definition of
them. Still if we have precisely defined the relation it is not more complex than a conventional
set relation.

For more complex relations we will need something more advanced than this, we will need
Fuzzy algorithms or functions. As well as the conventional sets, a function may not be defined
by a table but by an algorithm. A fuzzy algorithm is a set of instructions (like a program) in
which some of the instructions may have fuzzy sets and labels. By using this type of algorithms
you may simplify a lot a very complex algorithm by letting it have this kind of instructions, even
if the fuzzy sets are imprecise by nature, it may be perfectly adequate for a specified task.
Summary of relevant properties

Here we are introduced to the properties and the operations of the fuzzy sets which I won’t
cover in detail. It first introduces you to the notation used, and then it defines and shows the
properties of the fuzzy relations.

After this we see the different operations used for fuzzy sets, such as the negation (¬), the
union (+), the intersection and the product. After these simple operations, we see some more
complex operations, needed to deal with linguistic hedges (but just briefly covered), as
concentration (CON) and dilation (DIL).

Linguistic Hedges

In this section, it classifies the linguistic labels into 4 categories: Primary terms, negation and
connectives, hedges and markers, and it expose the problems of computing composite terms
(including terms and hedges).

After this it reaches the conclusion and linguistic hedges should be treated as operators, since
they modify the fuzzy set, so it uses the previously defined operators to define the hedge very
as an example, which is a quite difficult task because the meaning is changed depending on the
context (It also defines plus and minus afterwards).

Computation of the meaning of values of a linguistic variable

They reach the conclusion that, having the linguistic hedges defined, the processing of a
linguistic variable becomes a simple task, similar to the Boolean expressions. Still, it is needed
to define a set of precedence rules, to choose the order in applying the linguistic labels, which
is defined in the form of table.

After this it says that to find the meaning of a composite term in a certain grammar G you have
to make a syntax analysis to derive it to a set of equations, having then a precise meaning of
the composite term.

Fuzzy conditional statements and compositional rule of inference

After a brief comparison between the traditional conditional statements and the fuzzy ones,
they define the Cartesian product for fuzzy sets, and it uses it to define a simple conditional
fuzzy statement (which should be treated, as they say, as an especial case of a regular
conditional expression).

After this it says that to know the value of a statement, we have to use the Compositional Rule
of Inference, as an extension of the rule of modus ponens. It explains the usage of this rule,
and it gives some examples, but at the end it says that for practical usages it is used a much
more simplified approach, such as having a table of linguistic labels and compute, at the end,
approximate values matching these labels.

Fuzzy algorithms

In this section, the fuzzy algorithms that we were introduced to before are furtherly explained,
and the section starts saying that the human being employ unconsciously fuzzy algorithms all
the time. It classifies the fuzzy instructions in 3 different types: Assignment statements, fuzzy
conditional statements and unconditional action statements (some of these last ones may not
be fuzzy).

One problem of this kind of instructions is that we usually get a fuzzy set as a result while we
are in need of a concrete solution. In this case we should give the highest grade element, or a
random choice of them in case of a draw. As an alternative a different criterion could be
externally specified. For decisions, it is the same, choosing in each case the option that it is
more true than untrue, or randomly in case of similar options.

After this, the fuzzy algorithms are classified into definitional and identificational, generational,
relational and behavioral and decisional. After this, each of this type of algorithms are covered
individually, giving also some examples to them.