Vague Correlation Coefficient of Interval Vague Sets and its Applications to Topsis in MADM Problems

Abstract

Various attempts are made by researchers on the study of vagueness of data through Intuitionistic Fuzzy sets and Vague sets, and also it is shown that Vague sets are Intuitionistic Fuzzy sets. However, there are algebraic and graphical differences between Vague sets and Intuitionistic Fuzzy sets. In this chapter, an attempt is made to define the correlation coefficient of Interval Vague sets lying in the interval [0,1], and a new method for computing the correlation coefficient of interval Vague sets lying in the interval [-1,1] using a-cuts over the vague degrees through statistical confidence intervals is also presented by an example. The new method proposed in this work produces a correlation coefficient in the form of an interval. The proposed method produces a correlation coefficient in the form of an interval from a trapezoidal shaped fuzzy number derived from the vague degrees. This chapter also aims to develop a new method based on the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to solve MADM problems for Interval Vague Sets (IVSs). A TOPSIS algorithm is constructed on the basis of the concepts of the relative-closeness coefficient computed from the correlation coefficient of IVSs. This novel method also identifies the positive and negative ideal solutions using the correlation coefficient of IVSs. A numerical illustration explains the proposed algorithms and comparisons are made with some existing methods.