Fuzzy Set Theory: Applications in the Social Sciences, Issue 147

Front Cover
SAGE, Feb 17, 2006 - Mathematics - 97 pages
This book introduces fuzzy set theory to social science researchers. Fuzzy sets are categories with blurred boundaries. With classical sets, objects are either in the set or not, but objects can belong partially to more than one fuzzy set at a time. Many concepts in the social sciences have this characteristic, and fuzzy set theory provides methods for systematically dealing with them. A primary reason for not going beyond programmatic statements and rather unsophisticated uses of fuzzy set theory has been the lack of practical methods for combining fuzzy set concepts with statistical methods. This monograph takes that topic as its major focus, and provides explicit guides for researchers who would like to harness fuzzy set concepts while being able to make statistical inferences and test their models. Real examples and data-sets from several disciplines illustrate the techniques and applications, demonstrating how a combination of fuzzy sets and statistics enable researchers to analyze their data in new ways.

From inside the book

Contents

Measuring Membership
3
Internal Structure and Properties of a Fuzzy
37
Simple Relations Between Fuzzy Sets
50
9
64
Multivariate Fuzzy Set Relations
68
15
79
Concluding Remarks
85
19
92
Copyright

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Popular passages

Page 87 - A. & ZANI, S. (1990). A fuzzy approach to the measurement of poverty. In C. Dagum & M. Zenga (Eds.), Income and wealth distribution, inequality and poverty (pp. 272-284). Berlin: Springer- Verlag. CHELI, B., & LEMMI, A. (1995). A "totally" fuzzy and relative approach to the multidimensional analysis of poverty.
Page 90 - Inverses of fuzzy relations: Applications to possibility distributions and medical diagnosis.
Page 87 - Broughton, R. (1984). A prototype strategy for construction of personality scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1334-1346. Broughton, R. (1990). The prototype concept in personality assessment. Canadian Psychology, 31, 26-37. Burisch, M. (1984). Approaches to personality inventory construction: A comparison of merits. American Psychologist, 39, 214-227.

About the author (2006)

Michael Smithson is a Professor in the Research School of Psychology at The Australian National University in Canberra, and received his PhD from the University of Oregon. He is the author of Confidence Intervals (2003), Statistics with Confidence (2000), Ignorance and Uncertainty (1989), and Fuzzy Set Analysis for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (1987), co-author of Fuzzy Set Theory: Applications in the Social Sciences (2006) and Generalized Linear Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables (2014), and co-editor of Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2008) and Resolving Social Dilemmas: Dynamic, Structural, and Intergroup Aspects (1999). His other publications include more than 170 refereed journal articles and book chapters. His primary research interests are in judgment and decision making under ignorance and uncertainty, statistical methods for the social sciences, and applications of fuzzy set theory to the social sciences. Jay Verkuilen, PhD, is an associate professor of educational psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His methodological research work is primarily in the area of psychometrics and statistics. His empirical work focuses on measurement in education and clinical psychology, and statistical analysis of rehabilitation medicine, particularly in the area of aphasia. He is the author of several publications regarding fuzzy set theory in behavioral science.