Entropy-based and trapezoid fuzzification-based fuzzy time series approaches for forecasting IT project cost

A main drawback of existing fuzzy time series forecasting methods is that they lack persuasiveness in determining universe of discourse and the length of intervals. Two approaches are proposed for overcoming the problem, and the proposed approaches are more objective and reasonable to improve the persuasiveness in determining the universe of discourse, length of intervals and membership functions of fuzzy time series. The first approach is using Minimize Entropy Principle Approach (MEPA) to partition the universe of discourse and build membership functions, and the second is using Trapezoid Fuzzification Approach (TFA). Monthly amount data of IT project expenditure of a company are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed approaches. The forecasting accuracies of the proposed approaches are better than those of previous methods.