Building the fundamentals of granular computing: A principle of justifiable granularity

•Introduction of the principle of justifiable granularity.•Comprehensive algorithmic framework supporting the design of information granules.•Discussed are two essential requirements of information granularity.•Provided is a series of experimental studies.

The study introduces and discusses a principle of justifiable granularity, which supports a coherent way of designing information granules in presence of experimental evidence (either of numerical or granular character). The term “justifiable” pertains to the construction of the information granule, which is formed in such a way that it is (a) highly legitimate (justified) in light of the experimental evidence, and (b) specific enough meaning it comes with a well-articulated semantics (meaning). The design process associates with a well-defined optimization problem with the two requirements of experimental justification and specificity. A series of experiments is provided as well as a number of constructs carried for various formalisms of information granules (intervals, fuzzy sets, rough sets, and shadowed sets) are discussed as well.

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