Fuzzy Conditional Probability Relations and their Applications in Fuzzy Information Systems

In our real-world applications, data may be imprecise in which levels or degrees of preciseness of data are intuitively different. In this case, fuzzy set expressions are considered as an alternative to represent the imprecise data. In general, the degree of similarity relationship between two fuzzy (imprecise) data in real-world applications may not necessarily be symmetric or transitive. In order to provide such a degree of similarity between two fuzzy data, we introduced the fuzzy conditional probability relation. The concept of a fuzzy conditional probability relation may be considered as a concrete example of weak similarity relation which in turn is a special type of fuzzy binary relation generalizing similarity relation. Two important applications concerning the application of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) in the presence of a fuzzy data table (usually called fuzzy information system), namely removing redundant objects and recognizing partial or total dependency of (domain) attributes, are considered induced by the fuzzy conditional probability relation. Here, the fuzzy information system contains precise as well as imprecise data (fuzzy values) about objects of interest characterized by some attributes. Related to the dependency of attributes, we introduce the fuzzy functional dependency that satisfies Armstrong’s Axioms. In addition, we also discuss some interesting applications such as approximate data reduction and projection, approximate data querying and approximate joining in order to extend the query system.