Ciset

Abstract

Fuzzy theory holds that many things in life are matters of degree. A black and white photo is not just black and white; there are many levels of gray shades that can be observed in a typical picture. As an example, a pixel can have a brightness value between 0 and 1. The value 0 may correspond to black and the value 1 may correspond to white. In this case, every number between 0 and 1 corresponds to a certain gray level. Fuzzy theory has made significant contributions to many areas. However, fuzzy theory is not sufficient in the area of information processing such as databases, expert systems, information retrieval and so on. The major drawback is its inability to capture negation of information. For example, let us say one of the CIA members has informed the headquarters that Facility X in country ABC is used to produce biological weapons. This information is assigned a fuzzy value 0.6. Later on another source has informed the CIA headquarters that the facility is not used for the production of biological weapons. Currently there is no elegant way of keeping track of both pieces of information. One possible solution is to keep this new information with a fuzzy value assigned to it say 0.3. However, above two facts are not treated as two pieces of information regarding the same subject. The concept of a ciset is introduced to integrate both supporting and opposing pieces of information.