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Hesitant fuzzy linguistic multi-criteria decision making based on possibility theory

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Abstract

Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs) have attracted a lot of attention recently due to their distinguished power and efficiency for dealing with the situations in which the decision makers may hesitate among several linguistic terms to assess alternatives. To extend the applicability of HFLTSs, this paper firstly analyses the existing comparison methods for HFLTSs, and then develops some new different possibility degree formulas which are convenience and easy of calculation. After that, two novel methods of hesitant fuzzy linguistic multi-criteria decision making are developed based on the priority method of fuzzy complementary preference relation and the idea of PROMETHEE, in which multiple steps may be integrated into one formula to simplify the computational process. Especially, the two proposed methods are designed to reflect the degree of one alternative to be superior or inferior to another one properly. Finally, an experiment is designed to test and compare the proposed methods and other existing ones. The results show that the proposed methods provide us with a useful way for decision making in fuzzy environments.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are most grateful to the referees and the editors for their constructive suggestions. The work was partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71371107) and University Social Sciences Project of Jiangsu Province (2013SJD63003 9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

    Xiangqian Feng & Qianyun Tan

  2. College of Mathematical Sciences, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China

    Cuiping Wei

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  1. Xiangqian Feng
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  2. Qianyun Tan
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  3. Cuiping Wei
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Correspondence to Xiangqian Feng.

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Feng, X., Tan, Q. & Wei, C. Hesitant fuzzy linguistic multi-criteria decision making based on possibility theory. Int. J. Mach. Learn. & Cyber. 9, 1505–1517 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13042-017-0659-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13042-017-0659-7

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