1. Introduction
In order to transact with several complicated problems involving uncertainties in many fields such as engineering, economics, social and medical sciences, classical methods are found to be inadequate. In 1965, Zadeh [
1] presented fuzzy sets which helped to handle uncertainty and imprecision. Fuzzy sets had since been applied in many directions especially in decision making such as multi fuzzy sets [
2], complex multi fuzzy sets [
3,
4,
5,
6,
7], vague soft set [
8,
9,
10,
11], multiparameterized soft set [
12], multi Q-fuzzy soft matrix [
13] and intuitionistic fuzzy sets [
14].
In fuzzy set theory, the grade of membership of an object to a fuzzy set indicates the belongingness degree of the object to the fuzzy set, which is a point (single) value selected from the unit interval [0, 1]. In real life scenarios, a person may consider that an element belongs to a fuzzy set, but it is possible that person is not sure about it. Therefore, hesitation or uncertainty may exist in which the element can belong to the fuzzy set or not. The traditional fuzzy set is unable to capture this type of hesitation or uncertainty using only the single membership degrees. A possible solution is to use an intuitionistic fuzzy set [
14] or a vague set [
15] to handle this problem. The vague set [
15] is an extension of fuzzy sets and regarded as a special case of context-dependent fuzzy set which has the ability to overcome the problems faced when using fuzzy sets by providing us with an interval-based membership which clearly separates the evidence for and against an element.
From the above existing literature, we can see that those studies mainly focus on the fuzzy set, interval fuzzy set, vague set and their entropies [
16,
17,
18]. Later on, Jun et al. [
19] gave the idea of cubic set and it was characterized by interval valued fuzzy set and fuzzy set, which is a more general tool to capture uncertainty and vagueness, since fuzzy set deals with single-value membership while interval valued fuzzy set ranges the membership in the form of intervals. They presented the ideas of internal and external cubic sets and their characteristics. The hybrid platform provided by a cubic set has the main advantage since it contains more information than a fuzzy set and an interval-valued fuzzy set. By using this concept, different problems arising in several areas can be solved by means of cubic sets as in the works of Rashid et al. [
20], Ma et al. [
21], Khan et al. [
22], Jun et al. [
23,
24], Gulistan et al. [
25], Khaleed et al. [
26], Fu et al. [
27] and Ashraf et al. [
28].
As for the Pythagorean fuzzy set (PFS) and its generalizations, an entropy measure was defined by Yang and Hussein [
29]. Thao and Smarandache [
30] proposed a new entropy measure for Pythagorean fuzzy which discarded the use of natural logarithm, while Wang and Li [
31] introduced Pythagorean fuzzy interaction power Bonferroni mean aggregation operators in multiple attribute decision making.
Vague sets have a more powerful ability than fuzzy sets to process fuzzy information to some degree. Human cognition is usually a gradual process. As a result, how to characterize a vague concept and further measure its uncertainty becomes an interesting issue worth studying. Nevertheless, the concept of simple vague set is insufficient to provide the information about the occurrence of ratings or grades with accuracy because information is limited, and it is also unable to describe the occurrence of uncertainty and vagueness well enough, when sensitive cases are involved in decision making problems. Hence, there is a pertinent need for us to introduce the novel concept of cubic vague set (CVS) by incorporating both the ideas of cubic set and vague set. The aim of this model to introduce the notion of cubic vague set by extending the range of the truth-membership function and the false-membership function from a subinterval of [0, 1] to the interval-based membership structure that allows users to record their hesitancy in assigning membership values. This feature and its ability to represent two-dimensional information makes it ideal to be used to handle uncertain and subjective information that are prevalent in most time-periodic phenomena in the real world. These reasons served as the motivation to choose the cubic vague set model and use it in decision making problem.
The contribution of the novel cubic vague set (CVS) in the decision making process is its ability to handle uncertainties, imprecise and vagueness information considering both the truth-membership and falsity-membership values, whereas cubic set can only process the uncertainties information without able to take into account the truth-membership and falsity-membership values. The core advantage of using CVS against CS will be illustrated by an example. Hence, this concept of cubic vague set (CVS) will further enrich the use of various fuzzy methods in decision making such as those current trends which include group decision making using complex q-rung orthopair fuzzy Bonferroni mean [
32], air pollution model using neutrosophic cubic Einstein averaging operators [
33] and medicine preparation using neutrosophic bipolar fuzzy set [
34].
The flow of our research is as follows. Firstly, we examine the concept of cubic vague set (CVS), which is a hybrid of vague set and cubic set. Secondly, we define some concepts related to the notion of CVS as well as some basic operations namely internal cubic vague sets (ICVSs) and external cubic vague sets (ECVSs). The CVS will be used together with a generalized algorithm to determine the similarity measures between two CVSs for a pattern recognition problem. Finally, a numerical example is given to elucidate that the proposed similarity measure of CVS is an important concept for measuring the entropy of uncertain information.
The organization of the paper will be as follows. Fundamentals of vague set, cubic set and interval-valued vague set are presented in
Section 2. In
Section 3, the concept of a cubic vague set with P- and R-union and P- and R-intersection for CVSs, with various properties are introduced. In
Section 4, the similarity measure between CVSs is shown, along with an illustrative example studied, followed by the conclusion in
Section 5.
3. Cubic Vague Sets
In this section, we will define the concept of a cubic vague set (CVS) and internal/external cubic vague sets.
Definition 7. Let X be a universal set. A cubic vague set defined over the universal set X is an ordered pair which is defined as followswhere represents IVVS defined on X while represents VS such that and . For clarity, we denote the pairs as , where and . denotes the sets of all cubic vague sets in X. Example 1. Let be a universe set. Suppose an IVVS in X is defined byand a VS is a set of X is defined by Then the cubic vague set will have the tabular representation as in Table 1. Definition 8. Let X be a universal set and V be a non-empty vague set. A cubic vague set is called an internal cubic vague set (brief. ICVS) if for all .
Definition 9. Let X be a universal set and V be a non-empty vague set. A cubic vague set is called an external cubic vague set (brief. ECVS) if for all .
Remark 1. Let X be a universal set and V be a non-empty set. A cubic vague set is said to be neither ICVS nor ECVS if and for all .
Example 2. Let be a cubic vague set in X. If and for all , then is an ICVS. If and , , then is an ECVS. If and , , then is not an ICVS or an ECVS.
Theorem 1. Let is be a CVS in X which is not an ECVS. Then s.t .
Proof. Straightforward. □
Theorem 2. Let is a CVS in X. If is an ICVS and ECVS, thenwhere Proof. Suppose that is an ICVS and ECVS. By using Definition 8 and Definition 9, we get and . Thus, or , and so . □
Definition 10. Let and be two cubic vague sets in X and V. Then we have
- 1.
(Equality) and .
- 2.
(P-order) and .
- 3.
(R-order) and .
Definition 11. The complement of is defined to be the cubic vague set , where and is the vague complement and .
Definition 12. Let and be two cubic vague sets in X and V. Then we have
- 1.
(P-union).
- 2.
(P-intersection).
- 3.
(R-union).
- 4.
(R-intersection).
- 5.
(P-AND).
- 6.
(P-OR).
- 7.
(R-AND).
- 8.
(R-OR).
Theorem 3. Let be a CVS in X. If is ICVS (resp. ECVS), then is also an ICVS (resp. ECVS).
Proof. Since
is also an ICVS (resp. ECVS) in
X, we have
(resp.
) for all
. That means
(resp.
). Thus,
is an ICVS (resp. ECVS) in
X. □
Theorem 4. Let be a group of ICVSs in X. Then the P-union and intersection of are ICVSs in X.
Proof. Since
is an ICVS in
X, we have
for
. That means
and
Hence and are ICVSs in X. □
The following example shows that the P-union and P-intersection of two ECVSs need not be an ECVS.
Example 3. Let and be two ECVSs in X such that and , and .
- 1.
Note that and . Then is not an ECVS in I.
- 2.
Note that and . Then is not an ECVS in I.
The example below shows that the R-union and intersection of two ICVSs need not be an ICVS.
Example 4. Let and be ICVSs in in which , , and for all .
- 1.
Note that and . Then is not an ICVS in I.
- 2.
Note that and . Then is not an ICVS in I.
The example below will show that the R-union and intersection of two ECVSs may not necessarily be an ECVS.
Example 5. - 1.
Let and be ECVSs in whereas , , and . Since and . Then is not an ECVS in I.
- 2.
Let and be ECVSs in whereas , , and for all . Since and . Then is not an ECVS in I.
We give a condition of a R-union of two ICVSs to become an ICVS.
Theorem 5. Let and be two ICVSs in X such that.
Then the R-union ofandis an ICVS in X. Proof. Let and be two ICVSs in X which satisfy the condition of Definition 7. Then and which means . Now apply the condition of Definition 7 that is so that is an ICVS in X. □
We give a condition of a R-intersection of two ICVSs to become an ICVS.
Theorem 6. Let and be two ICVSs in X satisfying . Then the R-intersection of and is an IVCS in X.
Proof. Let and be ICVSs in X which satisfy the condition of Definition 1. Then and so . Now apply the condition of Definition 1 we get and therefore is an ICVS in X. □
Given two CVSs and . Suppose we exchange the for in the two CVSs and we denote the CVSs and , respectively. Then, for to ECVSs and in X, two cubic vague sets and may not be ICVSs in X as shown in the example below.
Example 6. - 1.
Let and be two EVCSs in in which , , and . Thus, and are not ICVSs in X since and .
- 2.
Let be a set. Let and be ECVSs in X defined by Table 2. Thus, and are not ICVSs in X since and .
We give an example to show that the P-union of two ECVSs in X does not necessarily become an ICVS in X.
Example 7. Let be a set. Let and be two ECVSs in X defined by Table 3. Then we will have is not an ICVS in X since We give a condition for P-union of two ECVSs to become an ICVS.
Theorem 7. For two ECVSs and in X, if and are IVCSs in X, then the P-union of and is an ICVS in X.
Proof. Let and be an ECVSs in X such that and are ICVSs in X. Then , , and for all . Now, for a given , we consider the cases:
and .
and .
and .
and .
We will illustrate the proof of the first case only because proofs of the remaining three cases are similar. Now, we get
. Since
and
are ICVSs in
X, we have
and
. It follows that
Hence is an ICVS in X. □
We give the condition of a P-intersection of two ECVSs to become an ICVS.
Theorem 8. Let and be CVSs in X such that and are ICVSs in X. Then the P-intersection of and is an ICVS in X.
Proof. The proof is similar to that of Theorem 7. □
For two ECVSs and in X, two CVSs and may not be ECVSs as shown in the following example.
Example 8. Let be a set. Let and be ECVSs in X given in Table 4. Thus, and are not ECVSs in X since and . Theorem 9. Let and be two ECVSs in X such that and are ECVSs in X. Thus, the P-union and is an ECVS in X.
Proof. For each
, we get
,
,
and
which means
. Then
is an ECVS in
X. □
We have given an example that shows the P-intersection for two ECVSs may not become an ECVS as in Example 3. Now we will add a condition for the P-itersection of two ECVSs to be an ECVS by using Definition 2.
Theorem 10. Let and be two ECVSs in X such that ≥ . Thus, the P-intersection and is an ECVS in X.
Proof. For each
, substitute
and
Then which is one of the and . We consider or only since the proof of the other cases are similar.
If
, thus
and so
. Then
thus
.
If
, thus
and so
. Suppose that,
. Thus,
then we get
or
of the case
. This is the contradiction to
and
are ECVSs in
X. For the case
we get
because
.
Suppose that,
. Thus,
then we get
or
of the case
. This is the contradiction to
and
are ECVSs in
X. For the case
we get
because
. Then P-intersection of
and
are ECVSs in
X. □
We add a condition of a P-intersection of two CVSs to become both an ECVS and ICVS.
Theorem 11. Let and be two VCSs in X such that for all . Then P-intersection and is an ECVS and an ICVS in X
Proof. For each
, substitute
and
Then which is one of the and . We take or only.
If
, thus
and so
. This implies that
. Thus,
implies that
. Thus,
and
.
If , thus, and so . Then and . Therefore, the P-intersection of and is an ECVS and ICVS in X. □
We provide the condition of a P-union of two ECVSs to become an ECVS.
Theorem 12. Let and be two EVCSs in X such that > . Then the P-union and is an ECVS in X.
Proof. For each
, substitute
and
Then is one of the and . We consider or only.
If
, thus,
and so
. This implies that
hence,
If
, thus
and so
. Suppose that
We have,
and
or
That is a contradiction for that fact
and
are ECVSs in
X in the first case. For the next case, we will show that
because
Suppose
We have,
which means
or
It contradicts
, for the fact
and
are ECVSs in
X. In the case
we get
since
. Thus, a P-union of
and
is an ECVS in
X. □
Theorem 13. Let and be two ECVSs in X. If for each such that , then the R-union and is an ECVS in X.
Proof. For each
, substitute
and
Then is one of the and . Consider the case of or .
If
, thus,
and
. Then the first part of inequality
and
If
, then
and
. Suppose
. Thus,
which implies that
or
For the case
, it contradicts the fact that
and
are ECVSs in
X. For the case
we have
since
.
Suppose
We have,
For the case
, it is a contradiction since
and
are ECVSs in
X. For the case
we notice that
since
. Hence the R-union of
and
is an ECVS in
X. □
For the R-intersection we provide the condition of two ECVSs to be an ECVS.
Theorem 14. Let and be two ECVSs in X. If for each such that , then the R-intersection of and is an ECVS in X.
Proof. The proof is similar to that of Theorem 13. □
For R-intersection we provide the condition of two CVSs to be both an ECVS and ICVS.
Theorem 15. Let and be CVSs in X. If for each such that , then the R-intersection of and is an ECVS and an ICVS in X.
Proof. The proof is similar to that of Theorem 11. □
For the R-union we provide the condition of two ICVSs to be an ECVS.
Theorem 16. Let and be ICVSs in X. If , then the R-union of and is an ECVS in X.
Proof. Straightforward. □
For the R-intersection we provide the condition of two ICVSs to be an ECVS.
Theorem 17. Let and be ICVSs in X. If for all , then the R-intersection of and is an ECVS in X.
Proof. Straightforward. □
For the R-union we provide the condition of two ECVSs to be an ICVS.
Theorem 18. Let and be ICVSs in X such that for all , then the R-union of and is an ICVS in X.
Proof. Straightforward. □