1. Introduction
In 1938, A. Ostrowski [
1] proved the following inequality concerning the distance between the integral mean
and the value
,
.
Theorem 1 ([
1])
. Let be continuous on and differentiable on such that be bounded on , i.e., . Thenfor all , and the constant is the best possible. An improvement to Ostrowski’s inequality was investigated by Dragomir in [
2]. Dragomir obtained the following important result:
Theorem 2 ([
2])
. Let (where is the set of complex numbers) be an absolutely continuous function on , whose derivative . Thenfor all , where denotes the usual norm on , i.e.,.
Anastassiou in [
3] proved an Ostrowski-type inequality, which we mention in the theorem below:
Theorem 3 ([
3])
. Let be a Banach space and , with , then we obtain the following inequality:where . Inequality (3) is sharp. In particular, the optimal function is , , and is a fixed unit vector in . The interested reader can read [
3] for more results on Ostrowski-type inequalities for mapping with values in Banach spaces. Suppose that
is a Banach space and
. We denote by
the Banach algebra of all bounded linear operators acting on
, and the norms of vectors or operators acting on
is
.
A function is called measurable if there exists a sequence of simple functions which converges pointwise almost everywhere on at . We recall that a measurable function is Bochner integrable if and only if its norm function is Lebesgue integrable on .
The following generalization of an Ostrowski scalar inequality holds [
4].
Theorem 4 ([
4])
. Assume that is Hölder continuous on , i.e.,where and . If is Bochner integrable on , then we have the inequalityfor any , provided the integrals and from the right-hand side are finite. A weighted version of Ostrowski’s inequality for two functions with values in Banach spaces was established by Dragomir in [
5].
Theorem 5 ([
5])
. Assume that (where is the set of complex numbers) and are continuous and φ is strongly differentiable on , then for all , the inequalityholds andWe also have the boundswhere with . The next section is devoted to the basic definitions and results of fuzzy numbers and fuzzy number-valued functions.
2. Preliminaries
In this section, we point out some basic definitions and results that will help us in the sequel to this paper. We begin with the following:
Definition 1 ([
6])
. Let us denote by the class of fuzzy subsets of real axis (i.e., ), i.e., is the set of functions , satisfying the following properties:- (i)
u is normal, i.e., , .
- (ii)
u is a convex fuzzy set, i.e.,where . - (iii)
u is upper semicontinuous on .
- (iv)
is compact.
The set is called the space of fuzzy real numbers.
Remark 1. It is clear that , because any real number can be described as the fuzzy number whose value is 1 for and zero otherwise.
We will collect some further definitions and notations needed in the sequel [
7].
For
and
, we define
and
Now, it is well-known that for each is a bounded closed interval. For and , the sum and the product are defined by , , where means the usual addition of two intervals as subsets of and means the usual product between a scalar and a subset of .
Now we define
by
where
then
is a metric space, and it possesses the following properties:
- (i)
- (ii)
- (iii)
.
Moreover, it is well-known that is a complete metric space.
Furthermore, we have the following theorem:
Theorem 6 ([
8])
. We have the following properties of fuzzy real numbers:- (i)
If we denote ( is the characteristic function of that only takes values 0 or 1), then is the neutral element with respect to ⊕, i.e., , for all .
- (ii)
If is the neutral element with respect to ⊕, then none of has the opposite in with respect to ⊕.
- (iii)
For all with or and any , we have . For all if or , the above property does not hold for any .
- (iv)
For any and any we have
- (v)
For any and any we have
- (vi)
If we denote , then is a norm on , i.e., if and only if , and
Remark 2. The propositions (ii) and (iii) in the above theorem show us that is not a linear space over , and consequently, cannot be a normed space. However, the properties of and those in theorem propositions (iv)–(vi) have as an effect that most of the metric properties of functions defined on with values in a Banach space can be extended to functions , called fuzzy number-valued functions.
In this paper, for ranking concept, we will use a partial ordering, introduced in [
9].
Definition 2 ([
9])
. Let the partial ordering ≼ in by if and only if and , , and the strict inequality ≺ in is defined by if and only if and , , where . Definition 3 ([
10])
. Let t, . If there exists a such that , then we call z the -difference of t and s, denoted by Definition 4 ([
11])
. Given two fuzzy numbers , the generalized Hukuhara difference (-difference for short) is the fuzzy number w, if it exists, such that Remark 3. It is easy to show that (i) and (ii) are both valid if and only if w is a neutral number, also known as crisp number.
In terms of
r-levels, we have
and the conditions for the existence of
are as follows:
If the
-difference
does not define a proper fuzzy number, the nested property can be used for
r-levels and can obtain a proper fuzzy number by
where
defines the generalized difference of two fuzzy numbers
, defined in [
10] and extended and studied in [
11].
Remark 4. Throughout this paper, we assume that if , then .
Proposition 1 ([
12])
. For u, , we have Proposition 2 ([
10])
. For u, . If exists, it is unique and has the following properties ( denotes the crisp set ):- (i)
.
- (ii)
(a) , (b) .
- (iii)
If exists, then also exists, and .
- (iv)
if and only if (in particular, if and only if ).
- (v)
If exists, then either or , and if both equalities hold, then is a crisp set .
Definition 5 ([
10])
. Let u, have r-levels , with . The -division is the operation that calculates the fuzzy number , defined byprovided that w is a proper fuzzy number. Proposition 3 ([
10])
. Let (here 1 is the same as ). We have the following:- (i)
If , then .
- (ii)
If , then .
- (iii)
If , then and .
- (iv)
If exists, then either or , and both equalities hold if and only if is a crisp set.
Remark 5. If is a fuzzy-valued function, then the r-level representation of φ is given by , .
Definition 6 ([
13])
. Let be a fuzzy-valued function and . If ∃ ∀t such thatthen we say that ∈ is the limit of φ in , which is denoted by . Definition 7 ([
13])
. A function is said to be continuous at if for every we can find such that , whenever . φ is said to be continuous on if it is continuous at every . If φ is continuous at each , then the continuity is one-sided at end points κ, ν. Lemma 1 ([
14])
. For any κ, , κ, and , we havewhere is defined by . Definition 8 ([
11])
. Let and h be such that , then the -derivative of a function at is defined asIf , we say that φ is generalized Hukuhara differentiable (-differentiable for short) at .
Definition 9 ([
11])
. Let and , with and both differentiable at . Furthermore, we say the following:- (a)
φ is (i) -differentiable at if - (b)
φ is (ii) -differentiable at if
Definition 10 ([
12])
. We say that a point is a switching point for the differentiability of φ if in any neighborhood of there exist points such thattype (I): at (7) holds while (8) does not hold and at (8) holds and ((7) does not hold, or type (II): at (8) holds while (7) does not hold and at (7) holds and (8) does not hold. Definition 11 ([
13])
. Let be -differentiable at . Then φ is fuzzy continuous at c. Theorem 7 ([
13])
. Let I be a closed interval in . Let be differentiable at t and be -differentiable . Assume that g is strictly increasing on I. Then exists and Definition 12 ([
7])
. Let . We say that φ is fuzzy Riemann integrable to if for every , there exists such that for any division of with the norms , and so we havewhere denotes the fuzzy summation. We choose to writeWe also call a φ as above -integrable.
Theorem 8 ([
15])
. Let be integrable and . Then Corollary 1 ([
7])
. If , then φ is -integrable. Lemma 2 ([
16])
. If are fuzzy continuous (with respect to the metric ), then the function defined by is continuous on , and Lemma 3 ([
16])
. Let be fuzzy continuous. Thenis a fuzzy continuous function in . Proposition 4 ([
17])
. Let , , , and be fixed. Then (the -derivative)In particular, when then .
Theorem 9 ([
18])
. Let I be an open interval of and let be -fuzzy differentiable, . Then exists and . Theorem 10 ([
17])
. Let be a fuzzy differentiable function on with -derivative , which is assumed to be fuzzy continuous. Thenfor any c, with . Theorem 11 ([
11])
. If φ is -differentiable with no switching point in the interval , then we have Theorem 12 ([
13])
. Let be a continuous fuzzy-valued function. Thenis -differentiable and . Theorem 13 ([
18])
. Let and be two differentiable functions (φ is -differentiable); then Theorem 14 ([
18])
. Let and be two differentiable functions (φ is -differentiable); then Since fuzziness is a natural reality different than randomness and determinism, therefore an attempt was made by Anastassiou [
19] in 2003 to extend (
1) to the fuzzy setting context. In fact, Anastassiou [
19] proved the following important results for fuzzy Hölder and fuzzy differentiable functions, respectively:
Theorem 15 ([
19])
. Let , the space of fuzzy continuous functions, be fixed. If φ fulfills the Hölder conditionfor some . Then Theorem 16 ([
19])
. Let , the space of one-time continuously differentiable functions in the fuzzy sense. Then for , The inequalities in (
9) and (
10) are sharp, as equalities are attained by the choice of simple fuzzy number-valued functions. For further details on these inequalities, we refer interested readers to [
19].
The main purpose of the present paper is to establish new Ostrowski-type inequalities for functions with values in the fuzzy environment that generalize the results of Dragomir from [
2,
5] and extend the results of Anastassiou proved in [
19]. The results of this paper extend the result of Theorem 5 to fuzzy settings and hence also generalize the results of Theorems 2 and 4. To the best of our knowledge, this work has not been carried out before in any studies related to the fuzzy environment, and we hope to discover wide continuations and lots of applications in mathematical sciences and other areas of the sciences related to fuzzy mathematics.