• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.397-412
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• 2011

Granular Computing has emerged as a unified and coherent framework of designing, processing, and interpretation of information granules. Information granules are formalized within various frameworks such as sets (interval mathematics), fuzzy sets, rough sets, shadowed sets, probabilities (probability density functions), to name several the most visible approaches. In spite of the apparent diversity of the existing formalisms, there are some underlying commonalities articulated in terms of the fundamentals, algorithmic developments and ensuing application domains. In this study, we introduce two pivotal concepts: a principle of justifiable granularity and a method of an optimal information allocation where information granularity is regarded as an important design asset. We show that these two concepts are relevant to various formal setups of information granularity and offer constructs supporting the design of information granules and their processing. A suite of applied studies is focused on knowledge management in which case we identify several key categories of schemes present there.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.435-447
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• 2017

Associative and bidirectional associative memories are examples of associative structures studied intensively in the literature. The underlying idea is to realize associative mapping so that the recall processes (one-directional and bidirectional ones) are realized with minimal recall errors. Associative and fuzzy associative memories have been studied in numerous areas yielding efficient applications for image recall and enhancements and fuzzy controllers, which can be regarded as one-directional associative memories. In this study, we revisit and augment the concept of associative memories by offering some new design insights where the corresponding mappings are realized on the basis of a related collection of landmarks (prototypes) over which an associative mapping becomes spanned. In light of the bidirectional character of mappings, we have developed an augmentation of the existing fuzzy clustering (fuzzy c-means, FCM) in the form of a so-called collaborative fuzzy clustering. Here, an interaction in the formation of prototypes is optimized so that the bidirectional recall errors can be minimized. Furthermore, we generalized the mapping into its granular version in which numeric prototypes that are formed through the clustering process are made granular so that the quality of the recall can be quantified. We propose several scenarios in which the allocation of information granularity is aimed at the optimization of the characteristics of recalled results (information granules) that are quantified in terms of coverage and specificity. We also introduce various architectural augmentations of the associative structures.