A comparative analysis of score functions for multiple criteria decision making in intuitionistic fuzzy settings

The purpose of this paper was to conduct a comparative study of score functions in multiple criteria decision analysis based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets. The concept of score functions has been conceptualized and widely applied to multi-criteria decision-making problems. There are several types of score functions that can identify the mixed results of positive and negative parts in a bi-dimensional framework of intuitionistic fuzzy sets. Considering various perspectives on score functions, the present study adopts an order of preference based on similarity to the ideal solution as the main structure to estimate the importance of different criteria and compute optimal multi-criteria decisions in intuitionistic fuzzy evaluation settings. An experimental analysis is conducted to examine the relationship between the results yielded by different score functions, considering the average Spearman correlation coefficients and contradiction rates. Furthermore, additional discussions clarify the relative differences in the ranking orders obtained from different combinations of numbers of alternatives and criteria as well as different importance conditions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.