Ranking-intuitionistic fuzzy numbers

Intuitionistic fuzzy sets are a generalization of ordinary fuzzy sets which are characterized by a membership function and a non-membership function. In this paper we consider the problem of ranking a set of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. We adopt a statistical viewpoint and interpret each intuitionistic fuzzy number as an ensemble of ordinary fuzzy numbers. This enables us to define a fuzzy rank and a characteristic vagueness factor for each intuitionistic fuzzy number. We show the reasonablesness of the results obtained by examining several test cases.