A Rough Set Based Dynamic Maintenance Approach for Approximations in Coarsening and Refining Attribute Values

In rough set theory, upper and lower approximations for a concept will change dynamically as the information system changes over time. How to update approximations based on the original information is an important task that can help improve the efficiency of knowledge discovery. This paper focuses on the approach of dynamically updating approximations when attribute values are coarsened or refined. The main contributions include: (1) defining coarsening and refining attribute values in information systems and introducing the properties and the principles of coarsening and refining attribute values; (2) analyzing the properties for dynamic maintenance in terms of upper and lower approximations with coarsening and refining attribute values; (3) proposing an incremental algorithm for updating the approximations of a concept as coarsening or refining attributes values; and finally (4) validating the efficiency of the proposed approach to handle the dynamic maintenance of the approximations for a given concept. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.