Novel methods on comparing grey numbers

Uncertain decision-making is an important branch of decision-making theory. It is crucial to describe uncertain information, which determine the decision-making is effective or not. This paper first presents a brief survey of the existing methods on denoting uncertain information, Such as fuzzy mathematics, stochastic and interval methods, analyzes the merits and demerits of these methods. Then the paper proposes a novel method grey systems theory to describe uncertain information and gives the novel definition of grey number on the basis of probability distribution. Subsequently a novel probability method on comparing grey numbers, especially discrete grey numbers and interval grey numbers, is Studied. When an interval grey number satisfied to continuous uniform distribution, it will be degenerated into an interval number. Finally three numerical examples are investigated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present method. (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.