Granularity of attributes in formal concept analysis

The construction of multi-granularity concept lattices

The construction of concept lattices is an important research topic in formal concept analysis. Inspired by multi-granularity rough sets, multi-granularity formal concept analysis has become a new hot research issue. This paper mainly studies the construction methods of concept lattices in multi-granularity formal context. The relationships between concept forming operators under different granularity are discussed. The mutual transformation methods of formal concepts under different granularity are presented. In addition, the approaches of obtaining coarse-granularity concept lattice by fine-granularity concept lattice and fine-granularity concept lattice by coarse-granularity concept lattice are examined. The related algorithms for generating concept lattices are proposed. The practicability of the method is illustrated by an example.

Concept learning via granular computing: A cognitive viewpoint

Concepts are the most fundamental units of cognition in philosophy and how to learn concepts from various aspects in the real world is the main concern within the domain of conceptual knowledge presentation and processing. In order to improve efficiency and flexibility of concept learning, in this paper we discuss concept learning via granular computing from the point of view of cognitive computing. More precisely, cognitive mechanism of forming concepts is analyzed based on the principles from philosophy and cognitive psychology, including how to model concept-forming cognitive operators, define cognitive concepts and establish cognitive concept structure. Granular computing is then combined with the cognitive concept structure to improve efficiency of concept learning. Furthermore, we put forward a cognitive computing system which is the initial environment to learn composite concepts and can integrate past experiences into itself for enhancing flexibility of concept learning. Also, we investigate cognitive processes whose aims are to deal with the problem of learning one exact or two approximate cognitive concepts from a given object set, attribute set or pair of object and attribute sets.