This book collects the abstracts of the contributions presented at AGOP 2017, the 9th International Summer School on Aggregation Operators. The conference took place in Skövde (Sweden) in June 2017. Contributions include works from theory and fundamentals of aggregation functions to their use in applications. Aggregation functions are usually defined as those functions that are monotonic and that satisfy the unanimity condition. In particular settings these conditions are relaxed. Aggregation functions are used for data fusion and decision making. Examples of these functions include means, t-norms and t-conorms, copulas and fuzzy integrals (e.g., the Choquet and Sugeno integrals).

This volume collects the extended abstracts of 45 contributions of participants to the Seventh International Summer School on Aggregation Operators (AGOP 2013), held at Pamplona in July, 16-20, 2013. These contributions cover a very broad range, from the purely theoretical ones to those with a more applied focus. Moreover, the summaries of the plenary talks and tutorials given at the same workshop are included. Together they provide a good overview of recent trends in research in aggregation functions which can be of interest to both researchers in Physics or Mathematics working on the theoretical basis of aggregation functions, and to engineers who require them for applications.

This book describes novel algorithms based on interval-valued fuzzy methods that are expected to improve classification and decision-making processes under incomplete or imprecise information. At first, it introduces interval-valued fuzzy sets. It then discusses new methods for aggregation on interval-valued settings, and the most common properties of interval-valued aggregation operators. It then presents applications such as decision making using interval-valued aggregation, and classification in case of missing values. Interesting applications of the developed algorithms to DNA microarray analysis and in medical decision support systems are shown. The book is intended not only as a timely report for the community working on fuzzy sets and their extensions but also for researchers and practitioners dealing with the problems of uncertain or imperfect information.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 36th Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2010, held in Špindleruv Mlýn, Czech Republic, in January 2009. The 53 revised full papers, presented together with 11 invited contributions, were carefully reviewed and selected from 134 submissions. SOFSEM 2010 was organized around the following four tracks: Foundations of computer science, principles of software construction, Data, knowledge, and intelligent systems and Web science.

This book commemorates the 65th birthday of Dr. Boris Kovalerchuk, and reflects many of the research areas covered by his work. It focuses on data processing under uncertainty, especially fuzzy data processing, when uncertainty comes from the imprecision of expert opinions. The book includes 17 authoritative contributions by leading experts.

Since the turn of the century, geology has advanced dramatically, with materials derived from extra-terrestrial sources meaning that it now encompasses cosmology, and new technologies providing ever more sophisticated possibilities for the conducting of research. This book, Unconventional Methods for Geoscience, Shale Gas and Petroleum in the 21st Century, aims to provide research directions for geology in the 21st century. As Eric Hobsbawm wrote, it is difficult to write the history of one’s own days, and selecting influential methods was no easy task, but an attempt has been made to include the most influential papers that represent the smart geology of the first few decades of the 21st century. The book presents 22 papers; the first serves as an introduction to biology, which is now expanding into the science of the cosmos following the discovery of previously missing information, and the remaining 21 papers are divided into 3 sections entitled Modelling, Simulation and Optimization. The importance of theoretical approaches from physics, mathematics, and statistics underlying meta-heuristic methods, knowledge and approaches is acknowledged, and there is a chapter dedicated to deep learning. The book contributes to the exploration of various possible solutions to challenging problems in both the Earth’s geology and that of the cosmos, and will be of interest to all those working in the field.

This textbook helps future data analysts comprehend aggregation function theory and methods in an accessible way, focusing on a fundamental understanding of the data and summarization tools. Offering a broad overview of recent trends in aggregation research, it complements any study in statistical or machine learning techniques. Readers will learn how to program key functions in R without obtaining an extensive programming background. Sections of the textbook cover background information and context, aggregating data with averaging functions, power means, and weighted averages including the Borda count. It explains how to transform data using normalization or scaling and standardization, as well as log, polynomial, and rank transforms. The section on averaging with interaction introduces OWS functions and the Choquet integral, simple functions that allow the handling of non-independent inputs. The final chapters examine software analysis with an emphasis on parameter identification rather than technical aspects. This textbook is designed for students studying computer science or business who are interested in tools for summarizing and interpreting data, without requiring a strong mathematical background. It is also suitable for those working on sophisticated data science techniques who seek a better conception of fundamental data aggregation. Solutions to the practice questions are included in the textbook.

This book, written by the foremost international researchers and practitioners of genetic programming (GP), explores the synergy between theoretical and empirical results on real-world problems, producing a comprehensive view of the state of the art in GP. In this year’s edition, the topics covered include many of the most important issues and research questions in the field, such as opportune application domains for GP-based methods, game playing and co-evolutionary search, symbolic regression and efficient learning strategies, encodings and representations for GP, schema theorems, and new selection mechanisms. The book includes several chapters on best practices and lessons learned from hands-on experience. Readers will discover large-scale, real-world applications of GP to a variety of problem domains via in-depth presentations of the latest and most significant results.

This volume presents the state of the art of new developments, and some interesting and relevant applications of the OWA (ordered weighted averaging) operators. The OWA operators were introduced in the early 1980s by Ronald R. Yager as a conceptually and numerically simple, easily implementable, yet extremely powerful general aggregation operator. That simplicity, generality and implementability of the OWA operators, combined with their intuitive appeal, have triggered much research both in the foundations and extensions of the OWA operators, and in their applications to a wide variety of problems in various fields of science and technology. Part I: Methods includes papers on theoretical foundations of OWA operators and their extensions. The papers in Part II: Applications show some more relevant applications of the OWA operators, mostly means, as powerful yet general aggregation operators. The application areas are exemplified by environmental modeling, social networks, image analysis, financial decision making and water resource management.