Practical Applications of Data Mining

8.9 Chapter Summary 383

Without the alpha-cut threshold, the size of the resulting table is much larger

than Table 8.23. Note, however, that the setting of an alpha-cut threshold to

a specific value highly depends on the purpose of the fuzzy query and the

type of information being sought.

8.9 CHAPTER SUMMARY

A fuzzy set is a set without a crisp boundary, which means the transition from

“belongs to the set” to “does not belong to the set” is gradual. This gradual

transition is characterized by a membership function that gives the fuzzy set

flexibility in modeling commonly used linguistic expressions. The member-

ship degree of a fuzzy set depends on the problem that needs to be solved

and the information that is to be retrieved. Membership ...