Soft Computing Evaluation Logic

3.3Elementary Attribute Criteria

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

—Henry Ford

Elementary attribute criteria (or simplified, elementary criteria or ELC, or attribute criteria) are functions that generate attribute suitability scores for all attributes of an evaluated object. In most cases, attributes are single variables, and in such cases elementary criteria are functions of a single variable. Less frequently, attributes can be compound and in such cases elementary criteria can be functions of more than one variable. We introduced attribute criteria in Sections 1.2.1 and 3.1.3.

A justifiable elementary criterion must be developed for each elementary input attribute. Let the elementary attributes be . The process of evaluation of elementary attributes consists of specifying requirements that elementary attributes must satisfy and then computing normalized degrees of satisfaction (preference or suitability scores) . The requirements are specified in the form of elementary criteria, which are mappings . Not surprisingly, there are various forms and types of elementary criteria. They are presented in subsequent sections.

3.3.1 Notation of Elementary ...