A mechanism to improve the interpretability of linguistic fuzzy systems with adaptive defuzzification based on the use of a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm

Abstract

This paper proposes a mechanism that helps improve the interpretability of linguistic fuzzy ruled based systems with common adaptive defuzzification methods. Adaptive defuzzification significantly improves the system accuracy, but introduces weights associated with each rule of the rule base, decreasing the system interpretability. The suggested mechanism is based on three goals: 1) reducing the number of total rules considering that rule weight close to zero can be removed; 2) reducing the rules with weights coupled because rules with weights close to one do not need the weight, and 3) reducing rules triggered jointly, all of them by using several metrics and a proposed interpretability index. This is performed using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, obtaining a set of solutions with different trade-offs between accuracy and interpretability. In addition, it is important to note that adaptive defuzzification and therefore the proposal developed in this work can be used together with other methodologies to improve system interpretability and accuracy, so it can be viewed as an interesting component. © 2012, Copyright the authors.