Integrative levels of granularity

Abstract

In their book, Granular Computing: An Introduction, Bargiela and Pedrycz present a view that granular computing is an emerging conceptual and computing paradigm of information processing. A central notion is an information-processing pyramid with multiple levels. Different levels involve different types of processing. The lowest level concerns numeric processing, the intermediate level concerns larger information granules, and the highest level concerns symbol-based processing. This chapter examines the notion of integrative levels of granularity as a basis of granular computing. The notion of levels had been studied extensively in different branches of sciences and different fields of computer sciences. By extracting a set of common features and principles of integrative levels of granularity, the triarchic theory of granular computing is developed. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.