A new pairwise comparison based method of ranking LR-fuzzy numbers

Abstract

This paper aims to rank LR-fuzzy numbers (LR-fns) by the pairwise comparison based method. Different from the existing methods, our method uses the information contained in each LR-fn to get a consistent total order. In detail, since an LR-fn may not be absolutely larger or smaller than another, this paper proposes the concept of dominant degree to quantify how much one LR-fn is larger and smaller than another. From the dominant degrees, we construct a pairwise comparison matrix based on which a consistent ranking is got. Meanwhile, the ranking result is transitive and consistent, and agrees with our intuition. Examples and comparison with existing methods show the good performance of our method. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.