Interval number comparison and decision making based on priority degree

Abstract

Interval number ranking and the operation reduction are studied in this paper. Firstly, the priority relation of interval numbers is redefined by introducing a new priority-degree. We proved that the new priority-degree can avoid the unreasonable phenomenon that the denominator is zero when interval numbers degrade into real numbers. Then, some important comparison related concepts of the interval numbers, such as totally greater than, greater than, exactly equal and equal to etc., are redefined based on the new priority-degree. We also prove that interval numbers are reducible for addition and subtraction according to the redefined equal to relation. Finally, priority-degree based multi-criteria decision making method for uncertain problems with interval data is given and its validation is shown by an example.