Rough Sets, Coverings and Incomplete Information

Rough sets are often induced by descriptions of objects based on the precise observations of an insufficient number of attributes. In this paper, we study generalizations of rough sets to incomplete information systems, involving imprecise observations of attributes. The precise role of covering-based approximations of sets that extend the standard rough sets in the presence of incomplete information about attribute values is described. In this setting, a covering encodes a set of possible partitions of the set of objects. A natural semantics of two possible generalisations of rough sets to the case of a covering (or a non transitive tolerance relation) is laid bare. It is shown that uncertainty due to granularity of the description of sets by attributes and uncertainty due to incomplete information are superposed, whereby upper and lower approximations themselves (in Pawlak’s sense) become ill-known, each being bracketed by two nested sets. The notion of measure of accuracy is extended to the incomplete information setting, and the generalization of this construct to fuzzy attribute mappings is outlined.