In this paper, we first use a fuzzy preference relation with a membership function representing preference degree forcomparing two interval-valued fuzzy numbers and then utilize a relative preference relation improved from the fuzzypreference relation to rank a set of interval-valued fuzzy numbers. Since the fuzzy preference relation is a total orderingrelation that satisfies reciprocal and tra...

This investigation assessed the effectiveness of a self-help, self-hypnosis treatment in a primary-care setting in Edinburgh, UK. A partially randomized preference (PRP) study design was used, with benchmarking results to trials of CBT and counseling. Patients seeing their general practitioner for depression were offered randomization to, or their treatment preference of, either self-help (self...

Inspired by the concept of deviation measure between two linguistic preference relations, this paper further defines the deviation measure of a linguistic preference relation to the set of consistent linguistic preference relations. Based on this, we present a consistency index of linguistic preference relations and develop a consistency measure method for linguistic preference relations. This ...

W purchase and consumption decisions are separated in time and when future utility is state dependent, consumers may desire to pursue consumption flexibility by purchasing different products together (multiple buying). This paper analyzes the effects of consumption flexibility on competing firms’ marketing mix decisions, in a model in which future preference uncertainty exists and consumers dif...

The last two decades have seen a growing interest in the development of automated agents that are able to negotiate on the user’s behalf. When representing a user in a negotiation, it is essential for the agent to understand the user’s preferences, without exposing them to elicitation fatigue. To this end, we propose a new model in which a negotiating agent may incrementally elicit the user’s p...

Groups engaged in a mutual activity often need assistance in order to reach a joint decision. However, the group members’ personal preferences are often unknown and need to be collected. Querying for preferences can annoy the users. We suggest employing a voting mechanism that finds a winning item under incomplete settings. We present a practical method for eliciting the preferences, so that wi...

Preference relations can provide a more realistic model of random phenomena than quantita­ tive probability or belief functions. In order to use preference relations for reasoning under un­ certainty, it is necessary to perform sequential and parallel combinations of propagated infor­ mation in a qualitative inference network. This paper discusses the rules for such sequential and parallel comb...

The increasing complexity of products and services being offered by businesses has made providing customers with easy access to technical assistance an important business function. Therefore, most businesses operate call centers to respond to product related queries from consumers. An emerging model is to let a third-party to run the contact center for a business. Preference elicitation the pro...

In this paper, we describe area of recommender systems, with focus on user preference learning problem. We describe such system and identify some interesting problems. We will compare how well different approaches cope with some of the problems. This paper may serve as an introduction to the area of user preference learning with a hint on some interesting problems that have not been solved yet.