Updating attribute reduction in incomplete decision systems with the variation of attribute set

In rough set theory, attribute reduction is a challenging problem in the applications in which data with numbers of attributes available. Moreover, due to dynamic characteristics, of data collection in decision systems, attribute reduction will change dynamically as attribute set in decision systems varies over time. How to carry out updating attribute reduction by utilizing previous information is an important task that can help to improve the efficiency of knowledge discovery. In view of that attribute reduction algorithms in incomplete decision systems with the variation of attribute set have not yet been discussed so far. This paper focuses on positive region-based attribute reduction algorithm to solve the attribute reduction problem efficiently in the incomplete decision systems with dynamically varying attribute set. We first introduce an incremental manner to calculate the new positive region and tolerance classes. Consequently, based on the calculated positive region and tolerance classes, the corresponding attribute reduction algorithms on how to compute new attribute reduct are put forward respectively when an attribute set is added into and deleted from the incomplete decision systems. Finally, numerical experiments conducted on different data sets from UCI validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithms in incomplete decision systems with the variation of attribute set. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.