If Everything is a Matter of Degree, Why Do Crisp Techniques Often Work Better?

Authors

Miroslav Svitek, Czech Technical University in PragueFollow
Olga Kosheleva, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

8-1-2023

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-23-51

Abstract

Numerous examples from different application domain confirm the statement of Lotfi Zadeh -- that everything is a matter of degree. Because of this, one would expect that in most -- if not all -- practical situations taking these degrees into account would lead to more effective control, more effective prediction, etc. In practice, while in many cases, this indeed happens, in many other cases, "crisp" methods -- methods that do not take these degrees into account -- work better. In this paper, we provide two possible explanations for this discrepancy: an objective one -- explaining that the optimal (best-fit) model is indeed often the crisp one, and a subjective one -- that we have to use crisp because of our limited ability to process information.