A Discriminative Analysis of Approaches to Ranking Fuzzy Numbers in Fuzzy Decision Making

This paper presents a discriminative analysis of approaches to ranking fuzzy numbers in fuzzy decision making based on a comprehensive review of existing approaches. The consistency and effectiveness of the approaches to ranking fuzzy numbers are examined in terms of two objective measures developed, leading to a better understanding of the relative performance of individual approaches in ranking fuzzy numbers. Representative fuzzy numbers are selected for carrying out the comparative study of several typical approaches in ranking fuzzy numbers. Several interesting findings are identified which may be of practical significance to fuzzy decision making in real situations.