The dominance-based rough set approach as a business analytical tool

This study demonstrates how to extract essential information from a set of financial and non-financial business indicators, leading to a better understanding of company performance. The use of Rough Set Theory and the Dominance principle associated with the probabilistic relationship between conditions and decisions in decision algorithms, is justified by the possibility of there being uncertain data to yield an essential set of effectively consistent information. The analysis was based on the Brazilian publication Exame Melhores e Maiores 2013 which lists the 500 largest companies in various economic sectors ordered by net sales. The study reveals the importance of broadening the analysis of enterprise indicators, and shows a method of describing conclusions from data without referring to prior and posterior probabilities.