Fuzzy computing for data mining

The study is devoted to linguistic data mining, an endeavor that exploits the concepts, constructs, and mechanisms of fuzzy set theory. The roles of information granules, information granulation, and the techniques therein are discussed in detail. Particular attention is given to the manner in which these information granules are represented as fuzzy sets and manipulated according to the main mechanisms of fuzzy sets. We introduce unsupervised learning (clustering) where optimization is supported by the linguistic granules of context, thereby giving rise to so-called context-sensitive fuzzy clustering. The combination of neuro, evolutionary, and granular computing in the context of data mining is explored. Detailed numerical experiments using well-known datasets are also included and analyzed.