A Comparative Study of Ordered and Covering Information Systems

Covering information systems and ordered information systems are two important types of information systems. In this paper the relationships between covering information systems and ordered information systems are first examined, and it is proved that these two types of information systems are isomorphic under given conditions and can be equivalently transformed into each other. Then, the approach to attribute reduction in ordered information systems is proposed. Based on the isomorphism and equivalence of transformation, the method of attribute reduction in a covering information system can be directly obtained according to the reduction approach in an ordered information system. A practical example is employed to show that the proposed method is an effective technique to deal with complex data sets.