Normal parameter reduction in soft set based on particle swarm optimization algorithm

Parameter reduction in soft set is a combinatorial problem. In the past, the problem of normal parameter reduction in soft set is usually be solved by deleting dispensable parameters, that is, by the trial and error method to search the dispensable parameters. This manual method usually need much time to reduce unnecessary parameters, and the method is more suitable for small data. For the large data, however, it is impossible for people to reduce parameters in soft set. In this paper, the particle swarm optimization is applied to reduce parameters in soft set. Firstly, a definition is introduced to define the dispensable core, and some cases about the dispensable core are discussed. Then the normal parameter reduction model is built and the particle swarm optimization algorithm is employed to reduce the parameters. Experiments have shown that the method is feasible and fast. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).