On a canonical representation of fuzzy numbers

Fuzzy numbers, and more generally linguistic values, are approximate assessments, given by experts and accepted by decision-makers when obtaining more accurate values is impossible or unnecessary. To simplify the task of representing and handling fuzzy numbers, several authors have introduced real indices in order to capture the information contained in a fuzzy number. In this paper we propose two parameters, value and ambiguity, for this purpose. We use these parameters to obtain canonical representations and to deal with fuzzy numbers in decision-making problems. Several examples illustrate these ideas. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.