Uncertain Distribution-Based Similarity Measure of Concepts

The similarity of concepts is a basic task in the field of artificial intelligence, e.g., image retrieval, collaborative filtering, and public opinion guidance. As a powerful tool to express the uncertain concepts, similarity measure based on cloud model (SMCM) is always utilized to measure the similarity between two concepts. However, current studies on SMCM have two main limitations: (1) the similarity measures based on conceptual intension lack interpretability for merging the numerical characteristics and cannot discriminate some different concepts. (2) The similarity measures based on conceptual extension are always instable and inefficient. To address the above problems, an uncertain distribution-based similarity measure of cloud model (UDCM) is proposed in this paper. By analyzing the definition of the CM, we propose a new complete uncertainty including first-order and second-order uncertainty to calculate the uncertainty more accurately. Then, based on the difference between the complete uncertainty of two concepts, the computing process of UDCM and its some properties are introduced. Finally, we exhibit its advantages by comparing with other methods and verify its validity by experiments.