Estimation of missing values in an incomplete linguistic 2-tuple judgment matrix based on additive consistency

As to express their preferences over alternatives, decision makers prefer linguistic terms to exact numbers. Sometimes a decision maker, however, may provide incomplete information due to the uncertainty and time limiting. In such case, how to estimate the missing values in an incomplete linguistic term judgment matrix should be solved. The linguistic 2-tuple representation model can be used to convert a linguistic term judgment matrix into a linguistic 2-tuple judgment matrix. The additive consistency of a linguistic 2-tuple judgment matrix has the property of transitivity. Based on the transitivity theorem of its additive consistency, a method to estimate the missing values in an incomplete linguistic 2-tuple judgment matrix was proposed. Finally, an example was given to illustrate it.