Computing with words (CW) and its application to decision support and systems analysis

Computing with words (CW) is inspired by the remarkable human capability to perform a wide variety of physical and mental tasks without any measurements and any computations. Everyday examples of such tasks are driving a car in city traffic, playing tennis and summarizing a story. Computing with words abandons bivalence. By so doing, computing with words lays the groundwork for a radical enlargement of the role of natural languages in scientific theories and, more particularly, in information processing, decision and control. A key component of computing with words is precisiated natural language (PNL). The principal function of PNL is to serve as a system for computation and reasoning with perceptions. Computing with words provides a basis for an important generalization of probability theory, namely, perception-based probability theory (PTp). Computing with words is an additional tool, which significantly enhances the ability of methods of design and analysis to deal with real-world problems.