How to make T-transitive a proximity relation

Abstract

Three ways to approximate a proximity relation R (i.e., a reflexive and symmetric fuzzy relation) by a T -transitive one where T is a continuous Archimedean t-norm are given. The first one aggregates the transitive closure R macr of R with a (maximal) T-transitive relation B contained in R . The second one computes the closest homotecy of R macr or B to better fit their entries with the ones of R. The third method uses nonlinear programming techniques to obtain the best approximation with respect to the Euclidean distance for T the Lukasiewicz or the product t-norm. The previous methods do not apply for the minimum t-norm. An algorithm to approximate a given proximity relation by a min-transitive relation (a similarity) is given in the last section of the paper.