Expositing stages of VPRS analysis in an expert system: Application with bank credit ratings

The variable precision rough sets model (VPRS) along with many derivatives of rough set theory (RST) necessitates a number of stages towards the final classification of objects. These include, (i) the identification of subsets of condition attributes (beta-reducts in VPRS) which have the same quality of classification as the whole set, (ii) the construction of sets of decision rules associated with the reducts and (iii) the classification of the individual objects by the decision rules. The expert system exposited here offers a decision maker (DM) the opportunity to fully view each of these stages, subsequently empowering an analyst to make choices during the analysis. Its particular innovation is the ability to visually present available beta-reducts, from which the DM can make their selection, a consequence of their own reasons or expectations of the analysis undertaken. The practical analysis considered here is applied on a real world application, the credit ratings of large banks and investment companies in Europe and North America. The snapshots of the expert system presented illustrate the variation in results from the 'asymmetric' consequences of the choice of beta-reducts considered. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.