Why It Is Important to Precisiate Goals

Abstract—After Zadeh and Bellman explained how to optimize a function under fuzzy constraints, there have been many successful applications of this optimization. However, in many practical situations, it turns out to be more efficient to precisiate the objective function before performing optimization. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for this empirical fact. Keywords—optimization under uncertainty, fuzzy uncertainty, interval uncertainty, precisiation I. FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM Objectives are usually imprecise (fuzzy). In many real-life situations, our objectives are imprecise (fuzzy). A company may want to have a good growth rate, an excellent level of customer satisfaction, etc. A university program may seek excellent quality of graduates, steady growth of the program, more good students and faculty in the program, etc. Man