Modeling Ceteris Paribus Preferences in Formal Concept Analysis

摘要

We present a context-based semantics for parameterized ceteris paribus preferences over attributes subsets. Such preferences are only required to hold when the alternatives being compared agree on a specified subset of attributes. We show that ceteris paribus preferences valid in a preference context correspond to implications of a special formal context derived from the original preference context. We prove that the problem of checking the semantic consequence relation for parameterized ceteris paribus preferences is coNP-complete. We then discuss the relation between parameterized and classical, i.e., non-parameterized, ceteris paribus preferences, which are only required to hold "all other things being equal". We show that a non-parameterized preference is a special case of a parameterized preference, while any parameterized preference can be represented by an exponentially large set of non-parameterized preferences.