Maximum Relative Divergence Principle for Grading Functions on Power Sets

Abstract

The concept of Relative Divergence of one Grading Function from another is extended from totally ordered chains to power sets of finite event spaces. Shannon Entropy concept is extended to normalized grading functions on such power sets. Maximum Relative Divergence Principle is introduced as a generalization of the Maximum Entropy Principle as a tool for determining the "most reasonable" grading function and used in some Operations Research applications where that function is supposed to be "element-additive" or "cardinality-dependent" under application-specific linear constraints.