Paper Title
Distances Between A Developed State And Less Developed States Using Membership Degrees Of Fuzzy Sets

Abstract
The knowledge of fuzzy sets (FSs) has been increasingly applied in various fields such engineering, economic, health sciences and social sciences. This paper applies the concepts of distance using membership degrees of fuzzy sets for obtaining the distances between a developed state and five less developed states in Peninsular Malaysia. Five indicators in measuring country�s development were employed as a testing dataset. Membership degrees of gross domestic product, net enrolment ratio in secondary school, ratio hospital beds and population, incidence of hardcore poverty and household monthly income from 2005 to 2012 are tested to three distances equations. The equations of Euclidean distance, Correlation distance and Cosine distances are applied to compute distances between the state of Selangor and the states of Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, and Perlis. The distances and detailed computations are illustrated in this paper. The distances may indicate the likelihood of less developed state to become the next developed state. Keywords- less developed state, developed state, fuzzy sets, Euclidean distance, economic indicator