The authors discuss aspects related to the scalability of data mining tools meant in a different way than whether a data mining tool retains its intended functionality as the problem size increases. They introduce a new concept of a cognitive (perceptual) scalability meant as whether as the problem size increases the method remains fully functional in the sense of being able to provide intuitively appealing and comprehensible results to the human user. The authors argue that the use of natural language in the linguistic data summaries provides a high cognitive (perceptional) scalability because natural language is the only fully natural means of human communication and provides a common language for individuals and groups of different backgrounds, skills, knowledge. They show that the use of Zadeh’s protoform as general representations of linguistic data summaries, proposed by Kacprzyk and Zadrozny (2002; 2005a; 2005b), amplify this advantage leading to an ultimate cognitive (perceptual) scalability.
