  Rough set theory is a useful tool to deal with uncertain, granular and
incomplete knowledge in information systems. And it is based on equivalence
relations or partitions. Matroid theory is a structure that generalizes linear
independence in vector spaces, and has a variety of applications in many
fields. In this paper, we propose a new type of matroids, namely,
partition-circuit matroids, which are induced by partitions. Firstly, a
partition satisfies circuit axioms in matroid theory, then it can induce a
matroid which is called a partition-circuit matroid. A partition and an
equivalence relation on the same universe are one-to-one corresponding, then
some characteristics of partition-circuit matroids are studied through rough
sets. Secondly, similar to the upper approximation number which is proposed by
Wang and Zhu, we define the lower approximation number. Some characteristics of
partition-circuit matroids and the dual matroids of them are investigated
through the lower approximation number and the upper approximation number.
