Scott Stephens wrote:
>
> Maybe its employed so well because its principals (calculus) is generaly
> taught and well understood. Impulse response and damping in the time domain,
> or frequency responce, pass/stopbands in the frequency domain, and pole zero
>

I have probably spent four or five hours reading about fuzzy logic over
the
last few years. All the rule-writing makes me think the compiler is
generating some

(& more.. )

>
> Just my narrow-minded, ignorant, conservative, traditionaly-educated 2 cents.

Scott:

I don't know if it's narrow minded, but it's not ignorant. You get the
point very well - fuzzy logic is not at all like the stuff you were
taught. If you had only put the same amount of time into calculus it
would probably be as opaque.

Despite the familiarity the standard frequency response model of a
process is still just a model. The mathematical description is not the
real thing, and is not made more valid because of human observation of
apparent cause and effect. Fuzzy logic models are also just models, only
made with a different set of tools.

By tools I do not mean commercial software. These tools are the internal
assumptions and logical understanding that you or I bring to bear on a
problem. I have seen these tools fail to adequately model reality more
often than not; a great deal of my most clever work has gone into
finessing the exceptions to the simple model. Most of the good designers
I know echo this experience.

Finally, please give up the idea that fuzzy logic implementation is
somehow indeterminate. The math is actually simple (much simpler than
calculus, but then when did you ever do calculus to implement a PID
loop?) and easily provable. It is the formulation of the system and the
interpretation of the result that takes work and understanding.

-- Tom