>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.

True. Hundreds of hours of control systems, calculus and laplace and four or
five of fuzzy from introductory articles and app-note. So I do have an
ignorant perspective. I don't wan't to pay the price in time & $$ to find
out how ignorant I am.

>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.

OK. Saying a=dv/dt is not the same as stepping on the gas pedal. But it
models reality so well if I'm off, I check my test equipment.
The big difference that scares me, is that the difference is quantify-able.
I can measure the difference between the model and reality. I know how much,
numbers arn't fuzzy.

>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.

The human mind processes information in terms of more and less, faster and
slower, formulate rules and change their minds to percieve reality in terms
of these concepts and rules. Thought is in linguistic cognitive tools and
terms. Fuzzy logic is a warm, fuzzy, linguistic and rule based programming
language.

Physical systems are described very well in the terse, arcane language of
mathematics. But this mathematic language was created to describe reality,
and imposed by the need to model the physical systems in question accurately
and precisely, not in fuzzy terms.

They way I see it, convention numeric techniques go to the playing field of
the physical system in question. Fuzzy logic brings the physical system in
question to the playing field of our fuzzy linguistic minds.

So the conclusion I reach is that a simple tool in competant hands will
outperform an elite tool in a ignorant hands. But it better to have a
powerfull mind and a powerfull tool ;-)