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From: ac007@cfn.cs.dal.ca (Wolodymyr Barabash)
Subject: Re: Cox's Fuzzy Handbook
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Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 04:27:50 GMT
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As a follow up to my post, let me relate a little experience. I was in 
the second day of negotiations for an expert system contract and was 
facing three managers. I was the only candidate to survive a selection 
process, no one else was in the running. I even had the ear of a deputy 
commissioner (minister). When I described how successful fuzzy systems 
were in engineering - such as the Japanese subway system, the managers 
smiled and nodded politely. Meanwhile they were thinking - "what the hell 
do I care?". Their concerns are completely different. I sensed something 
and explained even more -using more engineering examples. 

To make a long story short, I was asked to try again in a couple of years 
once they could gauge the effectiveness of fuzzy logic in industry - 
since it was so new.

It was my failure to take engineering fuzzy theory and bridge it to 
non-engineering tasks. As an aid for others in the sciences, books like 
the one Earl Cox wrote are absolutely essential. They are probably 
essential for relational database progarmmers and systems analysts as 
well, come to think of it. Hopefully Earl Cox will not be the only one 
with such books. I am rather tired of the infinite pendulum problems, or 
water flow or camera optics. The real money and difficult tasks are in 
areas such as personnel classification or negotiation. Areas where 
nothing has worked so far.

Any comments?
Regards, Wolly
