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1 comments about Complex Systems: Chaos and Beyond, A Constructive Approach with Applications in Life Sciences.

1. This is a book I've long been waiting for. It gives an excellent overview of how the study of complex systems and chaos brings together various branches of science with a special focus on Physics and the Biological Sciences. The book is not too technical yet highly to the point with philosophical and fundamental discussions and thus of great value to both expert and novice.

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No comments about An Introduction to Optimal Estimation of Dynamical Systems (Mechanics: Dynamical Systems).

5 comments about The Fuzzy Systems Handbook: A Practitioner's Guide to Building, Using, & Maintaining Fuzzy Systems.

1. I'm pretty comfortable with C++, so I found fixing the couple of bugs in the shipped code to be not a problem. (Quit your whining its nearly free code.) I can't vouch for the Hisss VB interface, but then I'd drive a cab before I coded with VB. There is one serious bug but its from a typo. Email me and I'll send you the patch.

   On to the good part. This is the first good Fuzzy Logic book I found. I've read several others before I got to this one and each one left me more confused than the rest. Earl finnally explained what its all about and what sort of problems this technique solves. There is a bit of "Fuzzy Logic is better than Neural Nets" but no real concrete examples to prove it. I ignored that and used his examples to learn how to do this and his code in some game AI. It worked well.

   Also in case you don't know the thing that Fuzzy logic does well is smooth out transistions, ie it keeps things from oscillating between two single states. It's also good for when you have multiple inputs all of which contribute to deciding whether a threshold has been reached. You set weights to the inputs contribution and analyize the result, meets the threshold or not. You can also adjust the threshold depending on the state of the object. Coupled with a Finite State machine and you've got a basic game AI.

   I have also taken some time (about a week) and cleaned the code up. It wasn't too difficult and I now have an OOP interface to it which made things a lot easier to understand. Earl obviously has a for sale system using the original code. He must have cut a chunk out and put it on the disk. I also have about a dozen emails from him, and I've sent him the updates. He's a busy guy, bug him to put the fixed code on his site. Maybe he'll get around to it.




2. If you want a book that gives basic explanation of fuzzy logic - this one is not that bad. If you want this book because it comes with 'free' code - look elsewhere. I'm a programmer with 10 years of C++ experience but I have not seen worse code than is supplied with this book. And believe me, I've seen a lot of bad code - I even wrote some of it :).



3. I am about halfway through the book and in general it's a decent guide to fuzzy logic. Earl explains the concepts well and provides decent real work examples. The code, as everyone else here has already said, is basically worthless. The book would be far more valuable if he just removed the code entirely from it and focused more on fuzzy logic. Another complaint: reading the first 50 pages made me feel as if I were reading a religious text, not a fuzzy systems book. Earl spends a great deal of time convincing the reader that Fuzzy Logic easily beats out other competing expert systems such as Bayes logic and neural networks. He dismisses those who do not agree with him as "uneducated" and spends time hurling personal insults at them rather than focusing on the benefits of fuzzy logic. I almost put the book down and returned it when reading the first 2 chapters. Altogether this is a decent introduction to fuzzy logic if you disregard the useless code and pedantics of the author.



4. This is the best hands on fuzzy logic book that I have used thus far. I succesfully used the first edition of the book as reference to develop real world fuzzy applications. I see that some reviewers are somewhat upset about the source code shipping with the book. It is a pity that the C++ code, is so difficult to get going with, because this detracts from some very valuable chapters in the book itself. However, Mr Cox was very helpful in providing me with updated code. I highly recommend the book.



5. By chapter 3 I realized Dr. Cox completely fails to document the assumptions and reasoning behind the formulas he illustrates. He fails to even clearly list formulas in the book. He provides mini C-code programs that will quickly become dated and the book totally useless that you can spend time picking through to eventually derive formulas, assuming they are even correct at this point in time. Do yourself a favor, check it out from the library and take a look at it first. Don't get stuck like I did with an overpriced paperweight. A "first course in fuzzy logic" by Hung Nguyen may be better. I looked through random pages and at least it has the formulas, how and why they are developed. I'm going to check it out of the library first. Ours did not carry Dr. Cox's book so I could not look at it before buying.

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No comments about Stability and Control of Aircraft Systems: Introduction to Classical Feedback Control (Aerospace Series (PEP)).

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