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From: jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Humor & Seminar - Slimy Logic
Message-ID: <548@ames.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Oct-84 00:50:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.548
Posted: Wed Oct  3 00:50:35 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Oct-84 20:14:14 EDT
References: <12302@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 33


# Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear... 

     This B-Board article is a master parody, right down to the "so to speak"
mannerism.  Thanks for the entertainment!

     I took a couple of courses from Professor Zadeh at Berkeley in the 70s,
not just in Fuzzy Logic, but also formal languages, where we all struggled
with LALR(1) lookahead sets.  The fuzzy controversy was raging then, with
Prof. William Kahan, numerical analyst, being Zadeh's arch-enemy.  Kahan was a
natural devil's advocate, himself none too popular for raving on, in courses
on data structures, a bit muchly about the way CDC 6400 Fortrash treated
roundoff of the 60th bit.  Apparently, there's some bad blood over the size
of Zadeh's grants (NSF?) for his fuzzy baby.  They both have had tenure for
years, so maybe a pie-throwing contest would be appropriate.

     Anyway, looks like the fuzzy stuff is now making the rounds at MIT.
Zadeh, who ironically wrote the book on linear systems (circa 1948), at
least got the linguistics department hopping with the fuzzies, influencing
the Lakoffs (George, mainly) to trade in their equally ad hoc transformational
grammars for fuzzy logic.  Kinda soured me on natural language theory, too.
I mean, is there life after YACC?

     Old Lofti has left an interesting legacy via his children.  Zadeh's 
daughter, I understand is a brilliant lawyer.  One son, after getting his
statistics Ph.D. at 20 or so, claims to have draw poker figured out.
Bluffing is dealt with by simple probability theory.  As I remember,
"Winning Poker Systems" is one of those "just-memorize-the-equivalent-of-
ten-phone-numbers-for-instant-riches" books.  He worked his way through school
with funds won in Emeryville poker parlors.  Not too shabby, but not too
fuzzy, either ...

	-- James A. Woods  {ihnp4,hplabs,philabs}!ames!jaw  (jaw@riacs.ARPA)