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Rating: 
Summary: good general introduction - code useless
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: The Fuzzy Systems Handbook
Review: I found the book to be very helpful. The programming examples are in C++, but are not set up in the latest OOP style. The functions presented, clearly show the concepts that Mr Cox is trying to get across. The Charts, Pictures and Grafts explain the various ideas well. There are no mathematical theorem proofs. It is more a hands on programming type of book, not a book of abstract theory.
Rating: 
Summary: Fuzzy Systems Handbook by Earl Cox
Review: I'm glad I read your other reviews. It solidified my opinion. I'm still trying, but after two days of attempting to use the software on the CD I'm convinced the review I read is right; "The software is useless". I will give the benifit of doubt, however, since I'm still green at C++, but I never did get the DLL's to even compile due to missing .HPP's and other serious errors. Also, in the book it says you can go to WWW.METUS.COM for software updates and corrections (e-mail to them still pending) but I only found a "Comming Soon" at the only link to any software. The software which was put on this CD was obviously not tested as shipped. The same problems existed with the first edition of this book, only worse. It's too bad because this is one of the only books I've found which showed any promise of helping me really understand fuzzy logic by USING it. The book also contains numerous printing errors. Looks like a case of poor QC all around.
Rating:
Summary: Fuzzy Systems Handbook by Earl Cox
Review: I'm glad I read your other reviews. It solidified my opinion. I'm still trying, but after two days of attempting to use the software on the CD I'm convinced the review I read is right; "The software is useless". I will give the benifit of doubt, however, since I'm still green at C++, but I never did get the DLL's to even compile due to missing .HPP's and other serious errors. Also, in the book it says you can go to WWW.METUS.COM for software updates and corrections (e-mail to them still pending) but I only found a "Comming Soon" at the only link to any software. The software which was put on this CD was obviously not tested as shipped. The same problems existed with the first edition of this book, only worse. It's too bad because this is one of the only books I've found which showed any promise of helping me really understand fuzzy logic by USING it. The book also contains numerous printing errors. Looks like a case of poor QC all around.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Entry level Fuzzy Systems text, messy code
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Book is Ok, but software is almost useless
Review: If you bought this book for the software, you wasted your money. Contrary to the text in a book there are no examples for VB5. And this is why - they wouldn't work. 32-bit DLL was compiled without external reference to the main subroutine and another 2 dozens of key functions are missing. 16-bit DLL works, but who wants it? Some 16-bit version files are missing from 32-bit version directories and since according to the author this files are not upward compatible , you will have to be an experienced C++ programmer to fix it up. You will also have to have VC 4.0 to recompile the DLL. As for the tech support, I wrote the E-mail, got the response that if there is a bug it will be fixed right away and never heard from E. Cox again. I ended up spending lot of time fixing and recompiling 32-bit DLL, just to find out later that it is completely useless with Visual Basic. It makes extensive use of the pointers (which is OK for C++), so you will have to store them every time you call this DLL from VB. In my opinion it should never been advertised as VB compatible software. If you want this software for C++, be aware that only version that works is 16-bit DOS version and you may have trouble converting examples to something useful. The book itself is OK, but kind of hard to read if you are the beginner.
Rating:
Summary: Ok book - sourcecode is completely useless
Review: 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 :).
Rating:
Summary: Good hands on fuzzy logic book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good hands on fuzzy logic book
Review: 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.
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