Customer Reviews

Fuzzy Logic and NeuroFuzzy Applications in Business and Finance

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has a promising blurb which lead to me buy it. I was greatly disappointed. The blurbs suggested that the book would have plenty of detailed examples for the use of fuzzy logic in business and finance. The examples were there, but few and far in between, without the detail that would have made them useful case studies. Instead the author spends almost the entire book on one *single* fuzzy logic software called fuzzytech. The book is more like a manual for fuzzytech applications than it is an exposition on the use of fuzzy logic for business and finance.

I found this book to be a worthwhile read. I agree with the other reviewers that it covers Fuzzytech quite extensively, but a completely working version of fuzzytech ships with the book, so it is possible to follow all the examples in the book. The book triggered some good ideas for me as to how to implement fuzzy logic in the business environment. It does not try to be a very academical book, although various discussions are given to explain Fuzzy Logic. If you are prepared to use Fuzzytech as tool to play around with examples, then this is a good book.

As a user of the fuzzy logic program that von Altrock's company makes, I have found that this book is absolutely necessary. The truly weird thing is that Inform, the software publisher, doesn't tell you about this book, when it should be included with every Fuzzy program that they sell. The manual that is included with the program is wretchedly bad; dull, confusing, and pointless. Only worse. Once you discover this book, much of the operational confusion surrounding Fuzzytech will be cleared up. However, von Altrock cannot resist a certain measure of obscurity. NeuroFuzzy applications is direct and clear, but leaves plenty of understanding gaps between one implementation and another. Von Altrock needs to expand this text and provide a wider range of specifics and details. For instance, until very recently, Fuzzytech suffered from a limited ability to read data files. This placed the program far behind the curve of contemporary usage. This is badly needed information; how does the progam really work ? Since this is the ONLY readable volume on the subject, von Altrock and Inform would be well advised to do a more thorough job of linking theory to practice.

I was looking for a good technology to implement risk assessment systems and a colleague pointed me to fuzzy logic. Browsing the various books, I was flooded with mathematical theory and application notes that just claimed, fuzzy is good because it is fuzzy, and gave no hints of what was really done. Altrock's book is different. It goes right to the point and shows you all the works with examples. While the first examples are rather simplistic and only serve a didactic use, the more complicated case studies are quite useful. What is really helpful is the attached software. However, the attached CD is a bit outdated. but I was able to download an updated version of the software examples.

I recently used the book in an introductory AI class. I found it short on good descriptions of the basics, and long on 'user manual' information on FuzzyTech. This was not bad in itself, but FuzzyTech is a VERY complex program and the 'trial version' on the CD will not let you save ANY files or projects. This means you have to do all your learning in one session, or start over the next day. It would have been far more useful if the company had limited the size of the project you could save. I won't use this book again.