Richard Smith wrote: > On May 12, 7:49 pm, singhals<[email protected]> wrote: > >>> ... Having a fuzzy rule to tell you that it's >>> normal to be baptised as a baby, while accepting that baptisms at all >>> ages do occur, helps a computer assist you in finding that record. >> >> It's NORMAL to be baptised as a baby IF and ONLY IF: >> 1) the child and parents are Christians >> 2) the parents belong to a branch of Christianity that does >> infant baptisms. >> >> Otherwise -- not normal. Hindus, Moslems, Taoists, >> Buddhists, and Confucians do not baptise at all. Most Jewish >> branches do not baptise. Baptists, Methodists, Disciples, >> and a fistful of other denominations insist on "adult" >> baptisms (with varying definitions of adult). > > My point is that fuzzy rules *such as* these are useful, not that > these specific rules are of universal applicability. In England, Many posters to this list/newsgroup aren't in England and/or don't deal with British research. > certainly until a hundred years ago, it was normal to be baptised as a > baby. Yes, there were plenty of religious groups that did not do so, > but in England at that time, it was not normal to be a member of one > of those religions. In another country, or if the family you're > researching is predominately of a minority religion, then a different > set of fuzzy rules will apply. Maybe instead you need a fuzzy rule > saying that a child is probably 12-14 for their Bar Mitzvah. The > point is that for any given culture (whether national, religious or > local) there are certain norms that, whilst not exclusively kept to, > are a useful guideline. But, up until now, I wasn't seeing any attention paid to exceptions to your fuzzy rule. And, not everyone wants to re-jigger their program. Worse, in some cases, families combine cultures, norms, religions ... few would want a program that forces them to use a different program or dataset for each branch of the family. More, I'm not sure you can call a rule with enough exceptions to fit a "rule", fuzzy or not, because eventually, fuzzy logic loses its logic. Cheryl