singhals wrote: > 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. > OTOH many of us are. And for us the assumption in US-sourced S/W that every address belongs in something styled a city doesn't fit well. The solution to both problems is a rules engine (executable code) and a separate rule-set which is data. That allows you to adapt the function to suit the situation without changing the code. Looking back on the 20 years I spent in S/W I moved more and more to that as a design approach and it served very well. >> 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, 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. To illustrate the point I made above, indicate that the family was Baptist & an adult baptism rule-set could be applied. > 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. And you don't have to create exemptions because you can substitute a different set of rules. Been there, done that - but with different types of rules, not fuzzy logic. The important thing is to realise you'll need to do it before you design the system. My last client before I retired wouldn't be told & built themselves a maintenance nightmare. -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk