This book has a rather strange history. It began in Spring 1989, thirteen years after our Systems Science Department at SUNY -Binghamton was established, when I was asked by a group of students in our doctoral program to have a meeting with them. The spokesman of the group, Cliff Joslyn, opened our meeting by stating its purpose. I can closely paraphrase what he said: "We called this meeting to discuss with you, as Chairman of the Department, a fundamental problem with our systems science curriculum. In general, we consider it a good curriculum: we learn a lot of concepts, principles, and...

Providing the first comprehensive treatment of the subject, this groundbreaking work is solidly founded on a decade of concentrated research, some of which is published here for the first time, as well as practical, ''hands on'' classroom experience. The clarity of presentation and abundance of examples and exercises make it suitable as a graduate level text in mathematics, decision making, artificial intelligence, and engineering courses.

This book has a rather strange history. It began in spring 1989, thirteen years after our Systems Science Department at SUNY-Binghamton was established, when I was asked by a group of students in our doctoral program to have a meeting with them. The spokesman of the group, Cliff Joslyn, opened our meeting by stating its purpose. I can closely paraphrase what he said: "We called this meeting to discuss with you, as Chairman of the Department, a fundamental problem with our systems science curriculum. In general, we consider it a good curriculum: we learn a lot of concepts, principles, and...

One criterion for classifying books is whether they are written for a single pur- pose or for multiple purposes. This book belongs to the category of multipurpose books, but one of its roles is predominant-it is primarily a textbook. As such, it can be used for a variety ofcourses at the first-year graduate or upper-division undergraduate level. A common characteristic of these courses is that they cover fundamental systems concepts, major categories of systems problems, and some selected methods for dealing with these problems at a rather general level. A unique feature of the book is that...

Information is precious. It reduces our uncertainty in making decisions. Knowledge about the outcome of an uncertain event gives the possessor an advantage. It changes the course of lives, nations, and history itself. Information is the food of Maxwell's demon. His power comes from know- ing which particles are hot and which particles are cold. His existence was paradoxical to classical physics and only the realization that information too was a source of power led to his taming. Information has recently become a commodity, traded and sold like or- ange juice or hog bellies. Colleges give...

In 1992 we published a book entitled Fuzzy Measure Theory (Plenum Press, New York), in which the term ''fuzzy measure'' was used for set functions obtained by replacing the additivity requirement of classical measures with weaker requirements of monotonicity with respect to set inclusion and con- nuity. That is, the book dealt with nonnegative set functions that were mo- tone, vanished at the empty set, and possessed appropriate continuity properties when defined on infinite sets. It seems that Fuzzy Measure Theory was the only book available on the market at that time devoted to this...

This volume presents a collection of revised refereed papers selected from the presentations at the Fourth International Workshop on Computer Aided Systems Theory - CAST '94, held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in May 1994.
The 31 full papers included in the book were chosen from originally 82 submissions and reflect the state of the art in the area of computer aided systems theory. The volume is divided into sections on foundations, methods, and tools and environments.

Providing the first comprehensive treatment of the subject, this groundbreaking work is solidly founded on a decade of concentrated research, some of which is published here for the first time, as well as practical, ''hands on'' classroom experience. The clarity of presentation and abundance of examples and exercises make it suitable as a graduate level text in mathematics, decision making, artificial intelligence, and engineering courses.

In 1992 we published a book entitled Fuzzy Measure Theory (Plenum Press, New York), in which the term ''fuzzy measure'' was used for set functions obtained by replacing the additivity requirement of classical measures with weaker requirements of monotonicity with respect to set inclusion and con- nuity. That is, the book dealt with nonnegative set functions that were mo- tone, vanished at the empty set, and possessed appropriate continuity properties when defined on infinite sets. It seems that Fuzzy Measure Theory was the only book available on the market at that time devoted to this...

One criterion for classifying books is whether they are written for a single pur- pose or for multiple purposes. This book belongs to the category of multipurpose books, but one of its roles is predominant-it is primarily a textbook. As such, it can be used for a variety ofcourses at the first-year graduate or upper-division undergraduate level. A common characteristic of these courses is that they cover fundamental systems concepts, major categories of systems problems, and some selected methods for dealing with these problems at a rather general level. A unique feature of the book is that...