Are you Fuzzy?

Can you imagine a three sided die instead of a six sided? Think about that...
Meanwhile, we - human beings - often like to divide the world in opposites. Things seem to be either true or untrue.


Examples:

• Friend or Foe?
• Black or White?
• Number or Word?
• Head or Tail?

But most of the times our world can't be split up like that.


Coins: Heads or Tails
Even an action like throwing a coin with two possible outcomes, Head or Tail, reaches its limits when you realize that there's - no matter how small it is - a change that the coin might land on its edge.
So we can view at things by



Thinking on the edge

Now we may realize that there three outcomes in tossing a coin:

Heads, Tails & Undecided


In mathematics this creates a new world of Logic, where the outcome of a logical process no longer consists of two possibilities, but three:
- Head => 1 = True
- Tail => 0 = Untrue
- Edge => 1/2 = Undecided


This idea introduces us in a special part of the mathematical world of symbolic logic called:
Three-valued-logic


This three valued logic has other truth tables than the traditional two valued system.





In The Netherlands we've got the words "God be with us" on the edge of our Euro-coins.
What makes three valued logic interesting is that there can be no 'true' or 'untrue', no 'head' or 'tails' of a coin unless it has a certain 'thickness'.
It's just like in our lives, by God we're able to distinguish between good and bad. He makes us think, he's so to say 'our edge'.





Dices
As the thickness of our coin increases, the probability of landing on its edge increases also and the coin looks more like a die.
If you still have doubts about wetter we are making sense here instead of theoretical nonsense, keep reading.
Its perhaps easy to design dices that consist of 4,6,8,12, 20 or even 30 sides.
They are called


Polyhedral Dice



But lets stretch the limits now....
Can you design a three sided die?
Well here it is:



So it turns out that a three sided die is a cylinder, in fact a 'thick coin' you could say.


The question on how to design a three-sided fair die or coin is a complicated mathematical matter, that basic comes down to the fact that the 'diameter' should be equal tot the 'thickness' of the coin.


A three-sided fair coin is defined to be a cylinder which, when flipped like a coin, has an equal probability of landing on heads, tails or the edge


Now let's take it one step further.


Sometimes things are not absolutely true, but more relatively. Fore example, when you ask wetter something is heavy or light or when something is hot or cold.
Here is where


Fuzzy Logic
comes in.


There's nothing really fuzzy about Fuzzy Logic, it's a more sophisticated way of valuing 'how much' something is true.
Fuzzy Logic is for example used in a


Fuzzy thermostat.






The conventional thermostat works with an on-off switch, the fuzzy thermostat in- or decreases the speed of the fan bit by bit and uses feedback.


But what are you? Is everything true or untrue in your life and do you respond therefore in a two- or maybe "three valued way" (including undecided) to your friends?


Or are you 'fuzzy enough' to try things gradually in your life and do you learn from feedback?

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