Panel Title: 50 Years Later: Challenges to Worldwide Acceptance of Fuzzy Sets and Systems
Panel organizer and Moderator: Jerry M. Mendel
Panelists: Vladik Kreinovich, Terry Rickard, William Melek, Marek Reformat, Boris Kovalerchuk
Abstract: 2015 is the 50th anniversary of Lotfi Zadeh's seminal paper on fuzzy sets. Although fuzzy sets and systems seems well and thriving within the fuzzy community they are still met with great hostility outside of this community, This panel will address why this is so and what can be done to overcome it. It will focus on four to five questions about this, such as the two just given These questions will be prepared jointly by the panelists ahead of time. One panelist will be assigned to present a five-minute reply to a question, after which the other panelists will share their thoughts about the question, after which the audience will be encouraged to participate.
Panel Title: How to handle a double-edged sword of context in soft computing?
Panel organizer and Moderator: Boris Kovalerchuk
Panelists: TBA
Abstract: Soft computing approaches enable us to take into account subtle details about the problem. While this is beneficial, it makes everything very specific and difficult to apply to other problems. On the other hand, when we have constraints, we often ignore them because we do not know how to handle them. As a result we often see “context-free” soft computing methods developed. It is a right way to work? On the other hand too much context makes the method too specific without applications outside of the specific task. We often see a situation when a method have been developed and then people try to find a task for it or to put an existing task to the Procrustean bed of the method that as designed for a different context. In other words: “What is first: a task or a method?” These problems demonstrate a double-edged sword of context. Today the robustness of the results relative to deficiencies of handling context is rarely addressed. The goal of this panel is to attract attention to the important issue of context in computing, to exchange ideas, and to encourage research in this area.