Computing with words. Principal concepts and ideas. (Q764861)

This book is in fact a printed revised Power Point presentation of a lecture given in USC in 2010. It presents and elaborates several key ideas of L.~A.~Zadeh from the last fifteen years, namely computing with words, restriction-based semantics, precisiated natural language, etc. The main aim is to solve problems formulated using sentences of natural language, e.g., ``Most Swedes are tall. Given this, what is the average height of Swedes?'' Natural language sentences are first translated into mathematical form. Propositions are understood as restrictions on the values of variables. Means for representing various types of propositions (possibilistic, probabilistic, combined) are elaborated. The author shows that using the formalism he introduced, a solution of the above problem leads to a certain variational problem, and the result is a restriction on the average height of Swedes. In the final part of the book, an exposition of key ideas is given in an accessible dialogical form. Although the form of an e-book would have been probably more logical, this book offers a good opportunity to recall important ideas of Prof.~Zadeh. It is not that easy to apply them directly, but they can be really inspiring in an effort to further develop computational intelligence methods.