Are the theories of fuzziness and random ness competitive or complementary?
In SMFD, these and related issues are addressed with rigor, authority and insight by prominent contributors drawn, in the main, from probability theory, fuzzy set theory and data analysis com munities. First, a historical perspective. In substance, the issue is: are fuzziness and randomness distinct or coextensive facets of uncertainty? What I heard in those lectures inspired one of my first papers (1950) "An Extension of Wiener's Theory of Prediction," and led to my life-long interest in probability theory and its applications to information processing, decision analysis and control. "Statistical Modeling, Analysis and Management of Fuzzy Data," or SMFD for short, is an important contribution to a better understanding of a basic issue -an issue which has been controversial, and still is though to a lesser degree.