Hi Alaric and others, Your questions are very good. I put Karnaugh maps in the book mainly because of my own bias from previous EE studies. In practice I actually skip that chapter with my students to save time. However, Karnaugh maps are a nice visual alternative to using algebra to simplify the Boolean equations. For students or beginners these methods help them explore many programming alternatives and emphasize some important lessons including, - there are multiple ways to write the same program - logic has some rules and general forms - to prepare for more advanced techniques and logic I would expect that a controls engineer would rarely -write- a Boolean equation. But, it doesn't mean they are not using them intuitively. Hugh
