Disjunctions, Conjunctions and More...

Its week three, and the material is accumulating quickly.  We are dealing with more complicated statements packed with more symbols, which can sometimes take a lengthily period to fully grasp.  But thats mathematical logic for you.

I personally found this current set of tutorial problems to be more challenging than the former.  There were a few questions that confused me initially, and of which I struggled to obtain the correct solution.  For example, one of the problems that I found difficult at first, was question 1 (f.) which asked to rewrite the following symbolically "No course has more than two prerequisites."

In relation to Assignment 1, I am about half way done.  There were a few questions here and there that I skipped and will definitely come back to later.  To write up the document, I'm using Texmaker.  I've been writing documents using Latex for some time, and over that time I've noticed that two Latex Editors I really enjoy are Texmaker and Vim with Latex suite.  Although, I often prefer Texmaker simply because its more user friendly.
  

The Beginning

Well,  already two weeks have elapsed in CSC165.  Being a second year student, the majority of material we have covered so has been review for me.  Mathematical logic was the subject of interest during the early portions of MAT137.  Thus, I'm actually fairly comfortable with the ubiquitous mathematical symbols such as ∀,∃, ⇔, ⇒ and as you know the list goes on and on and on... ad infinitum!  Ok I'm joking, but its large.

However, there was one thing that did confuse me from lectures.  I found difficulty correctly distinguishing the premise from the conclusion in an english statement.  And yes I said an "english" statement, not a "mathematical" one, although it could be translated into one. 

Now this isn't your tradition if…then statement.  For example, given a statement like  "I dance only when I'm drunk", and asked to determine the direction of the implication daunted me at first. However, through multiple in class examples, it eventually dawned on me.   In the above example, if your drunk it doesn't necessarily imply that you'll dance.  On the other hand, if you dance, then you must be drunk.  Thus, I dance => I'm drunk.  It really isn't so so bad after reading over the statement a few times. 

Anyways that concludes my thoughts on this weeks lecture, stay tuned for next weeks post.