November 2025
Beginner
416 pages
8h 6m
English
Content preview from Logic For Dummies, 2nd Edition
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 19
Planting a Quantity of Truth Trees
IN THIS CHAPTER
Extending the truth tree method to QL statements
Pondering non-terminating truth trees
In Chapter 8, I show you how to use truth trees in sentential logic (SL) for a variety of different purposes. In this chapter, you see how you can extend this method to quantification logic (QL). As in SL, truth trees in QL are generally simpler than proofs. You don’t need to have a brainstorm to make them work — you just plug and chug.
So, in this chapter, I show you how to make the most of the truth tree method for solving problems in QL. However, I warn you right up front that (unfortunately) QL truth trees have limitations. When you get comfortable with using truth trees in QL, I reveal an important drawback: the non-terminating tree.
Applying Your Truth Tree Knowledge to QL
Everything you know about building truth trees in SL also applies to QL trees. In this section, I give you a QL example to show you how it’s done. If at any time you come across something unfamiliar and get stuck, flip to Chapter 8 for a refresher.
Using the decomposition rules from SL
Suppose you want to test whether the following set of three statements is consistent:
As with truth trees in SL, the first step in deciding whether statements are consistent ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.