Nancy Corbett wrote:
> One time someone told me to study Logic...but not just any logic, some
> specific type of logic. I can no longer remember what it's called. Maybe
> you know. I can see how it would help me to cover all my bases when
> writing programs. It involves mapping out truth tables for problems like:
Boolean logic. You *CANNOT* write anything that involves an 'if' or a
'while' or any other logic evaluation test without it.
Here's the basic operators for boolean logic:
AND
(Is the following statement true? : It is raining AND the roof is wet)
Raining Roof Statement-as-a-whole
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F F
OR
It is raining OR the roof is wet
Raining Roof Statement-as-a-whole
T T T
T F T
F T T
F F F
IF-THEN (also called implies, not often used in programming)
IF it is raining THEN the roof is wet
Raining Roof Statement-as-a-whole
T T T
T F F
F T T (or at least, you can't prove it to be false)
F F T (ditto)
XOR (exclusive or - one or the other but not both)
It is raining XOR the roof is wet
Raining Roof Statement-as-a-whole
T T F
T F T
F T T
F F F
NOT
It is NOT raining
Raining Statement-as-a-whole
T F
F T
To solve a problem, you reduce each factoid to a true/false statement,
such as 'Mr Smith is a knight'.
So...
IF Smith-knight THEN Smith-tells-truth.
IF Smith-tells-truth THEN Mrs-Smith-tells-lies
IF Mrs-Smith-tells-lies THEN Mr-Smith-is-not-a-knight
..... and so on. Until you hit false statements, or
self-contradictions like that one.
This particular puzzle can also be solved by either propositional or
predicate calculus, which are also on my recommended learn-list. :)
Jenn V.
--
"Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture
you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Jenn Vesperman http://www.simegen.com/~jenn/
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