We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from II - How to think logically
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, 1936When I tell people that I am a mathematician it is often not very long before they bring up the subject of how logical mathematics is. Sometimes they consider this a downside to the subject as it makes it so much harder. After all, with logic you have to be right whereas in other areas of life opinions matter more. And it's easy to have an opinion – even if you can't back it up with evidence.
Logic is in essence quite simple despite its reputation for difficulty. A small number of simple rules exist. We need only to apply these and reduce complicated statements with them to achieve success.
In the next few chapters we shall concentrate on the logic used by mathematicians in their day-to-day work rather than on deep conundrums and paradoxes or on technical material such as predicates, compound statements and so on. I will, however, explain truth tables, which are rarely used by mathematicians in their everyday work, as they do provide a lot of clarity for beginners.
Mathematics is the business of proving mathematical statements to be true or false. So, first let's look at statements.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
