RE: How do you teach fundamental logic to someone that doesn't grok it?

From: John Hall (johnhall@evergo.net)
Date: Thu May 03 2001 - 16:41:04 PDT


It is the first one that shocks me. A => B, A, means B

As to the second, you can conclude nothing. Specifically, you have no
information about A.
A => B, B, no extra conclusions can be drawn.

I have run into people that confused A => B with A <=> B. I think is
relatively common, if you teach it to a normal high school class.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Bone [mailto:jbone@jump.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 4:04 PM
To: John Hall
Cc: FoRK
Subject: Re: How do you teach fundamental logic to someone that doesn't
grok it?

Not sure what you're getting at, John. In the second case, the only
things you can conclude are trivial: B, A OR B, etc... so what's
your point? Is it just that: the only things you can conclude in the
second case are trivial statements from the givens? Why is that hard
to understand? I guess I've never run into a person who can get the
first example, but falls into the trap on the second. I'm sure they
exist, though; nothing about people's reasoning skills or lack
thereof shocks me anymore.

;-)

jb



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