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Mathematical Logic: Exercises and Solutions

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Problem Books in Mathematics

Series Editor
Peter Winkler
Department of Mathematics
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH
USA
More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/714
Laszlo Csirmaz Zalán Gyenis
•

Mathematical Logic
Exercises and Solutions

123
Laszlo Csirmaz Zalán Gyenis
Institute of Information Institute of Philosophy
Theory and Automation Jagiellonian University
Prague, Czech Republic Kraków, Poland

ISSN 0941-3502 ISSN 2197-8506 (electronic)

Problem Books in Mathematics
ISBN 978-3-030-79009-7 ISBN 978-3-030-79010-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79010-3

Mathematics Subject Classification: 03B05, 03B10, 03C10, 03C20, 03C62

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PREFACE

Delivering a Mathematical Logic course is always a challenge. Students enroll the course
expecting to learn what “logical thinking” is and what the infallible rules of mathematical and
rational thinking are. Instead, they get boring stuff like Zorn’s lemma, torsion-free divisible
Abelian groups, or dense linear ordering. They probably have heard of the infamous incom-
pleteness theorem, and are eager to know how it destroys mathematics and rational thinking in
general. Instead, they get the technicalities of Gödel’s theorems and a page-long list of conditions
under which they apply. The Mathematical Logic course covers a large and diverse segment of
mathematics, and a significant part comes in the form of problem-solving. The weekly assignments
play another important role: a crucial part of learning mathematics is gaining intuition about how
the various concepts operate and interact, which, much like learning to drive a car, cannot be
done without hands-on experience, and trial and error.
Problems in this volume have been collected over more than 30 years of teaching under-
graduate students Mathematical Logic at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. The problems
come in great variety: routine applications of a newly introduced technique, checking whether
the conditions of a particular theorem are really necessary, extending or finding the limitations of
various methods, to amusing puzzles and interesting applications of established results. They
range from easy questions and riddles to proving hard theorems when all the necessary ingre-
dients are—hopefully—available.
Several of the problems are part of the “mathematical folklore”: well-known ones often used in
teaching that everyone changes or twists slightly to fit their taste and the problem to illustrate.
They are like good jokes or anecdotes that one keeps telling to new guests at a dinner party,
although no one is sure exactly where they have come from. Others are extensions, details, or
crucial points of the often hard and ingenious proofs of major theorems. Still others are based on
solutions submitted by our students where an unexpected, clever method was used, or where the
proposed solution had an interesting flaw or omission. And, some of the problems originated
from intriguing questions from our students.
Chapters 1–4 contain problems from supporting fields: set-theoretical constructions, inter-
esting applications in (perfect information) games, basic (and not so basic) results in formal
languages, and recursion theory. Mathematical Logic proper is covered in Chapters 5–11 with
problems in propositional and multi-valued logic, compactness and derivation; basic properties
of first-order logic, derivation, compactness and completeness, elementary equivalence, and the
ultraproduct technique. Chapter 10 covers arithmetics and incompleteness, and Chapter 11
touches on two advanced topics: the insufficiency of the Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé game, and the
zero-one law of random (universal) graphs.
The book concludes with solutions to all of the problems. We strongly encourage the reader to
try to solve the problems before reading the solution included. Someone pointed out that there is
a difference between doing push-ups and watching someone doing them (however fortunate it

v
vi PREFACE

would be if it was otherwise!), which also seems to apply to mental exercise. The problems are
organized such that ideas and techniques from previous ones can often be used to solve the next
problem, so looking at the problems and their solutions leading up to the current one can be a
good way of getting some inspiration.
One of the first homework problems in the Mathematical Logic course is a famous sorosites
created by Lewis Carroll, so let us start our collection with it.

THE PIGS AND BALLOONS PUZZLE

The following facts are known:

(1) All, who neither dance on tight ropes nor eat penny-buns, are old.
(2) Pigs, that are liable to giddiness, are treated with respect.
(3) A wise balloonist takes an umbrella with him.
(4) No one ought to lunch in public who looks ridiculous and eats penny-buns.
(5) Young creatures, who go up in balloons, are liable to giddiness.
(6) Fat creatures, who look ridiculous, may lunch in public, provided that they do not dance on
tight ropes.
(7) No wise creatures dance on tight ropes, if liable to giddiness.
(8) A pig looks ridiculous, carrying an umbrella.
(9) All who do not dance on tight ropes, and who are treated with respect are fat.
Show that no wise young pigs go up in balloons.

Acknowledgements The work of the first author for compiling and preparing the material has
been funded by the GACR grant number 19-04579S. The second author wishes to acknowledge
the project no. 2019/34/E/HS1/00044 financed by the National Science Centre, Poland.

Prague, Czech Republic Laszlo Csirmaz

Kraków, Poland Zalán Gyenis
CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V

1 Special Set Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Basic Constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Counterexamples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Set Systems of Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 Ultrafilters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Games and Voting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.1 Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Voting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3 Formal Languages and Automata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.1 Regular Languages and Automata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2 When the Context Does not Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4 Recursion Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.1 Primitive Recursive Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2 Recursive Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.3 Partial Recursive Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.4 Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.5 Universal Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.6 Decidability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.7 Recursive Orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5 Propositional Calculus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.1 Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.2 Derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.3 Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

6 First-Order Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.1 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.2 Expressing Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.3 Models and Cardinalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
6.4 Ordered Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.5 Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

vii
viii CONTENTS

7 Fundamental Theorems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.1 First-Order Derivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.2 Compactness and Other Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

8 Elementary Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
8.1 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
8.2 Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
8.3 Quantifier Elimination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
8.4 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

9 Ultraproducts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
9.1 What Ultraproducts Look Like . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
9.2 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
9.3 Advanced Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9.4 Axiomatizability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

10 Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
10.1 Robinson’s Axiom System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
10.2 Undecidability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
10.3 Derivability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
10.4 Peano’s Axiom System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
10.5 Arithmetical Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

11 Selected Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

11.1 Independent Unary Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
11.2 Universal Graphs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
11.3 Universal Tournaments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
11.4 Zero-One Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

12 Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
12.1 Special Set Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
12.2 Games and Voting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
12.3 Formal Languages and Automata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
12.4 Recursion Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
12.5 Propositional Calculus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
12.6 First-Order Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
12.7 Fundamental Theorems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
12.8 Elementary Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
12.9 Ultraproducts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
12.10 Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
12.11 Selected Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

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