PROPOSITIONS

PROOF - what makes up a correct mathematical argument.

THEOREM - once we prove a mathematical statement is true.

Propositions are tool for constructing correct mathematical arguments (the basic building blocks
of logic).

The conventional letters used for propositional variables are p, q, r, s, ...

Truth value – T
False value – F

ATOMIC PROPOSITIONS - propositions that cannot be expressed in terms of simpler

propositions.
The area of logic that deals with propositions is called the propositional calculus or
propositional logic.
It was first developed systematically by the Greek philosopher Aristotle more than 2300 years
ago.

NEGATION - NOT
The proposition ¬p is read “not p.”
The truth value of the negation of p, ¬p, is the opposite of the truth value of p.

CONJUCTION - AND
The conjunction of p and q, denoted by p ∧ q, is the proposition “p and q.”
The conjunction p ∧ q is true when both p and q are true and is false otherwise.
In logic the word “but” sometimes is used instead of “and” in a conjunction.
DISJUNCTION – OR
The disjunction of p and q, denoted by p ∨ q, is the proposition “p or q”
The disjunction p ∨ q is false when both p and q are false and is true otherwise.

EXCLUSIVE OR
The exclusive or of p and q, denoted by p ⊕ q (or p XOR q), is the proposition that is true when
exactly one of p and q is true and is false otherwise.

CONDITIONAL STATEMENTS – IF, THEN

The conditional statement p → q is the proposition “if p, then q.”
The conditional statement p → q is false when p is true and q is false, and true otherwise.
In the conditional statement p → q, p is called the hypothesis (or antecedent or premise) and q is
called the conclusion (or consequence).
The statement p → q is called a conditional statement because p → q asserts that q is true on
the condition that p holds.
A conditional statement is also called an implication.
The statement p → q is true when both p and q are true and when p is false (no matter what
truth value q has).

CONVERSE, CONTRAPOSITIVE AND INVERSE

The proposition q → p is called the converse of p → q.
The contrapositive of p → q is the proposition ¬q → ¬p.
The proposition ¬p → ¬q is called the inverse of p → q.

When two compound propositions always have the same truth values, regardless of the truth
values of its propositional variables, we call them equivalent.
BICONDITIONALS – IF AND ONLY IF
The biconditional statement p ↔ q is the proposition “p if and only if q”
The biconditional statement p ↔ q is true when p and q have the same truth values, and is
false otherwise.
Biconditional statements are also called bi-implications.
The statement p ↔ q is true when both the conditional statements p → q and q → p are true
and is false otherwise.
That is why we use the words “if and only if” to express this logical connective and why it is
symbolically written by combining the symbols → and ←.

There are some other common ways to express p↔q:

“p is necessary and sufficient for q”
“if p then q, and conversely”
“p iff q”
“p exactly when q”

PRECEDENCE OF LOGICAL OPERATIONS

It is generally the case that unary operators that involve only one object precede binary
operators.
Another general rule of precedence is that the conjunction operator takes precedence over the
disjunction operator.
Finally, it is an accepted rule that the conditional and biconditional operators, → and ↔, have
lower precedence than the conjunction and disjunction operators, ∧ and ∨.

LOGICAL EQUIVALENCES
The compound propositions p and q are called logically equivalent if p ↔ q is a tautology.
The notation p ≡ q denotes that p and q are logically equivalent.
Compound propositions that have the same truth values in all possible cases are called logically
equivalent.
PREDICATES

The statement “x is greater than 3” has two parts.

The first part, the variable x, is the subject of the statement.
The second part → the predicate, “is greater than 3” → refers to a property that the subject of
the statement can have.
We can denote the statement “x is greater than 3” by P(x), where P denotes the predicate “is
greater than 3” and x is the variable.
The statement P(x) is also said to be the value of the propositional function P at x.

PRECONDITIONS AND POSTCONDITIONS

Predicates are also used to establish the correctness of computer programs, that is, to show that
computer programs always produce the desired output when given valid input.
The statements that describe valid input are known as preconditions and the conditions that the
output should satisfy when the program has run are known as postconditions.

QUANTIFIERS
When the variables in a propositional function are assigned values, the resulting statement
becomes a proposition with a certain truth value.
However, there is another important way, called quantification, to create a proposition from a
propositional function.
Quantification expresses the extent to which a predicate is true over a range of elements.
In English, the words all, some, many, none, and few are used in quantifications.

We will focus on two types of quantification here:

universal quantification - which tells us that a predicate is true for every element under
consideration,
existential quantification - which tells us that there is one or more element under consideration
for which the predicate is true.
UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIER - ∀xP(x)
The universal quantification of P(x) is the statement “P(x) for all values of x in the domain.”
An element for which P(x) is false is called a counterexample to ∀xP(x).

EXISTENTIAL QUANTIFIER - ∃xP(x)

The existential quantification of P(x) is the proposition “There exists an element x in the domain
such that P(x).”

QUANTIFIERS OVER DOMAINS

When the domain of a quantifier is finite, that is, when all its elements can be listed, quantified
statements can be expressed using propositional logic.
When the elements of the domain are x1, x2, ..., xn, where n is a positive integer, the universal
quantification ∀xP(x) is the same as the conjunction P(x1 ) ∧ P(x2) ∧ ⋯ ∧ P(xn), because this
conjunction is true if and only if P(x1), P(x2), ... , P(xn) are all true.

QUANTIFIER OPERATIONS
 Logical equations
 Negation
 DeMorgan's law
PROOFS

ARGUMENTS - a sequence of propositions.

All but the final proposition in the argument are called premises and the final proposition is
called the conclusion.
An argument is valid if the truth of all its premises implies that the conclusion is true.

An argument form in propositional logic is a sequence of compound propositions involving

propositional variables.
An argument form is valid if no matter which particular propositions are substituted for the
propositional variables in its premises, the conclusion is true if the premises are all true.

TERMINOLOGY

THEOREM is a statement that can be shown to be true.

In mathematical writing, the term theorem is usually reserved for a statement that is considered
at least somewhat important.
Less important theorems sometimes are called propositions.

We demonstrate that a theorem is true with a proof.

A proof is a valid argument that establishes the truth of a theorem.

The statements used in a proof can include axioms (or postulates), which are statements we
assume to be true.
Axioms may be stated using primitive terms that do not require definition, but all other terms
used in theorems and their proofs must be defined.

A less important theorem that is helpful in the proof of other results is called a lemma.
COROLLARY is a theorem that can be established directly from a theorem that has been
proved.
CONJECTURE is a statement that is being proposed to be a true statement, usually on the basis
of some partial evidence, a heuristic argument, or the intuition of an expert.

DIRECT PROOF
DIRECT PROOF of a conditional statement p → q is constructed when the first step is the
assumption that p is true; subsequent steps are constructed using rules of inference, with the final
step showing that q must also be true.

A direct proof shows that a conditional statement p → q is true by showing that if p is true,
then q must also be true, so that the combination p true and q false never occurs.
In a direct proof, we assume that p is true and use axioms, definitions, and previously proven
theorems, together with rules of inference, to show that q must also be true.

PROOF BY CONTRAPOSITION
Direct proofs lead from the premises of a theorem to the conclusion.
They begin with the premises, continue with a sequence of deductions, and end with the
conclusion.
However, we will see that attempts at direct proofs often reach dead ends.
We need other methods of proving theorems of the form ∀x(P(x) → Q(x)).
Proofs of theorems of this type that are not direct proofs, that is, that do not start with the
premises and end with the conclusion, are called indirect proofs.
An extremely useful type of indirect proof is known as proof by contraposition.
VACUOUS AND TRIVIAL PROOFS
We can quickly prove that a conditional statement p → q is true when we know that p is false,
because p → q must be true when p is false.
Consequently, if we can show that p is false, then we have a proof, called a vacuous proof, of
the conditional statement p → q.
Vacuous proofs are often used to establish special cases of theorems that state that a conditional
statement is true for all positive integers [i.e., a theorem of the kind ∀nP(n), where P(n) is a
propositional function].

PROOF BY CONTRADICTION
Because the statement r ∧ ¬r is a contradiction whenever r is a proposition, we can prove that p
is true if we can show that ¬p → (r ∧ ¬r) is true for some proposition r.
Proofs of this type are called proofs by contradiction.
Because a proof by contradiction does not prove a result directly, it is another type of indirect
proof.

EXHAUSTIVE PROOF
Some theorems can be proved by examining a relatively small number of examples.
Such proofs are called exhaustive proofs, or proofs by exhaustion because these proofs
proceed by exhausting all possibilities.
An exhaustive proof is a special type of proof by cases where each case involves checking a
single example.

PROOF BY CASES
A proof by cases must cover all possible cases that arise in a theorem.
EXISTENCE PROOF
Many theorems are assertions that objects of a particular type exist.
A theorem of this type is a proposition of the form ∃xP(x), where P is a predicate.
A proof of a proposition of the form ∃xP(x) is called an existence proof.

THE FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM