Revision Notes

Class XI Mathematics
Chapter 14 - Mathematical Reasoning

Basics:
There are two types of reasoning in mathematics as inductive and deductive
reasoning.

Logic:
 The study of logic is concerned with the way of reasoning.
 It gives us guidelines for judging the correctness of a particular argument in the
context of theorem proof.

Statement (Proposition):
 A mathematical statement is the fundamental unit of mathematical
reasoning.
 A sentence is called a mathematically acceptable statement if it is either true or
false but not both.
 A statement is an aggressive sentence that is either true or false, but not both
true and false which is known as valid statement. Otherwise, it is referred to as
an invalid statement.
 Small letters are used to indicate statements.
For example, p, q, r etc.
 Example:
1. A cow has four legs.
2. Chemistry is an experimental subject.
3. Maths is a fun subject.
 In mathematics, an ambiguous sentence is not admissible as a statement.
 The statement should be "mathematically acceptable."

Open and Compound Statement

 An open statement is a sentence with one or more variables that becomes a
statement when specified values are assigned to the variables.
 If two or more simple statements are combined by the use of words such as
‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if’, ‘then’, ‘if and only if ‘, then the resulting statement is
called a compound statement.
 Example:
1. There is something wrong with the bulb or with the wiring.
2. The sky is blue and the grass is green.

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 3. The component statements are
 p: The sky is blue.
 q: The grass is green.
 The connecting word is ‘and’.
 The compound statement with ‘And’ is true if all its component statements are
true.
 The component statement with ‘And’ is false if any of its component statements
is false (this includes the case that some of its component statements are false or
all of its component statements are false).
 A compound statement with an ‘Or’ is true when one component statement is
true or both the component statements are true.
 A compound statement with an ‘Or’ is false when both the component
statements are false
 In Or statement there are two types

1. Exclusive “Or”
Example:
Two lines intersect at a point or are parallel

2. Inclusive “Or”
Example:
To enter a country, you need a passport or a voter registration card.

Elementary Operation of Logic

 Conjunction
 A compound sentence formed by two simple sentences p and q using
connective ‘and’ is called the conjunction of p and q and it is represented
by p  q .

 Disjunction
 A compound sentence formed by two simple sentences p and q using
connectives ‘or’ is called the disjunction of p and q and it is represented by
pq.

 Negation
 A statement which is formed by changing the truth value of a given statement
by using the word like ‘no’, ‘not’ is called negation of given statement.
 If p is a statement, the negation of p is denoted by ~p .
 Example

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 1. p: Thane is a city.
2. The negation of this statement is
• It is not the case that Thane is a city
• It is false that Thane is a city.
• Thane is not a city.

 Conditional Sentence (Implication):

Two simple sentences p and q connected by the phase, if and then, is called
conditional sentence of p and q arid it is denoted by p  q .

 Biconditional Sentence (Bi-implication):

The two simple sentences connected by the phrase, ‘if and only if this is called
biconditional sentences.
It is denoted by the symbol ‘  ’.

 Table for Basic Logical Connections:

p q ~p pq pq pq pq

T T F T T T T
T F T F T F F
F T F F T T F
F F T F F T T

Truth Value and Truth Table:

 A statement can be either "true" or "false," which are represented by the
symbols T and F , respectively, and are termed truth values.
 A truth table is a list of all possible truth values for the resulting statements.
 Values are assigned to the variables in a compound statement.
 The number of rows is proportional to the number of statements.

Tautology and Contradiction:

 The compound statement which are true for every value of their components are
called tautology.
 The compound statements which are false for every value of their components
are called contradiction (fallacy).

Truth Table:

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 p q pq qp Tautology Contradiction
 p  q    q  p ~  p  q    q  p 
T T T T T F
T F F T T F
F T T F T F
F F T T T F

Quantifiers and Quantified Statements:

In this statements, there are two important symbols are used.
 The symbol ‘  ’ stands for ‘all values of ‘ and is called as universal
quantifier.
 The symbol ‘  ’ stands for ‘there exists’. The symbol  is known as existential
quantifier.

Example
p : For every prime number p , p is an irrational number.
It means that if S denotes the set of all prime numbers, then for all the
members’ p of the set S , p is an irrational number.

Quantified Statement:
 A quantifier transforms an open sentence into a statement, which is referred to
as a quantified statement.

Negation of a Quantified Statement:

 ~  x  A : p  x  is true   x  A such that  s.t  ~ p  x  is true
 ~  x  A p  x  is true   x  A : ~ p  x  is true

Implications:
• These are statements with words “if-then”, “only if” and “if and only if”.
• Example
o r : If a number is a multiple of 9 , then it is a multiple of 3 .
o Let p and q denote the statements
o p : a number is a multiple of 9 .
o q : a number is a multiple of 3 .
Then, if p then q is the same as the following:
o p implies q is denoted by p  q . The symbol  stands for implies.
o p is a sufficient condition for q .
o p only if q .

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 o q is a necessary condition for p .
o ~ q implies ~ p .

Contrapositive and converse:

 Contrapositive and converse are certain other statements which can be formed
from a given statement with “if-then”.
 ‘If and only if’, represented by the symbol ‘  ‘ means the following equivalent
forms for the given statements p and q.
o p if and only if q
o q if and only if p
o p is necessary and sufficient condition for q and vice-versa
o pq

 Example
o When the physical environment shifts, the biological environment shifts as
well.
o The converse of this statement is: If the biological environment does not
change, then neither does the physical environment.

Validating Statements:
There are various general rules to check whether a statement is true or not.

 Rule 1:
If p and q are mathematical statements, then in order to show that the statement
“ p and q ” is true, the following steps are followed.
o Step-1- Show that the statement p is true.
o Step-2 - Show that the statement q is true.

 Rule 2:
• Statements with “Or”.
• If p and q are mathematical statements, then in order to show that the statement
“ p or q ” is true, one must consider the following.
o Case 1 - By assuming that p is false, show that q must be true.
o Case 2 - By assuming that q is false, show that p must be true.

 Rule 3:
• Statements with “If-then”.

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 • In order to prove the statement “if p then q ” we need to show that any one of
the following case is true.
o Case 1- By assuming that p is true, prove that q must be true.(Direct
method)
o Case 2- By assuming that q is false, prove that p must be
false.(Contrapositive method)

 Rule 4:
• Statements with “if and only if ”
• In order to prove the statement “ p if and only if q ”, we need to show.
• If p is true, then q is true and If q is true, then p is true

 By Contradiction
• To check whether a statement p is true, we assume that p is not true that is
~ p is true.
• Then, we arrive at some result which contradicts our assumption. Therefore,
we conclude that p is true.
• The method involves giving an example of a situation where the statement is
not valid.
• Such an example is called a counter example.

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