February 06, 2017 Monday
Bedtime Story
Boolean Algebraic Logic was a Useless Knowledge in 1854
George Boole was not simply content to put logic on a firm
mathematical footing.
He had intended to go further.
In fact, it is said that his ambitions were quiet grandiose.
He wanted to devise a form of algebraic logic that would model the
working of the human brain.
In 1847 he came up with a small pamphlet titled “Mathematical
Analysis of logic”.
For reason unknown to me, he was deeply dissatisfied with this
work (without anyone else publicly deriding or criticizing his work).
He was a man who set high standards for himself.
Seven years later in 1854, he came up with his second monograph
titled “An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the
Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities.”
This treatise is often referred to as Boole’s Laws of Thought.
In it he developed signs and symbols and basic operations to
compare different objects.
These symbols and their connectives used three basic operations of
AND, OR and NOT.
According to Boole, these three operations would be sufficient to
comparison of sets and perform most operations on them.
From these he developed such algebraic identities:
(X or Y) = (Y or X)
Not (not X) = X
Not (X and Y) = (not X) or (not Y) and so on.
He also developed a quaint binary system of nothing “0” and
universe “1”.
The word universe simply refers to whatever the discourse is going
on about.
This binary system would be capable of processing only two objects
such as “yes-no”, “truth-false”, “on-off” and”zero-one”.
In such a type of Boolean algebra, it would be possible to have
two truths to add up to one truth or
1 + 1 = 1
As you can see, such kind of algebra was theoretical and had no
application then and hence was largely forgotten.
It would lie in the book shelves of great libraries only to be rediscovered
in 1937 some 83 years later by another genius Claude Shannon at the MIT.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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