February 07, 2017 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
De Morgan's Contribution to Propositional Logic and Boolean Algebra
3. Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871)
De Morgan, the third British gentleman and a coeval of both the
Georges happened to land on this planet in the city of Madurai of the Madras
Presidency of India.
De Morgan lost on of his eyes very soon after his birth.
Perhaps that scared his parents and very soon as Augustus was
seven months old, his parents shifted back to England.
Augustus De Morgan was a very interesting character for several
reasons.
One being that not only was he born in India but so did his father
and grandfather and hence he never considered himself English.
Rather he fancied himself as a Briton “unattached”.
The other reason being that not only was De Morgan a brilliant
mathematician showing his talents at the age of 14, but was also an incredibly
witty writer, controversialist, debater and a correspondent.
Remember mon ami, wit is a mark of great intelligence in men and
hence a trait widely sought after by the opposite sex in their mating partner.
De Morgan for his work on mathematical logic by two great
mathematicians and logicians, one being George Boole himself and the other
being William Rowan Hamilton of the quaternion fame (i2 = j2 = k2 = ijk = -1).
De Morgan is famous (among mathematicians and logicians) for his
laws that go by the name of De Morgan’s Laws.
They are rules of transformation involving sets.
They deal with conjunction or disjunction of sets.
Conjunction in logic and mathematics is equivalent to “and”
operator.
Its equivalent in set theory is intersection.
Disjunction in logic and mathematics is equivalent to “or”
operator.
Its equivalent in set theory is union.
De Morgan’s Laws go as follows:
Consider a set A and a set B,
A U
A (inverse U)
In English, these two equations can be translated as follows:
The complement of the union of two sets is the same as the
intersection of their complements.
The complement of the intersection of the two sets is the same as
the union of their complements.
Let me illustrate this with a simple Venn diagram.
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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