Foundations of Information Science

Deduction

Deduction is a kind of reasoning about classes that takes the form of a chain of premises and conclusions. Each conclusion in the chain automatically follows from its premises. These chains can be expressed and manipulated using the formal language of Boolean algebra.

One video this week.

Introduction to Boolean Algebra | Python

This video will discuss things we may discuss again in the lecture. Watch it to familiarize yourself with the terminology.

A bit more tightly focused discussion of deduction.

Berkeley, Edmund C. Boolean Algebra (the Technique for Manipulating AND, OR, NOT and Conditions). The Record 26 part II, no. 54 (1937): 373-414.

This article is by Edmund Berkeley, a pioneer of computer science and co-founder of the Association for Computing Machinery, which is still the primary scholarly association for computer scientists. But he wrote this article in 1937, before he became a computer scientist—because computers had yet to exist. At the time he was a mathematician working at the Prudential life insurance company, where he recognized the usefulness of Boolean algebra for modeling insurance data. He published this article in a professional journal for actuaries (people who compile and analyze statistics and use them to calculate insurance risks and premiums).

Berkeley uses some frightening-looking mathematical notation in parts of this article, but everything he discusses is actually quite simple. The most important parts are:

pages 373-374, where he gives a simple explanation of Boolean algebra,

pages 380-381, where he considers practical applications of Boolean algebra, and

pages 383 on, where he pays close attention to translation back and forth between Boolean algebra and English.

One to consider if you want to get deeper into the concept.

Evans, Eric. Crunching Knowledge. In Domain-Driven Design. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2004.

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