PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC

Dr. Puja Dutta (PhD IIT Kharagpur)

Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering,
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore
 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC

What is a proposition?
 A proposition is the basic building block of logic.
It is defined as a declarative sentence that is either True or
False, but not both.
The Truth Value of a proposition is True(denoted as T) if it is
a true statement, and False(denoted as F) if it is a false
statement. For

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 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC

 Examples:
 Sun sets in the West and rises in the east.
 4+3 = 7
 30 is a prime number
All of the above sentences are propositions, where the first
two are Valid(True) and the third one is Invalid(False).

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 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC

 Examples:
 When did you wake up?
 Have dinner at the restaurant.
 y+5=7
The above sentences are not propositions as the first two do
not have a truth value, and the third one may be true or false.

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 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC
 To represent propositions, propositional variables are used.
 By Convention, these variables are represented by small
alphabets such as p, q, r, s.
 The area of logic which deals with propositions is called
propositional calculus or propositional logic.
 It also includes producing new propositions using existing ones.
 Propositions constructed using one or more propositions are
called compound propositions.
 The propositions are combined together using Logical
Connectives or Logical Operators. 5
Dr. P. Dutta
 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC
 TRUTH TABLE
 Negation
 Proposition (p): It’s sunny today
 Negation (p): It’s not sunny today

p p
T F
F T
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 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC
 TRUTH TABLE
 Conjunction (and)
 For any 2 propositions say p and q
p q pq
T T T
T F F
F T F

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 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC

 Disjunction (pq): p or q
 Exclusive Or : either p or q (both cannot be true)
 Biconditional or Double Implication: For any two
propositions p and q, the statement p if and only if q is
true

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 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC
 Given a sentence “You can purchase this book if you have Rs.
200 or Rs. 100 and a discount coupon.”
 Now, this is a bit complex to be understood at once.
 So we translate this into a logical expression that will make it
simple to understand.
 Let a, b, c, and d represent the sentences ‘You can purchase
this book’, ‘You have Rs. 200’, ‘You have Rs. 100’, and ‘You
have a discount coupon.’ respectively. Then the given sentence
can be translated to (b ∨ (c ∧ d) -> a, which simply means that
“if you either have Rs. 200 or Rs. 100, along with a discount
coupon, then you can purchase the book.”
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