Celebrate the 200th Birthday of George Boole With Logic (i-programmer.info) 63
mikejuk writes: November 2nd 2015 is the bicentenary of George Boole, dubbed the forefather of modern information technology. To mark the event 55,000 school students globally will be learning about Boolean Logic. Free lesson plans, puzzles and worksheets have been made available in English, Irish and Mandarin and schools in over 30 countries have signed up. According to the George Boole 200 website set up by University College Cork (UCC), the Irish university where he was the first Professor of Mathematics in the mid-19th century, Boole is an unsung hero of the digital age who deserves to be recognized as the forefather of the Information Age. An hour-long documentary, The Genius of George Boole, will be released on November 2 and available to view online until November 16. Although Boole did briefly encounter Charles Babbage during his lifetime he wasn't responsible for bringing together binary arithmetic and what we now call Boolean logic. That achievement is down to Claude Shannon who recognised the relevance for engineering of Boole's symbolic logic. As a result of Shannon's work Boole's thinking became the practical foundation of digital circuit design and the theoretical grounding of the the digital age.
True or False (Score:2, Funny)
You need a whole class to explain Boolean Logic.
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When I learnt Boolean logic, it was called Boolean algebra. I think I can still remember most of the rules.
It is sad that most people cannot apply logic to solving problems. With all the facts at hand, too often irrational conclusions are arrived at. That is probably one of the reasons artificial intelligence is so difficult. We do not know how to model irrationality.
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When I learnt Boolean logic, it was called Boolean algebra. I think I can still remember most of the rules.
And when you've had too much logic, visit Congress, or any local establishment where politicians congregate. That's been a fully logic-free zone since at least the 19th century.
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You need a whole class to explain Boolean Logic.
Booleans? You either get them or you don't.
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There is only 1 type of rational person in the world: Those who "get" and can use Boolean logic. The rest are zeros.
Re:True or False (Score:4, Funny)
You need a whole class to explain Boolean Logic.
Not to be snobbish, but as for class I studied Bouillon Logic with Paul Bocuse in France.
Re:You need a whole class to explain Boolean Logic (Score:1)
Or... (Score:2)
Or, you know, don't. Both work. He's awesome both cases.
Ryan Fenton
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Obviously, learning formal logic did not help improve your writing skills.
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If the framework is fucked there is no guarantee anyone will understand anything. Your framework is intrinsically fucked, as it is indistinguishable from one created by someone with untreated mental issues. That's not to say you have untreated mental issues, just that you argue like someone with said issues.
I can tell you one thing... (Score:2, Informative)
...the UK Government, or, indeed, anyone in the UK, will NOT be celebrating this centenary. We don't recognise our scientists.
As an aside, 2015 is the 800th anniversary of the birth of Roger Bacon, a British Franciscan friar who was pivotal in the early development of the Scientific Method. It is arguable that he 'invented science' - certainly there are few others of whom this could be said. And yet the entire British (and World) academic community have completely ignored the passage of this date.
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Generally speaking, you just can't.
To explain who these people are and what they did takes forever. There are more than 365.25 of them, in any single field you choose. And geographers want famous geographers celebrated and historians want famous events and people celebrated, and sportsmen want famous sporting achievements celebrated.
Mathematics says you can't simply have a day-long recognition of all these people on any particular anniversary and, let's be honest, 800 years is both inaccurate enough to be
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There should be a day that isn't this day or that day or his day or her day.
International "it's just an ordinary fucking day" day.
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We don't recognise our scientists.
We have Darwin on our £10 bank note.
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Your logic is ambiguous.
"In what you're saying, do you mean OR or AND," and they reply "Yes."
Yes is a correct answer to that statement, just not the one you are expecting. If either OR or AND is what they mean then an affirmative can be correct. Perhaps the correct question to ask is: "In what you're saying, WHICH do you mean, OR or AND?
Then you have to explain it to them: "Cake OR iced cream or cake AND iced cream?" ... and they get confused and insulted.
Obviously the correct question to ask is "Would you like Cake OR Iced Cream?" as it logically gives the largest number of combinations: cake, iced cream, both, or neither. Whereas asking about Cake AND Iced Cream gives the option of both or
100000000 (Score:2)
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Is his birthday signed or unsigned?
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This would be for Donald Knuth. Just like $2.56 is one hexadecimal dollar, 256 years is one hexadecimal century.
Unsung hero? (Score:4, Informative)
In every academic institution I studied or worked, every professor of mathematics and electronics-related subject acknowledged Boole as the founder of digital logic.
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That was quite a stretch there, neighbor! Did you pull any muscles making that leap?
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He is missing. I managed to get my master of science in electrical engineering with a focus on digital electronics and his name didn't come up even once. Boolean algebra was used all the time and we knew it was named after somebody, but I actually thought it was some German named Bool.
Thinking about it, I didn't really have engineering/science history classes at all at the university. It was hard on studying what is needed to make something work. Who invented what was mostly skipped and what I know in this
taught grades 4-8 in 1960s new math (Score:2)
The school year started with a week of set theory with some Boolean algorithms. I never used the stuff in real life until college digital circuits.
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Wrong. Common core is NOT a teaching method, it's a specification for what kids ought to be able to do at various ages. The "how" is up to the teacher.
http://www.corestandards.org/a... [corestandards.org]
(Video) Not Available in your Country (Score:2)
I tried to view the video discussed in the article and the youtube link displays:
"This video contains content from RTE. It is not available in your country"
What country am I in if I can read Slashdot?
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That's a YouTube restriction. Unfortunately, it appears that the only sites that host this film have pirated it in Ireland, and put it up only on SCAMMER sites. I would hope there would be a downloadable version available as .mp4, so we can educate others about the magnificent achievements Boole made in understanding basic logic. I believe him to be as important to the evolution of computing as I do Alan Turing (where would Turing have been without Boole???).
Irish Television, RTE, could make the film ava
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Well, at least this illustrates how inadequate human procedure can be when it comes to the free flow of ideas...er....I mean intellectual property... If history (aforesaid "reality") resembles previous works involving language on media, then commercial and legal interests shall have license to subvert their transmission to the populous. This, of course, is for the common good, of the few. Those who may benefit must pursue it, and retain it, as if it were a commodity with strict rules of exchange.
Charles
Birthday (Score:2)
All men are mortal; Socrates is a man (Score:2)
Isn't that over-egging it a bit? It's been a long time, but isn't it really the same as ancient Greek syllogisms except with symbols instead of words?
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To bad it isn't an even number (Score:1)