GENERAL GROUND RULES
- The
exam will cover chapters 1-8 (pp. 19–223) of LPL.
- The exam
is on Friday, October 26, 2007.
- You must
bring a (purple) Standard Answer Sheet (“bubble-sheet”) and
#2 pencil. Do not use ink on the exam!
- Please
fill out your vital statistics (course name and number, your name, etc.)
on the bubble sheet before the exam. Include your section number
(AA, AB, etc.). If you need to look it up, be sure to do so. Fill in
the bubbles carefully so that your results get correctly credited to
you.
- You may
bring scratch paper, but no books or notes.
WHAT TO EXPECT ON THE EXAM
The format
will be multiple choice. On each question there will be only one correct
answer. On some questions, some answers may be partially correct;
but a partially correct answer will not be given partial credit. It is
never correct to fill in more than one “bubble” on the
answer sheet. You will receive zero credit for any answer on which more
than one bubble is filled in.
Topics to be covered are:
- Truth-tables:
You will need to know how to read a truth table, and to understand what
a truth table shows and how to evaluate a table you are presented with.
(You will not actually have to construct any tables, unless you need
to do so to help you answer other questions.)
- Tarski
Worlds: You will need to be able to determine the truth-value of
a given FOL sentence in a particular world. (You will be looking at
pictures of Tarski worlds.) Since you will not have the TW program running,
you will have to figure this out on your own, without the benefit of
playing the game with TW. If you have been relying on TW to tell you
whether an FOL sentence is true or false, you may need to practice this
to be sure you can do it on your own.
- Fitch
proofs: Since you will not have Fitch running, you will not be required
to construct any proofs. But you will have to recognize and explain
the steps in an incomplete Fitch proof you will be shown. You will need
to provide justifications (rule and line citations) if they are missing,
or provide the steps (if they are missing) based on rule and line citations
and on subsequent developments in the proof.
- Translation:
You will be given English sentences and be asked to select the correct
FOL translation, and vice versa. You will need to be aware of different
equivalent ways of translating from English to FOL, and vice versa.
Here are some practice problems
in translation.
- Equivalence:
You will need to be able to determine whether or not a pair of FOL sentences
you are presented with are equivalent. This will come up in a context
in which you are presented with a number of pairs of sentences and asked
to pick out the equivalent pairs. For help in recognizing equivalent
sentences, print out a copy of the file Some handy
truth-table equivalences. (You can’t bring it with you to the
exam, though!)
- Theory:
A number of questions will test your understanding of concepts such
as the following: valid argument, sound argument, inconsistent
set of sentences (e.g., inconsistent premises), atomic sentence,
literal, tautology, TT-contradiction, TT-possible, logical necessity (logical truth), TW-necessity,
logical consequence, tautological consequence, equivalence,
tautological equivalence, soundness of a deductive system
(such as system F),
completeness of a deductive system. Memorizing definitions will
not be adequate — you will need to understand the concepts and
how they are interrelated, and to identify instances of them. These
theory topics are very important — they will make up 40% of the
exam.
Now it’s
time to put your study to work. Take the practice
quiz on logical theory. If you find that you can't read all of the
logical symbols on the quiz, you may need to add a font to your computer.
To get the font you need, click here.
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