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In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra.It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variables are the truth values true and false, usually denoted 1 and 0, whereas in elementary algebra the values of the variables are numbers.
All rules use the basic logic operators. A complete table of "logic operators" is shown by a truth table , giving definitions of all the possible (16) truth functions of 2 boolean variables ( p , q ):
Boolean function; Boolean-valued function; Boolean-valued model; Boolean satisfiability problem; Boolean differential calculus; Indicator function (also called the characteristic function, but that term is used in probability theory for a different concept) Espresso heuristic logic minimizer; Logical matrix; Logical value; Stone duality; Stone ...
In Boolean algebra, the consensus theorem or rule of consensus [1] is the identity: ¯ = ¯ The consensus or resolvent of the terms and ¯ is . It is the conjunction of all the unique literals of the terms, excluding the literal that appears unnegated in one term and negated in the other.
If one replaces '=' in R1 and R2 with the biconditional, the resulting rules hold in conventional logic. However, conventional logic relies mainly on the rule modus ponens; thus conventional logic is ponential. The equational-ponential dichotomy distills much of what distinguishes mathematical logic from the rest of mathematics.
In Boolean logic, the majority function (also called the median operator) is the Boolean function that evaluates to false when half or more arguments are false and true otherwise, i.e. the value of the function equals the value of the majority of the inputs.
In mathematics, a Boolean function is a function whose arguments and result assume values from a two-element set (usually {true, false}, {0,1} or {-1,1}). [1] [2] Alternative names are switching function, used especially in older computer science literature, [3] [4] and truth function (or logical function), used in logic.
The term "Boolean algebra" honors George Boole (1815–1864), a self-educated English mathematician. He introduced the algebraic system initially in a small pamphlet, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, published in 1847 in response to an ongoing public controversy between Augustus De Morgan and William Hamilton, and later as a more substantial book, The Laws of Thought, published in 1854.