Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In logic, a quantifier is an operator that specifies how many individuals in the domain of discourse satisfy an open formula.For instance, the universal quantifier in the first order formula () expresses that everything in the domain satisfies the property denoted by .
This language uses the same operators as tuple calculus, the logical connectives ∧ (and), ∨ (or) and ¬ (not). The existential quantifier (∃) and the universal quantifier (∀) can be used to bind the variables. Its computational expressiveness is equivalent to that of relational algebra. [2]
First-order logic—also called predicate logic, predicate calculus, quantificational logic—is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables over non-logical objects, and allows the use of sentences that contain variables.
Since the calculus is a query language for relational databases we first have to define a relational database. The basic relational building block is the domain (somewhat similar, but not equal to, a data type). A tuple is a finite sequence of attributes, which are ordered pairs of domains and values. A relation is a set of (compatible) tuples ...
A (existential second-order) formula is one additionally having some existential quantifiers over second order variables, i.e. …, where is a first-order formula. The fragment of second-order logic consisting only of existential second-order formulas is called existential second-order logic and abbreviated as ESO, as Σ 1 1 {\displaystyle ...
In symbolic logic, the universal quantifier symbol (a turned "A" in a sans-serif font, Unicode U+2200) is used to indicate universal quantification. It was first used in this way by Gerhard Gentzen in 1935, by analogy with Giuseppe Peano's (turned E) notation for existential quantification and the later use of Peano's notation by Bertrand Russell.
The absence of polyadic relation symbols severely restricts what can be expressed in the monadic predicate calculus. It is so weak that, unlike the full predicate calculus, it is decidable—there is a decision procedure that determines whether a given formula of monadic predicate calculus is logically valid (true for all nonempty domains).
For technical reasons to do with quantifier elimination, it is sometimes more convenient to force the constant field to be perfect by adding a new symbol r to the signature with the axioms ∀ u ∂ ( u ) = 0 ∧ p 1 = 0 → r ( u ) p = u {\displaystyle \forall u\,\partial (u)=0\land p1=0\rightarrow r(u)^{p}=u}