From owner-cse191-sp08-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sat Mar 1 20:17:53 2008 Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 20:17:38 -0500 From: "William J. Rapaport" Subject: Test supplement To: CSE191-SP08-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU A student writes: | I apologize if I've missed this at some point, but I remember you mentioning | early on in the class that Dr. Decker distributed rule sheets to her 191 classes | by which to refer when doing proofs for homework or on a test.r I don't think I ever discussed anything about Prof. Decker's version of this course. | I don't recall you | ever definitively mentioning whether or not you were going to also. I didn't mention it, because I'm not going to distribute it, at least not for the midterm. | Since I would | assume the purpose of this course is not an exercise in memoryr A bad assumption ;-) | but rather to work | out the logic of a problem, I can also assume doing so would not be a conflict of | interest. My reason in asking this question is motivated by the limited time in | which we're given to take the test and by the simple fact that any | mathematician/logician/computer scientist in the real world would not necessarily | have to remember each rule but could simply refer to them when working out proofs. I have, indeed, allowed such "cheat sheets" in other courses, in which there is a more formal emphasis on just which rules of inference are allowed. But this course is more informal, and this is the course, if anything, in which you should learn the basics by heart. | Again, I apologize if this has already been answered, but while studying it | begged the question and I couldn't find the answer in the listserv. No problem; good question. I will make the following offer: If a large number of students get the logic problems wrong because of this, then I will allow it on the final exam. But I'll say more about that when the time comes. The other offer I'll make is this: You don't have to memorize the names of the rules, just what the rules are, so, e.g., if you have something like: If I study hard enough -> I will pass I didn't pass therefore, I didn't study hard enough where the official justification is "modus tollens" and you don't remember that name, but you do remember that rule, you can just write down the rule: p->q, -q, therefore -p.