Celebrate the 200th Birthday of George Boole With Logic (i-programmer.info)

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.

Comments

True or False

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a whole class to explain Boolean Logic.

Re:True or False

[Mostly a lurker]

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.

Re:True or False

[Freshly Exhumed]

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.

I can tell you one thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

Unsung hero?

[blind biker]

In every academic institution I studied or worked, every professor of mathematics and electronics-related subject acknowledged Boole as the founder of digital logic.

Re:Logic is sorely missing.

[captjc]

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 neither since they two have become conditionally paired.

Then again, you can also realize that few people use precise language but most people who are not socially dysfunctional or deliberate assholes understand meaning and intent of the question because people are not computers with strict syntax requirements.