I need help verifying the answers to these exercises [Velleman, Chapter 1.1, Q6]

207 Views Asked by At

I've begun to study Daniel Velleman's "How to Prove It" and I need to clarify a few things and ensure I've gotten the answers correct before I move on. Thank you.


Question 6

Let S stand for the statement "Steve is happy" and G for "George is happy". What English sentences are represented by the following expressions:
(a) $(S\vee G) \wedge (\neg S \vee \neg G)$
(b) $[S \vee (G \wedge \neg S)] \vee \neg G$
(c) $S \vee [G \wedge (\neg S \vee \neg G)]$


(a) $(S\vee G) \wedge (\neg S \vee \neg G)$

This translates to:

Either Steve or George are happy and Steve or George are not happy. This seems very ill-worded to me, is there a better way to phrase this?

(b) $[S \vee (G \wedge \neg S)] \vee \neg G$

This translates to:

Either Steve is happy or George is happy and Steve is not happy, OR George is not Happy.

(c) $S \vee [G \wedge (\neg S \vee \neg G)]$

This translates to:

Either Steve is happy OR George is happy and Steve is not happy or George is not happy.

Again I don't really understand how to phrase this, the nested statements make things difficult for me, if someone could elucidate this for me it would be really appreciated

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On

a) at least one of the two is happy and at least one of the two is not, therefore one is happy and the other is not.