translating phrases into propositional logic

Question

translate the following into propositional logic:

students attend the annual meetings

where s: students

A: attend annual meetings

my first intuition is:

s -> A however there is no "if, then" relationship in the sentence. any thoughts?

Answer 1

So, in propositional logic, each letter symbols (i.e. A and s) should stand for a whole sentence. Notice how s, in your question above, is not an entire sentence. This should be a clue as to what you need to do to solve the problem. You should change your definition of s to a sentence.

How do you go about doing this? Notice that the sentence "Students attend the annual meetings" is a statement about students in general. Therefore, you should think "If a person is a student, then they do A". Notice that even though this sentence is not in if-then form, it is clear that it is making a statement equivalent to the one I have written above.

Long story short; you should change s to a sentence, but otherwise, your intuition is correct.