DEFINITION 1 Let p and q be propositions. The conditional statement p → q is the proposition “if p, then q.” The conditional statement p → q is false when p is true and q is false, and true otherwise. In the conditional statement p → q, p is called the hypothesis (or antecedent or premise) and q is called the conclusion (or consequence). The statement p → q is called a conditional statement because p → q asserts that q is true on the condition that p holds. A conditional statement is also called an implication. The truth table for the conditional statement p → q is shown in Table 5. Note that the statement p → q is true when both p and q are true and when p is false (no matter what truth value q has). Because conditional statements play such an essential role in mathematical reasoning, a variety of terminology is used to express p → q. You will encounter most if not all of the following ways to express this conditional statement:
A useful way to understand the truth value of a conditional statement is to think of an obligation or a contract. For example, the pledge many politicians make when running for office is “If I am elected, then I will lower taxes.” If the politician is elected, voters would expect this politician to lower taxes. Furthermore, if the politician is not elected, then voters will not have any expectation that this person will lower taxes, although the person may have sufficient influence to cause those in power to lower taxes. It is only when the politician is elected but does not lower taxes that voters can say that the politician has broken the campaign pledge. This last scenario corresponds to the case when p is true but q is false in p → q. Similarly, consider a statement that a professor might make: “If you get 100% on the final, then you will get an A.” If you manage to get a 100% on the final, then you would expect to receive an A. If you do not get 100% you may or may not receive an A depending on other factors. However, if you do get 100%, but the professor does not give you an A, you will feel cheated. Of the various ways to express the conditional statement p → q, the two that seem to cause the most confusion are “p only if q” and “q unless ¬p.” Consequently, we will provide some guidance for clearing up this confusion. To remember that “p only if q” expresses the same thing as “if p, then q,” note that “p only if q” says that p cannot be true when q is not true. That is, the statement is false if p is true, but q is false. When p is false, q may be either true or false, because the statement says nothing about the truth value of q. Be careful not to use “q only if p” to express p → q because this is incorrect. To see this, note that the true values of “q only if p” and p → q are different when p and q have different truth values. To remember that “q unless ¬p” expresses the same conditional statement as “if p, then q,” note that “q unless ¬p” means that if ¬p is false, then q must be true. That is, the statement “q unless ¬p” is false when p is true but q is false, but it is true otherwise. Consequently, “q unless ¬p” and p → q always have the same truth value. We illustrate the translation between conditional statements and English statements in Example 1. EXAMPLE 1 Let p be the statement “Maria learns discrete mathematics” and q the statement “Maria will find a good job.” Express the statement p → q as a statement in English. Note that the way we have defined conditional statements is more general than the meaning attached to such statements in the English language. For instance, the conditional statement in Example 1 and the statement “If it is sunny, then we will go to the beach.” are statements used in normal language where there is a relationship between the hypothesis and the conclusion. Further, the first of these statements is true unless Maria learns discrete mathematics, but she does not get a good job, and the second is true unless it is indeed sunny, but we do not go to the beach. On the other hand, the statement “If Juan has a smartphone, then 2 3 = 5” is true from the definition of a conditional statement, because its conclusion is true. (The truth value of the hypothesis does not matter then.) The conditional statement “If Juan has a smartphone, then 2 3 = 6” is true if Juan does not have a smartphone, even though 2 3 = 6 is false. We would not use these last two conditional statements in natural language (except perhaps in sarcasm), because there is no relationship between the hypothesis and the conclusion in either statement. In mathematical reasoning, we consider conditional statements of a more general sort than we use in English. The mathematical concept of a conditional statement is independent of a cause-andeffect relationship between hypothesis and conclusion. Our definition of a conditional statement specifies its truth values; it is not based on English usage. Propositional language is an artificial language; we only parallel English usage to make it easy to use and remember. CONVERSE, CONTRAPOSITIVE, AND INVERSE We can form some new conditional statements starting with a conditional statement p → q. In particular, there are three related conditional statements that occur so often that they have special names. The proposition q → p is called the converse of p → q. The contrapositive of p → q is the proposition ¬q →¬p. The proposition ¬p →¬q is called the inverse of p → q. We will see that of these three conditional statements formed from p → q, only the contrapositive always has the same truth value as p → q. We first show that the contrapositive, ¬q →¬p, of a conditional statement p → q always has the same truth value as p → q. To see this, note that the contrapositive is false only when ¬p is false and ¬q is true, that is, only when p is true and q is false.We now show that neither the converse, q → p, nor the inverse, ¬p →¬q, has the same truth value as p → q for all possible truth values of p and q. Note that when p is true and q is false, the original conditional statement is false, but the converse and the inverse are both true. When two compound propositions always have the same truth value we call them equivalent, so that a conditional statement and its contrapositive are equivalent. The converse and the inverse of a conditional statement are also equivalent, as the reader can verify, but neither is equivalent to the original conditional statement. (We will study equivalent propositions in Section 1.3.) Take note that one of the most common logical errors is to assume that the converse or the inverse of a conditional statement is equivalent to this conditional statement. We illustrate the use of conditional statements in Example 9. Much of our work in mathematics deals with statements. In mathematics, a statement is a declarative sentence that is either true or false but not both. A statement is sometimes called a proposition. The key is that there must be no ambiguity. To be a statement, a sentence must be true or false, and it cannot be both. So a sentence such as "The sky is beautiful" is not a statement since whether the sentence is true or not is a matter of opinion. A question such as "Is it raining?" is not a statement because it is a question and is not declaring or asserting that something is true. Some sentences that are mathematical in nature often are not statements because we may not know precisely what a variable represents. For example, the equation 2\(x\)+5 = 10 is not a statement since we do not know what \(x\) represents. If we substitute a specific value for \(x\) (such as \(x\) = 3), then the resulting equation, 2\(\cdot\)3 +5 = 10 is a statement (which is a false statement). Following are some more examples:
Which of the following sentences are statements? Do not worry about determining whether a statement is true or false; just determine whether each sentence is a statement or not.
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In mathematics, we often establish that a statement is true by writing a mathematical proof. To establish that a statement is false, we often find a so-called counterexample. (These ideas will be explored later in this chapter.) So mathematicians must be able to discover and construct proofs. In addition, once the discovery has been made, the mathematician must be able to communicate this discovery to others who speak the language of mathematics. We will be dealing with these ideas throughout the text. For now, we want to focus on what happens before we start a proof. One thing that mathematicians often do is to make a conjecture beforehand as to whether the statement is true or false. This is often done through exploration. The role of exploration in mathematics is often difficult because the goal is not to find a specific answer but simply to investigate. Following are some techniques of exploration that might be helpful.
Use the techniques of exploration to investigate each of the following statements. Can you make a conjecture as to whether the statement is true or false? Can you determine whether it is true or false?
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One of the most frequently used types of statements in mathematics is the so-called conditional statement. Given statements \(P\) and \(Q\), a statement of the form “If \(P\) then \(Q\)” is called a conditional statement. It seems reasonable that the truth value (true or false) of the conditional statement “If \(P\) then \(Q\)” depends on the truth values of \(P\) and \(Q\). The statement “If \(P\) then \(Q\)” means that \(Q\) must be true whenever \(P\) is true. The statement \(P\) is called the hypothesis of the conditional statement, and the statement \(Q\) is called the conclusion of the conditional statement. Since conditional statements are probably the most important type of statement in mathematics, we give a more formal definition.
A conditional statement is a statement that can be written in the form “If \(P\) then \(Q\),” where \(P\) and \(Q\) are sentences. For this conditional statement, \(P\) is called the hypothesis and \(Q\) is called the conclusion. Intuitively, “If \(P\) then \(Q\)” means that \(Q\) must be true whenever \(P\) is true. Because conditional statements are used so often, a symbolic shorthand notation is used to represent the conditional statement “If \(P\) then \(Q\).” We will use the notation \(P \to Q\) to represent “If \(P\) then \(Q\).” When \(P\) and \(Q\) are statements, it seems reasonable that the truth value (true or false) of the conditional statement \(P \to Q\) depends on the truth values of \(P\) and \(Q\). There are four cases to consider:
The conditional statement \(P \to Q\) means that \(Q\) is true whenever \(P\) is true. It says nothing about the truth value of \(Q\) when \(P\) is false. Using this as a guide, we define the conditional statement \(P \to Q\) to be false only when \(P\) is true and \(Q\) is false, that is, only when the hypothesis is true and the conclusion is false. In all other cases, \(P \to Q\) is true. This is summarized in Table 1.1, which is called a truth table for the conditional statement \(P \to Q\). (In Table 1.1, T stands for “true” and F stands for “false.”)
Table 1.1: Truth Table for \(P \to Q\) The important thing to remember is that the conditional statement \(P \to Q\) has its own truth value. It is either true or false (and not both). Its truth value depends on the truth values for \(P\) and \(Q\), but some find it a bit puzzling that the conditional statement is considered to be true when the hypothesis P is false. We will provide a justification for this through the use of an example.
Suppose that I say “If it is not raining, then Daisy is riding her bike.” We can represent this conditional statement as \(P \to Q\) where \(P\) is the statement, “It is not raining” and \(Q\) is the statement, “Daisy is riding her bike.” Although it is not a perfect analogy, think of the statement \(P \to Q\) as being false to mean that I lied and think of the statement \(P \to Q\) as being true to mean that I did not lie. We will now check the truth value of \(P \to Q\) based on the truth values of \(P\) and \(Q\).
1. Consider the following sentence: If \(x\) is a positive real number, then \(x^2 + 8x\) is a positive real number. Although the hypothesis and conclusion of this conditional sentence are not statements, the conditional sentence itself can be considered to be a statement as long as we know what possible numbers may be used for the variable \(x\). From the context of this sentence, it seems that we can substitute any positive real number for \(x\). We can also substitute 0 for \(x\) or a negative real number for x provided that we are willing to work with a false hypothesis in the conditional statement. (In Chapter 2, we will learn how to be more careful and precise with these types of conditional statements.) (a) Notice that if \(x = -3\), then \(x^2 + 8x = -15\), which is negative. Does this mean that the given conditional statement is false? (b) Notice that if \(x = 4\), then \(x^2 + 8x = 48\), which is positive. Does this mean that the given conditional statement is true? (c) Do you think this conditional statement is true or false? Record the results for at least five different examples where the hypothesis of this conditional statement is true. 2. “If \(n\) is a positive integer, then \(n^2 - n +41\) is a prime number.” (Remember that a prime number is a positive integer greater than 1 whose only positive factors are 1 and itself.) Add texts here. Do not delete this text first.
The following statement is a true statement, which is proven in many calculus texts. If the function \(f\) is differentiable at \(a\), then the function \(f\) is continuous at \(a\). Using only this true statement, is it possible to make a conclusion about the function in each of the following cases?
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The primary number system used in algebra and calculus is the real number system. We usually use the symbol R to stand for the set of all real numbers. The real numbers consist of the rational numbers and the irrational numbers. The rational numbers are those real numbers that can be written as a quotient of two integers (with a nonzero denominator), and the irrational numbers are those real numbers that cannot be written as a quotient of two integers. That is, a rational number can be written in the form of a fraction, and an irrational number cannot be written in the form of a fraction. Some common irrational numbers are \(\sqrt2\), \(\pi\) and \(e\). We usually use the symbol \(\mathbb{Q}\) to represent the set of all rational numbers. (The letter \(\mathbb{Q}\) is used because rational numbers are quotients of integers.) There is no standard symbol for the set of all irrational numbers. Perhaps the most basic number system used in mathematics is the set of natural numbers. The natural numbers consist of the positive whole numbers such as 1, 2, 3, 107, and 203. We will use the symbol \(\mathbb{N}\) to stand for the set of natural numbers. Another basic number system that we will be working with is the set of integers. The integers consist of zero, the positive whole numbers, and the negatives of the positive whole numbers. If \(n\) is an integer, we can write \(n = \dfrac{n}{1}\). So each integer is a rational number and hence also a real number. We will use the letter \(\mathbb{Z}\) to stand for the set of integers. (The letter \(\mathbb{Z}\) is from the German word, \(Zahlen\), for numbers.) Three of the basic properties of the integers are that the set \(\mathbb{Z}\) is closed under addition, the set \(\mathbb{Z}\) is closed under multiplication, and the set of integers is closed under subtraction. This means that
Notice that these so-called closure properties are defined in terms of conditional statements. This means that if we can find one instance where the hypothesis is true and the conclusion is false, then the conditional statement is false.
Answer each of the following questions.
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