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Throughout these exercises, a b is simply a shorthand for a b .

Relations and interpretations

Consider the binary relation is-a-factor-of on the domain 1 2 3 4 5 6 .

  1. List all the ordered pairs in the relation.

  2. Display the relation as a directed graph.

  3. Display the relation in tabular form.

  4. Is the relation reflexive? symmetric? transitive?

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How would you define addsTo as a ternary relation?

  1. Give a prose definition of addsTo x y z in terms of the addition function.
  2. List the set of triples in the relation on the domain 1 2 3 4 .

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Generalize the previous problem to describe how you can represent any k -ary function as a k 1 -ary relation.

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Are each of the following formulas valid, i.e. , true for all interpretations? (Remember that the relation names are just names in the formula;don't assume the name has to have any bearing on their interpretation.)

  • For arbitrary a and b in the domain, atLeastAsWiseAs a b atLeastAsWiseAs b a
  • For arbitrary a in the domain, prime a odd a prime a
  • For arbitrary a and b in the domain, betterThan a b betterThan b a
For each, if it is true or false under all interpretations, prove that. For these small examples, a truth table like this one will probably be easier than using Boolean algebra or inference rules.Otherwise, give an interpretation in which it is true, and one in which it is false.
As always, look at trivial and small test cases first. Here, try domains with zero, one, or two elements,and small relations.

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[Practice problem solution provided.]

Suppose we wanted to represent the count of neighboring pirates with a binary relation, such that when location A has two neighboring pirates, piratesNextTo A 2 will be true. Of course, piratesNextTo A 1 would not be true in this situation. These would be analogous with the propositional WaterWorld propositions A-has-2 and A-has-1 , respectively.

  1. If we only allow binary relations to be subsets of a domain crossed with itself,then what must the domain be for this new relation piratesNextTo ?

  2. If we further introduced another relation, isNumber? , what is a formula that would help distinguishintended interpretations from unintended interpretations? That is, give a formula that is true under all our intendedinterpretations of piratesNextTo but is not true for some

    nonsense
    interpretations we want to exclude. (This will be a formula without an analog in the WaterWorld domain axioms .)

  1. The relation needs to accept locations as well as numbers, so the domain is L , where L is the set of WaterWorld locations. Alternatively, you could use 0 1 2 3 instead of , the set of all natural numbers.

  2. The difficulty is that it's possible to ask about nonsensical combinations like piratesNextTo 17 2 and piratesNextTo W B . Adding isNumber? , any interpretation would be expected to satisfy, for arbitrary a and b , piratesNextTo a b isNumber? b isNumber? a b .

    More interestingly though, imagine we did interpret piratesNextTo over the domain only. We could then pretend that the locations, instead of being named A ,…, Z , were just numbered 1,…,24.While this representation doesn't reflect how we model the problem, it is legal.Exercise for the reader: Write a formula which excludes relation piratesNextTo which can't match this convention!

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Source:  OpenStax, Intro to logic. OpenStax CNX. Jan 29, 2008 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10154/1.20
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