Instructor for 80-210 ‘‘Logic and Proofs’’

Instructor of Record for the course 80-210 ‘‘Logic and Proofs’’. Syllabus here.

``Logic & Proofs (L&P) is a web-based course which introduces students to modern symbolic logic. It focuses primarily on strategies for constructing and refuting arguments. In service of this primary focus, L&P offers a wealth of online instructional materials which will help students develop an understanding of: i. the logical form of statements; ii. syntactic inference rules that allow the construction of logically correct arguments; iii. strategies for crafting arguments that use these rules; iv. semantic techniques that facilitate the development of counterexamples to arguments (showing them to be logically incorrect). By the end of this course, students will find themselves introduced to and familiar with the following (this is not an exhaustive list): ● Logical interpretation of statements and arguments. ● The structure and validity (or invalidity) of arguments. ● The syntax of sentential and predicate (quantificational) logic. ● The semantics of sentential and predicate logic. ● Counterexamples. ● Finally: inference rules, proofs, and strategies for arguments.’’

Description here.

Pedagogical Goals:

This was a course mostly developed by Wilfried Sieg. Most of the course is run online using OLI and a proof system called AProS. My role was largely to give the students weekly exercizes that covered frequently made mistakes on quizzes and assignments. However, I learned distinctly that while AProS was an excellent teaching tool (and I would use it again), it has to be supplemented with pencil/paper assignments. AProS makes tackling longer and more involved proofs much more tractable (and therefore makes connecting logical proof structure to mathematical reasoning more salient), but many students would and did complete proofs in AProS simply by clickig around randomly until they happened to hit the right sequence of proof steps. I could get the best of both worlds by using class time to ask students to work out simple, targeted problems that emphasized the relevant proof techniques by hand, often in small groups.