Here are answers to questions on the practice homework as well as some information about discussion section schedules:

(1) All discussion sections on March 1 and March 4 will meet in the computer classroom of the writing center on the 6th floor of Helen C. White (go to the sixth floor and follow the signs for the writing center). I plan to show you how to use the free software that goes with our textbook. You can use it to automatically check your work (thus ensuring that you will get an A on the assignment)

(2) There will be no discussion section on the Friday before spring break, March 22. Instead, I will hold two optional discussion sections on the Monday after spring break, April 1, one at 9:55AM and the other at 12:05PM (locations TBA). Attendance will not be counted for either of those days.

(3) Instead of talking about Elimination Puzzles (and their role in the LSAT) in this Friday's afternoon discussion, I will delay that topic one week (i.e. until Feb 15) so that we don't get ahead of lecture. In the meanwhile, I will begin to put some fun puzzles on our course web site (you might want to check them out).

(4) Regarding use and mention: When you surround a word with quotation marks, you get a new word (two additional characters in length) that refers to the original word. If we had no quotation marks, we wouldn't be able to refer to words. Life is an experience, "Life" is a four-character word that refers to that experience. ""Life"" is a six-character word that refers to a word that refers to that experience. Get the idea?

Answers to problems on the practice (here I use '>' for hook and '=' for triple-bar)

(a) ((H v ~~~~K) v ((S = H) > S))) is not a well-formed formula because it has more right parentheses than left ones.

(b) ((J & (Q >T))) is not a well-formed formula because it has more pairs of parentheses than it has binary connectives (our rules only allow us to add parentheses when we add binary connectives).

(c) ~(A & B & C) is not a well-formed formula because it contains two binary connectives with no parentheses between them. To correct this, we might write ~(A & (B & C)).

(d) not a well-formed formula because it contains Greek letters (and the symbols of SL are limited to the five connectives, parentheses, square brackets, and capital roman letters with or without non-negative subscripts)

(e) ~(A) v (B) isn't a well-formed formula because it has more pairs of parentheses than binary connectives.

(a) the main connective of "~(A & B)" is the tilda.

(b) the main connective of "~(A & B) = K" is the triple-bar (the use of the "drop the outer-parentheses" convention makes this tricky)

(c) the main connective of "~~(A = (B = C)) v H" is the wedge (same trickiness as b)

(d) the main connective of "((A > (B > K)) & (C v K))" is the ampersand.

(e) the main connective of "~~~~A" is the left-most tilda.

The (heavily graded) homework due this Thursday can be found on the course web site. You are encouraged to work in groups or come find a group in my office hours on Wed. 9:45-10:45AM and 4:30-5:30PM. This first homework is not the sort of thing that requires you to find a creative inspiration (as our proof homeworks will), but it may be helpful to compare answers with someone just to make sure you understand and to start figuring out who you will want to team up with later.

Best Wishes,

Chris