Life of Fred: Logic

Learn logic in a day! That is, a day in the life of Fred. Here is a complete coverage of logic in a mere 176 pages. No ancillaries required. That's right. No separate teacher book, no test pack, no workbook needed. It's all right here - the whole "Kittens" caboodle. Fred, now six (and still a professor at Kittens U), is preparing to give a logic lecture. Ironically, and somewhat conveniently, Duck (first introduced in Life of Fred: Apples) pays Fred a visit and provides ample fodder for some of the first topics covered in the book. Duck, who always speaks in sentences that are false, helps to illustrate both logic sentence structure and the concept of every sentence being True or False. As always, Dr. Schmidt manages to both entertain and train. Along with the levity and random bits of eclectic knowledge provided in chapter 1, Dr. Schmidt gets right down to introducing us to both pure and applied logic and the language of logic (the use of symbols, modeling, and structures) - all in the first few pages of the book. From there, the course progresses through the topics of truth tables, connectives, the language of logic, inductive vs. deductive reasoning, logic fallacies (covered all in ONE conversation), and predicate logic. These first six chapters provide a complete high school logic course. Once logic as a second language is mastered, working through the remaining ten chapters is the equivalent of completing a college-level logic course. This part of the course is more heavily theoretical. It uses the structures and models learned in the first part of the course, progressing to proofs, introducing more complex structures and lemmas, and giving much thought to Gdel's Incompleteness Theorem. No prerequisites are required to begin this course, though I think it would help if your student had completed Algebra and Geometry before tackling it. While the math skills themselves are not needed, the ability to reason well and think logically (and somewhat mathematically) is. There are no exercises to complete, though there are 99 "puzzles" to solve. In addition to a very alert and thoughtful mind, familiarity with and understanding of symbolic language, proofs, combinations, set theory, and other topics typically covered in higher-level math would aid solutions. As far as teaching time, there is none. The course is totally self-instructional. Instruction is directed to the student/reader and all answers are included in the back of the book. Dr. Schmidt goes to great lengths as the book's narrator to make sure the student does not take the easy road and check the answers before first exercising his/her brain. He also already anticipates questions and objections the student might have, with many "reader" interjections, shown in distinctive font, at these points. One quibble I have with the book (and a caution to parents) is Dr. Schmidt's unnecessary incorporation of drugs (cocaine) and drinking used in one of the early examples in the book. I can guess the reason for this, but I wish he had considered another option". This course will appeal most to those who enjoy math, enjoy Fred, and enjoy a good story along with their study.