# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 237): Psycho

Let $P$ be the set of all people, let $T$ be the set of all times, and let $M(x,t)$ be the statement “$x$ goes mad at time $t$.” Translate the logical statement

$\forall x \in P \exists t \in T (\sim M(x,t))$.

This matches a line from the movie Psycho.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Inside the Demented Minds of Mathematicians

I received quite a jolt when I received the most recent issue of Mathematics Magazine, one of the mathematical journals that I subscribe to. The article contains an interesting article on combinatorics and train tickets entitled The Lucky Tickets; here’s the first page.

But I was a little surprised when I saw the pithy description of this article on the magazine’s front cover:

Yes, they really wrote “Getting lucky on a long train ride” on the cover of the magazine.

As this is a mathematical journal, it’s impossible to tell if this was a deliberate double entendre or an honest mistake borne of, in the words of Betsy Devine and Joel E. Cohen in Absolute Zero Gravity, a certain otherworldly innocence.

# Engaging students: Writing if-then statements in conditional form

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission comes from my former student Bri Del Pozzo. Her topic, from Geometry: writing if-then statements in conditional form.

How has this topic appeared in pop culture (movies, TV, current music, video games, etc.)?

There are numerous examples of conditional statements in pop culture including movies, tv shows, and video games. I think that a fun activity to introduce students to conditional statements is to have students play a matching card game where they match the “if” strand of a famous quote to the “then” strand. For example, students would match the phrase: “If you’re happy and you know it” to “then clap your hands!” This would allow the opportunity for students to discover if-then statements in a fun and interactive way! A couple more examples that I would consider including would be from Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend”: “If I was your boyfriend, (then) I’d never let you go.” I would also include a line from the famous children’s book, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” I want to include relatable and fun examples that also help students get a clear idea of what a conditional statement is. After the matching activity, I would have students pair up and determine the definition of a conditional statement and what their general structure looks like. Including pop culture references is a fantastic way to keep the lesson fun while engaging students in the lesson material.

How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

As an introduction to writing inverses, converses, and contrapositives, I could help students create graphic-organizer. Conditional statements can start to get confusing when introducing inverses, converses, and contrapositives, so a graphic organizer would be a fantastic way for students to differentiate the vocabulary and the structures of each type of statement. I would encourage students to include examples (possibly from the card sort activity), drawings, and the mathematical representation of each type of statement. The graphic organizer can also serve as a guide for students as they work through practice problems and start to develop their skills in writing conditional statements in a geometric context. As students progress through the content, I would allow students the time to go back to their organizer and include geometric examples and pictures. The organization of concepts serves as an excellent scaffold for more difficult concepts and serves as a fun way for students to practice their statement writing.

How can technology (YouTube, Khan Academy [khanacademy.org], Vi Hart, Geometers Sketchpad, graphing calculators, etc.) be used to effectively engage students with this topic? Note: It’s not enough to say “such-and-such is a great website”; you need to explain in some detail why it’s a great website.

This Desmos Activity can be an effective resource for students to gain some practice with conditional statements. What I like most about this website is that the questions come in different formats and ask students to utilize different skills. It is beneficial to students’ development in the subject matter that some questions ask them to write conditional statements and their converse, inverse, or contrapositive, and other questions that ask students to underline keywords. This activity would fit into this lesson topic after students have learned conditional statements, inverses, converses, and contrapositives. The interactive Desmos Activity would go well with the foldable and students can complete both lesson components simultaneously. Additionally, the interactive Desmos Activity includes examples of the different types of statements with symbols included. The combination of visuals and words is very beneficial to students who may have trouble understanding the difference between the different types of statements. Finally, the card sort activity can encourage students to work in pairs and complete an activity similar to their entry activity.

(Here is the link to the Desmos Activity https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5b909548262be93b79d1e056)

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 236): Dirty Dancing

Let $P$ be the set of all people, and let $C(x)$ be the statement “$x$ puts Baby in a corner.” Translate the logical statement

$\forall x \in P (\sim C(x))$.

This matches a line from the movie Dirty Dancing.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 235): Suits

Let $p$ be the statement “Winners make excuses,” and let $q$ be the statement “The other side plays the game.” Translate the logical statement

$q Rightarrow \sim p$.

This matches a line from the TV show Suits.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Engaging students: Using Pascal’s triangle

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission comes from my former student Jaeda Ransom. Her topic, from Precalculus: using Pascal’s triangle.

How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

A great activity that involves Pascal’s Triangle would be the sticky note triangle activity. For this activity students will be recreating an enlarged version of Pascal’s Triangle. To complete this activity students will need a poster of Pascal’s Triangle, poster board, markers, sticky notes, classroom wall (optional), and tape (optional). The teacher’s role is to show students Pascal’s Triangle, along with an explanation of how it was made. Students will be working in pairs and grabbing the necessary materials needed to complete this activity.On the poster board the students will recreate Pascal’s Triangle. Students will write a number 1 on a sticky note and place it at the top of the posterboard, they will then write 2 number 1’s on a sticky note and place it directly under. The students will continue recreating the triangle on their poster board until they run out of space. You can also consider having students use smaller sticky notes so that students are engaged with creating more rows.

What interesting things can you say about the people who contributed to the discovery and/or the development of this topic?

Pascal’s Triangle was named after French mathematician Blaise Pascal. At just the age of 16 years old Pascal wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry marking him as a child prodigy. Amongst that, Pascal also corresponded with other mathematicians on probability theory, which vastly encouraged the development of modern economics and social science. Pascal was also one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator when he started pioneering work on calculating machines, these were called Pascal’s calculators and later Pascalines. Pascal impressively created and invented all of this as a teenager. Though the Pascal Triangle was named after Blaise Pascal, this theory was established well before Pascal in India, Persia, China, Germany, and Italy. As a matter of fact, in China they still call it the Yang Hui’s triangle, named after Chinese mathematician Yang Hui who presented the triangle in the 13th century, though the triangle was known in China since the early 11th century.

How can this topic be used in your students’ future courses in mathematics or science?

This topic can be used in my students future mathematics course to introduce binomial expansions, where it is known that Pascal’s Triangle determines the coefficients that arise in binomial expansion. The coefficients aᵢ in a binomial expansion represents the number of row n in the Pascal’s Triangle. Thus, $a_i = \displaystyle {n \choose i}$.

Another useful application of this topic is in the calculations of combinations. The equation to find the combination is also the formula to find a cell for Pascal’s Triangle. So, instead of performing the calculations using the equation a student can simply use Pascal’s Triangle. In doing this you can continue a lesson over probability or even do an activity using Pascal’s Triangle while implicating probability questions.

Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_triangle#Formula

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 234): Linkin Park

Let $p$ be the statement “They turn down the lights,” and let $q$ be the statement “I hear my battle symphony.” Translate the logical statement

$p \Rightarrow q$.

This matches part of the chorus of “Battle Symphony” by Linkin Park.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 233): Panic! At The Disco

Let $F(x)$ be the statement “$x$ feels good,” let $H(x)$ be the statement “$x$ tastes good,” let $M(x)$ be the statement “$x$ is mine,” and let $H$ be the set of all things. Translate the logical statement

$\forall x \in H( (F(x) \land H(x)) \Rightarrow M(x))$.

This matches a line from “Emperor’s New Clothes” by Panic! At The Disco.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 232): Limp Bizkit

Let $B(x)$ be the statement “$x$ knows what it’s like to be the bad man,” let $H(x)$ be the statement “$x$ knows what it’s like to be hated,” and let $P$ be the set of all people. Translate the logical statement

$\forall x \in P(\lnot B(x) \land \lnot H(x))$.

This matches the opening lines of “Behind Blue Eyes” by Limp Bizkit.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 231): Aristocats

Let $C(x)$ be the statement “$x$ wants to be a cat,” and let $P$ be the set of all people. Translate the logical statement

$\forall x in P(C(x))$.

This matches the opening line of “Everyone Wants to be a Cat” from the movie “The Aristocats.”

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.