Monday, November 5, 2007

The title of this post is a lie and I have not finished another book.

Look at the title of this post - this is a (very simple) example of the sort of logic present in the latest book I've started (and, perhaps, finished). Assuming all statements I make are either true or false, given the title of this post, have I finished another book?


In any case, the book in question is:

The Riddle of Scheherazade: And Other Amazing Puzzles

by Raymond M. Smullyan

(yay - I can upload images now, dunno what was wrong before, perhaps I'll get motivated and update the previous posts).

In any case, this book and others by Smullyan are puzzle books, but they are based on a foundation of logic and probability theory rather than simply being your average brain teasers. They also tend to have a decent learning curve, such that if you work your way through each puzzle, you'll be able to build upon your thinking - and indeed, what you've actually learned - for subsequent puzzles. The only trouble I have with his style is that I, with a computer science background, kept having to rephrase the questions in terms of more basic logic states. That is, the questions are phrased in terms of tales of people who lie based on what day of the week it is, or "red and green lights" or "drawers with gems in them" etc, which are equivalent to the much drier representation of entities as state machines with truth tables, but I realize that I'm not necessarily normal.

If you're interested in bending your brain a bit and actually learning about logic and probability, I'd recommend reading either this book or perhaps The Lady or the Tiger.

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