3 - Principles of Logic

Logic is the process by which decisions are made or conclusions reached. The study of logic is essential to a good understanding of computer engineering, as computer are used to make decisions based on information that is being processed. Decisions made by the computer should not be thought of as an indication of the computer’s ability to think, but rather as the computer following a prescribed set of instructions. The decisions made by computers follow the same logic as that of our thinking. Logic deals with the idea of true and false to make decisions. This binary or two state nature of logic is interesting because it is similar to the binary number system. The two state nature of logic makes it possible to represent logical ideas in terms of 1 and 0 and then ultimately as on and off states within a circuit.  The history of logic spans several centuries, but the mathematical form that is used in electrical computing was first introduced by George Boole in 1854.