Math 461, Section 1
Spring 2006

Course Description

"Intuitive and formal development of the sentential and predicate calculus. Special emphasis given to questions of consistency, completeness, and independence. Formal systems; incompleteness and undecidability; theorems of Gödel. Exploration of which properties of structures can be defined in the first-order language." (Taken from the undergraduate catalog.)

Schedule

The schedule will have a list of topics, organized by week. The assigned homework will be added as the semester progresses.

Instructor

Name Office E-mail Phone Office Hours
Saul Schleimer HLL-207 saulsch at math dot rutgers dot edu 732-445-1935 Wed. 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Class meetings

Attendance will not be taken.

Activity Run by Time Location
Lecture Saul Schleimer MW4 1:40pm to 3:00pm SEC-216 BUS

Paraphernalia

The suggested text for this course, by Herbert B. Enderton, is titled A mathematical introduction to logic. (Warning: the AddAll webpage takes some time to load.) I intend to follow notes by Professor Simon Thomas instead of following the book, however. Another reference which you may find useful, for the first month or so of class, is Paul Halmos' book Naive set theory. Perhaps Enderton's book Elements of set theory will also be useful.

As one has come to expect, various on-line resources on any subject, and hence on mathematical logic, are available. These range from pages at Wikipedia to homepages of other logic classes to games.

Please remember that any material that you use (or paraphrase) from a book, the web, a classmate, a professor, etc should be correctly cited. If you are unsure what constitutes plagiarism please consult the Rutgers Academic Integrity Policy or come ask me.

Homework

See the schedule for the weekly list of homework problems. These are due at the beginning of the lecture one week after they are assigned. Your two lowest homework scores will be dropped. Late work will not be accepted. Please staple.

Exams

Exams are closed book. No calculators are allowed. You may, however, bring a single (two-sided) sheet of paper with whatever material on it that you desire. You may also use a ruler. For any problem on the exam which is left completely blank (except for possibly the phrase "I don't know.") you will receive 25% of the available points.

There will be two midterms and a final. See the schedule for dates. At least one-third of the problems on each midterm will be taken from the homework.

Grades

The final score is composed of 20% for homework, 20% for each midterm, and 40% for the final. Grades will be assigned on a curve, modified by common sense: if every student does well every student will receive a good grade.

Mistakes

Please tell me in person, or via email, about any errors on this website or made (by me!) in class.