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Word people like finding out stuff, so they search - as the many exhortations to google here attest - and so we frequently employ Boolean operators . And so, the inquisitive person that I am, with an interest in biogs, googled... and came up with this:
""Boolean" honors George Boole, a 19th-century British mathematician who suggested that logical thought could be expressed as algebra. As you'll see below, it seems logical."
and this:
"Yes, George Boole (1815-1864) was an English mathematician who helped establish a field of mathematical study called symbolic logic. This system, known as Boolean logic, is basic to the design of digital computer circuits. It also is the basis for computer database searches. Bacause many Internet search engines are based on Boolean logic, so it is important to understand how this system works."
So I thought I'd share it so we could all be thankful together.
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Alexis, all computer programs employ Boolean logic. All search engines, by definition, must use it. As soon as you enter your search terms, the search engine must use a statement like "Return the page's URL if the metadata on the HTML page contains these terms".
And while Georgie came up with the idea of "computation logic", Ada Lovelace (no relation to Linda) actually used to it sketch out programs for Babbage's analytical engine. While I've never studied her programs, I'm assured they were very sophisticated.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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My encyclopedia says Boole was professor of math at University in Cork, Ireland.
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i heard long, long ago, (i learned binary, within a year of JFK being shot, in elementary school, more years ago, than i would like to acknowledge)i heard that there was a strong underpinning of theology to boolian logic.
Boolian logic employes binary math, where there are two values,let's call them 1 and 0(zero). God is represented by 1, because, with out god, there is nothing.
a weird tangent : for Knitter only
some of the rules for binary math and boolian logic, are similar to knitting.
in knitting there are only two stitches, knit, and purl. to know what you are looking at, you need to know which is the front, and which is the back, because a knit, from behind looks like a purl, and a purl, looks like a knit. this duality, and the idea that information can be or can not be, depending on how you are looking at it, is part of boolian logic.
there are other similarities to knitting and binary math, but this is a real tangent.. and i don't know how many of us wordies are also knitters!
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...i don't know how many of us wordies are also knitters!Guilty as charged, ot.  I'm glad you threw in that tangent... I had never thought of it that way before.
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My encyclopedia says Boole was professor of math at University in Cork, Ireland.
The web notes: As it turns out, his life story is a good example of what can happen when you combine some intelligence with a lot of hard work. I find it inspiring and hope you will also. The story is much better told in a book than in anything I can find on the web. Brief exerpts here (ellipses omitted) from Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell (1937) do not really do it justice.
.....He was born in 1815 and was the son of a petty shopkeeper [,which] at that time was to be damned by foreordination. The whole class to which Boole's father belonged was treated with a contempt a trifle more contemptuous than that reserved for enslaved scullery maids and despised second footmen. A child in Boole's station should so live as never to transgress the strict limits of obedience imposed by that remarkable testimonial to human conceit and class-conscious snobbery.
.....To say that Boole's early struggles to educate himself into a station above that to which 'it had pleased God to call him' were a fair imitation of purgatory is putting it mildly. Making a pathetically mistaken diagnosis of the abilities which enabled the propertied class to goven those beneath them, Boole decided [at age 8] that he must learn Latin and Greek if he was ever to get his feet out of the mire. By the age of twelve he had mastered enough Latin (he had also taught himself Greek) to translate an ode of Horace into English verse. This precipitated a scholarly row. A classical master denied that a boy of twelve could have produced such a translation. Boole was humiliated and resolved to supply the defciencies of his self-instruction.
.....By the age of sixteen he saw that he must contribute at once to the support of his wretched parents [and took a job as an assistant teacher for four years. After that time] he had acquired a mastery of French, German, and Italian, [and] in his twentieth year Boole opened up a civilized school of his own.
.....To prepare his pupils properly he had to teach them some mathematics. His interest was aroused. It must be remembered that he had had no mathematical training beyond the rudiments. To get some idea of his mental capacity we can imagine the lonely student of twenty mastering, by his own unaided efforts, the Méchanique céleste of Laplace, one of the toughest masterpieces ever written for a conscientious student to assimilate, full of gaps and enigmatical declarations that 'it is easy to see'. Yet Boole, self-taught, found his way and saw what he was doing.
.....[For 14 years] Boole went on with the drudgery of elementary teaching, without a complaint, because his parents were now wholly dependent on his support. [He did his mathematical work solely 'on the side'.]
.....At last he got an opportunity. He was appointed Profeessor of Mathematics at the recently opened Queen's College at Cork, Ireland [at the age of 34. Fifteen years later he was dead.]
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re: I had never thought of it that way before.
what's it? Boolian logic? or Knitting?
i tend to be a visual learner, i need to be able to literally or virtually see them.. once a saw boolian logic as knitting (a thread or theme link all the logic together!) and that information can in it, flow forward or backward, and that one's view point make all the difference..
i am 'old school' and still tend to think as the knit side of a garment as the 'outside' and hte purl side as the inside. but, slowly i am comming round to seeing both sides, as just sides. mind you knitting is value neutral, so its easier to see both sides as valid.1>0 expresses the same idea as 0<1.. it doesn't matter which term, (0 or 1) comes first the relationship remains the same. the back of purl is a knit, the back of knit is a purl.
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This may be a foolish leap to a further connection between making of "fabric' (knitting) and boolean logic, but:
Weren't the old IBM punchcards an adaption of a technology that was first used to control weaving in cloth-mills? Jacquard mills, or something like that?
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Referring back to my southern neighbour's comments (ie Kiwi!) - I know all search engines use Boolean logic, I guess I meant that when doing a search the searcher themselves doesn't always consciously use AND, NOT, or OR, for example - and that sometimes, search engines don't allow for the full range of operators (does google allow 'ADJ'? I've never tried)
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The professional search engines certainly do. Google must, although they don't skite about it. So does Lycos, and they do skite about that. Read all about it at: http://www.lycos.com/help/boolean_help.htmlThey use the more advanced operators to be able to assign probabilities of match or percentage of match to work out what order in which to return the pages found. And they have to do it quickly! Most of the advanced operators (such as ADJ, NEAR, FAR, SAME) are not actually Boolean at all, but have been developed as part of search engine logic.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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