For what it is worth, I am embarked on a (long-term) project to produce an open-source computer application that would be a context for creation, submission, and correction of exercises for Symbolic Logic. If you are contemplating study of Symbolic Logic, do not “wait for it,” it will be a long time coming. However over the next years I do hope to release the program bit by bit. Among goals are,
- Exercises are cleaner and easier (more fun) in SLAPP than on paper. (This is not trivially true – see many existing web apps.)
- Provides contextual feedback and checking, with goal that students always complete exercises correctly – or at least know that and where they have problems.
- Runs on as many platforms as possible – but primarily on laptop / desktop.
Quite generally, logic software is beset by a problem of resources: The market is not large enough to support full-scale commercial development (as for mathematics), and instructors may have neither the time nor training to develop full-fledged software projects on their own. I hope to overcome at least the time problem by the magic of “retirement”! T.R.
Hello,
Studied and enjoyed Symbolic Logic at the University of Tampa back in 1983. How’s the app coming along? I’ve been considering creating such a thing myself and am doing a little digging to see if it’s already out there.
Thanks
Jim
I’m making progress on the app, but slowly! Yes, there are a number of things out there, but I haven’t been satisfied by any. If you do find something useful, let me know!
Very cool, Dr. Roy! I’ve been teaching high school math the last 7 years, and have taken on many passion projects whose completion would benefit my teaching and my students’ learning, such as a decent wysiwyg math text editor! Alas, I haven’t had the time to complete most such projects, especially with 3 kiddos under age 7. Maybe I’ll have to wait until retirement to finish as well! Anyways, they’re still fun to think about and tinker with as time does allow.
Thanks for all the inspiration I’ve been deriving from you since almost 15 years ago! I think I’ll send you a little life update by email if you care to read.
Best,
Fry
Hi Again,
I’m putting together a symbolic logic course that I’ll be giving to a handful of people during the summer (one of whom is a young man attending Prescott College in Prescott, AZ, and who will be earning credit for the course) and am investigating the oli.cmu.edu course called “Logic and Proofs: Open & Free”. As part of that course there’s a thing called The AProS project which features a program called LogicLab. (https://www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/apros/). Have you discovered this yet? It seems like the type of program you’re aiming to create with SLAPP.
Hope you’re retirement is going well!
I did not know about this Carnegie Mellon project. Thanks for the link! It looks useful and interesting. I will need to poke around more. One difference is that AProS Project software appears to be heavily mouse driven. This makes it impractical for extended problems, though still useful for acquiring basic concepts.