Instructor: José J. Mendoza
Email: josejm@uw.edu
Office: Savery Hall 385
Office Hour: Tuesday 1:30-3:30pm
Course Description
This course is designed to improve a student’s reasoning skills and critical thinking capabilities. Towards these ends, we will explore some of the basic notions of logical reasoning and how they relate to critical argumentation. Students will learn what an argument is, what its basic parts are, how a good argument is composed, and how to evaluate it using formal and informal methods. We will learn the syntax and semantics of propositional logic and we will use them to test the validity of arguments. Topics we will cover in this course include consistency, proof, logical consequence, logical equivalence, logical truth, logical form, set theory, infinity, paradoxes, truth functionality, binary numbers, logic gates, truth tables, quantification, relations, functions, interpretations, models, soundness, and completeness. Students should find the skills they gain from this course to be useful in a variety of other disciplines, including those of law, literature, and the sciences.
Required Text
The Logic Course Adventure by Ian Schnee
TA Info:
Teaching Assistant: Anna Bates
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- Sections:
- Office Hours: Fridays, 2:30 – 4:30PM
- Email: batesa3@uw.edu
Teaching Assistant: Jesus Raya
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- Sections:
- Office Hours: Tuesday, 3:30 – 5:30PM
- Email: rjesus@uw.edu
Instructor email policy
Given the size of this class, we cannot answer content questions over email. Since many folks tend to have the same questions, we will primarily go over these questions during lecture or section. For personal matters that are not suitable for a public discussion, please do feel free in those sorts of cases to email the instructor or your TA. For questions about your grade email the instructor.
Grading and Course Requirements
There are three components of your grade:
- Homework: 30%
- Midterm Exam: 35% (February 7th)
- Final Exam: 35% (March 14th)
Grading Scale
A 95% = 4.0
B 85% = 3.0
C 75% = 2.0
D 65% = 1.0
Roughly each 1% increment between grades is equivalent to 0.1. At the end of the quarter we will convert your course grade from a percentage to the UW 4-point scale using this metric: 95% and up is 4.0; 94% is 3.9; 93% is 3.8; etc. Each 1% step is a 0.1 step on the UW 4-point scale. So an 86.1%, e.g., would give you a 3.1 on the UW scale. 85.5% rounds up to 86% (and thus 3.1), but 85.49% does not. At the bottom of the scale, however, 60% also rounds up to 0.7. See image below.