Deductions

Deductions is educational software designed to help students learn proofs in formal logic. It is intended to be used by instructors and students of college-level logic courses in philosophy, mathematics and computer science. It gives immediate feedback at each stage of a proof, provides hints about how to complete proofs, and comes with a set of video tutorials that explain and review several challenging concepts in logic. Deductions aims to solve the three problems that make proofs the most difficult component of formal logic courses: not knowing whether rules are applied correctly, getting stuck in the middle of a proof, and uncertainty about the rules and strategies. Deductions addresses these issues by flagging errors, including a hint engine to make suggestions about how to complete a proof, and having multimedia tutorials to help students through complex rules. Features Highlights: 1. Textbooks: Deductions is designed to work seamlessly with the following textbooks: (i) The Logic Book (by Bergmann, Moor, and Nelson), (ii) A Modern Formal Logic Primer (by Paul Teller), (iii) A Serious Introduction to Mathematical Logic (by Tony Roy). 2. Flagging Errors - Deductions flags errors in proofs as soon as they occur. This is important, because when students are first learning proofs, Deductions prevents students from learning the wrong rules. 3. Hint Engine - Deductions provides hints about how to complete proofs. When students get stuck in the middle of a proof, Deductions suggests how to make progress. 4. Multimedia Tutorials - Deductions comes with a set of multimedia tutorials, divided into two groups: how to use Deductions to learn logic, and how to use the logic rules. 5. Flexibility - Deductions is designed to work with many different logic systems and textbooks. Both standard and alternative symbols are included, as well as rules that may be turned on and off individually. 6. Modern Design - Deductions provides a modern interface. As a new entry into a field that has not seen many updates in recent years (many logic programs are written for DOS, Windows 9x, or are rudimentary Java applets), Deductions leverages the technologies of Mac OS X to provide a clean user interface, drag-and-drop support, and a comprehensive help system. 7. More Efficient than Paper - Deductions takes care of the editing details by automatically adjusting proofs when lines are added, removed or moved.

What is new in this release:

• added support for The Logic Book PD+ rule system
• added support for Accessible Introduction ND+ rule system
• added ability to export a deduction to a Text file
• added ability to export a deduction to a LaTeX snippet

Limitations:

Only the following deduction rules are available in the trial version: Premise, Assumption, Reiteration, Conjunction Introduction, Conjunction Elimination, Conditional Introduction, Conditional Elimination, Tilde Introduction, Tilde Elimination