In Chapter 5 you were introduced to comparisons and the three basic Boolean operations of AND, OR, and NOT. As you can imagine and have experienced, Boolean expressions may become very complex in a program. This chapter introduces the postulates and theorems used in Boolean algebra and shows how to use them to simplify expressions.

The theorems and postulates are very similar to the ones you have learned in your previous algebra courses, but sometimes they take a few extra moments to understand how they work. Remember, we are dealing with Boolean values and the result of an expression is always a Boolean value.

Objectives

Upon completion of this chapter’s exercises, you should be able to:

  • Identify the postulates and theorems of Boolean Algebra.
  • Use Closure, Identity, Commutative, Distributive, and Closure to simplify Boolean expressions.
  • Use the Theorems of Boolean Algebra to re-write expressions.
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