Understanding Logical Thinking by Serahn Berman ’25

Understanding Logical Thinking: Introducing the Construct of Unitizing Predicates by Serahn Berman ’25, Wednesday February 26, 1:00 – 1:50pm, North Science Building 113, Wachenheim, Mathematics Colloquium

How is it that we come to understand logical reasoning? How do we teach logic? We will go over some general theory on how we naturally read and think about logical statements along with several instructional methods educators use for teaching students to think productively about such statements. We will then introduce a new construct, unitizing predicates, as an addition to our existing instructional methods. To map out and demonstrate this construct, we will dissect some sample students’ reasoning on an example proof of a logical statement.