Logic for Computer Scientists

By the development of new fields and applications, such as Automated Theorem Proving and Logic Programming, Logic has obtained a new and important role in Computer Science. The traditional mathematical way of dealing with Logic is in some respect not tailored for Computer Science - plications. This book emphasizes such Computer Science aspects in Logic. It arose from a series of lectures in 1986 and 1987 on Computer Science Logic at the EWH University in Koblenz, Germany. The goal of this l- ture series was to give the undergraduate student an early and theoretically well-founded access to modern applications of Logic in Computer Science. A minimal mathematical basis is required, such as an understanding of the notation and knowledge about the basic mathematical proof techniques induction). More sophisticated mathematical kno- edge not a precondition read this book. Acquaintance with some conventional programming language, PASCAL, assumed. Several people helped in various ways in the preparation process of the original German version of this book: Johannes KSbler, Eveline and Rainer Schuler, and Hermann Engesser from B.I. Wissenschaftsverlag. Regarding the English version, I want to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Ronald Book. Without him, this translated version of the book would not have been possible.

This book introduces the notions and methods of formal logic from a computer science standpoint, covering propositional logic, predicate logic, and foundations of logic programming. It presents applications and themes of computer science research such as resolution, automated deduction, and logic programming in a rigorous but readable way.

The style and scope of the work, rounded out by the inclusion of exercises, make this an excellent textbook for an advanced undergraduate course in logic for computer scientists.

 

This is a short introductory book on the topic of propositional and first-order logic, with a bias towards computer scientists…. Schöning decides to concentrate on computational issues, and gives us a short book (less than 170 pages) with a tight storyline…. I found this a nicely written book with many examples and exercises (126 of them). The presentation is natural and easy to follow…. This book seems suitable for a short course, a seminar series, or part of a larger course on Prolog and logic programming, probably at the advanced undergraduate level.   ― SIGACT News

Contains examples and 126 interesting exercises which put the student in an active reading mode.... Would provide a good university short course introducing computer science students to theorem proving and logic programming.   ― Mathematical Reviews

This book concentrates on those aspects of mathematical logic which have strong connections with different topics in computer science, especially automated deduction, logic programming, program verification and semantics of programming languages.... The numerous exercises and illustrative examples contribute a great extent to a better understanding of different concepts and results. The book can be successfully used as a handbook for an introductory course in artificial intelligence.  ― Zentralblatt MATH