Boolean Logic

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What Does Boolean Logic Mean?

Boolean logic is a type of computer science originally developed by mathematician George Boole in the mid-1800s. It supports a great deal of algorithmic programming and the emergence of computing functionality approaching artificial intelligence (AI).

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Techopedia Explains Boolean Logic

At its core, Boolean logic relies on some very basic operators, such as AND, OR and NOT. Experts add the operators NAND and NOR, which combine one of these operators with a negative NOT operator.

Using the above elements, developers can construct logic gates that direct the flow of computing toward various results. Boolean logic and elements like truth tables used to support logical outcomes also reveal the difference between how humans and how computers “think.”

The use of Boolean logic can help bridge the semantical difference between machine language, which is simply a combination of ones and zeros, and syntactical code language, which includes elements of human written languages.

To put it another way, humans can use Boolean logic formats and operators to boil down the code they write into concepts that approach machine language. For example, a semantic code line or model that states: “If A is 1 and B is 1, then add 1” can be reduced into a series of Boolean logical operators and values.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.