Boolean algebra, developed in 1854 by George Boole in his book An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, is a variant of ordinary algebra as taught in high school. Boolean algebra differs from ordinary algebra in three ways: in the values that variables may assume, which are of a logical instead of a numeric character, prototypically 0 and 1; in the operations applicable to those values; and in the properties of those operations, that is, the laws...
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Boolean algebra, developed in 1854 by George Boole in his book An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, is a variant of ordinary algebra as taught in high school. Boolean algebra differs from ordinary algebra in three ways: in the values that variables may assume, which are of a logical instead of a numeric character, prototypically 0 and 1; in the operations applicable to those values; and in the properties of those operations, that is, the laws they obey.
Whereas high school algebra deals mainly with real numbers, Boolean algebra deals with the values 0 and 1. These can be thought of as two integers, or as the truth values false and true respectively. In either case they are called bits or binary digits, in contrast to the decimal digits 0 through 9.
Boolean algebra also deals with other values on which Boolean operations can be defined, such as sets or sequences of bits. However Boolean algebra is unlike many other systems of algebra in that it obeys exactly the same laws ...
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