JEE Important Chapter - Mathematical Reasoning

Mathematical reasoning is the concept in Mathematics that deals with finding the truth values of any Mathematical statement. The principle of Mathematical reasoning is generally used to analyse the conceptual logical thinking capacity of an individual in competitive examinations and eligibility tests. Mathematical reasoning questions are extremely interesting and successfully stir up the rational thinking of the human brain. There are various kinds of statements in Mathematical reasoning and the operations that are performed on those statements.

JEE Main Maths Chapter-wise Solutions 2023-24 

Topics of Mathematical Reasoning:

Statement and Logical Operations:

In JEE Main Maths, you'll encounter logical operations like "and," "or," "implies," and others. These help connect statements in a way that makes sense, like building bridges between different math ideas.

Understanding of Tautology:

In simple terms, tautology means a statement that is always true, no matter what. It's like saying, "If it's raining, then it's wet outside" – a statement that's pretty much always true.

Understanding of Contradiction:

Contradiction is the opposite. It's a statement that can never be true, like "The sky is both blue and not blue at the same time."

Understanding of Converse:

When you flip a statement around, you get its converse. For example, if the original statement is "If it's wet outside, then it's raining," the converse would be "If it's raining, then it's wet outside."

Understanding of Contrapositive:

Contrapositive involves flipping and negating a statement. So, if the original is "If it's wet outside, then it's raining," the contrapositive would be "If it's not raining, then it's not wet outside."

Understanding of If and Only If:

"If and only if" is like a two-way street. It means the statement works both ways. If you say "It's wet outside if and only if it's raining," it covers both scenarios – if it's wet, it's raining, and if it's raining, it's wet.

Important Terminologies in Mathematical Reasoning

• Statement

• Truth value of a statement 

• Truth Table

• Negation operation

• Compound statements

• Conditional Statements

• Contrapositive Statement

• Tautology

• Algebra of Statements

Compound Statement and Basic logical Statement

If two or more simple statements are combined by the words ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if…..then’, ‘if and only if’ then the resultant statement is called a compound statement and words ‘and’, ‘or’ , ‘if…..then’, ‘if and only if’ are called logical connectives.

Examples: (i) Yuvi studies in class XII and resides in Himachal Pradesh.

(ii) Vineet might be watching a movie or playing chess

(iii) India can win the match if and only if Sachin hits a six on each of the remaining 3 balls.

Truth Table of Compound Statements Using Connective ‘AND’ and ‘OR’

Truth Values of statement ‘ p and q’ and ‘p or q’ are tabulated as follows:

• Statement ‘p and q’ is true when both p and q are true. Also, this statement is false if at least one of the statements is false.

• Statement ‘p or q’ is true if at least one of the statements is true. Also, this statement is false if both statements are false.

Conditional Statements

Consider the following compound statements:

If Varanasi is in India then 3 + 6 = 9.

If Varanasi is in India then 3 + 6 = 11

If Varanasi is in China then 3 + 6 = 9.

If Varanasi is in India then 3 + 6 = 11.

If the first statement is p and the second statement is q, then we have the following truth table for $p\rightarrow q$.

Biconditional Statements:

Consider the following compound statements

If Varanasi is in India if and only if 3 + 6 = 9.

If Varanasi is in India if and only if 3 + 6 = 11

If Varanasi is in China if and only if 3 + 6 = 9.

If Varanasi is in India if and only if 3 + 6 = 11.

If the first statement is p and the second statement is q, then the following truth table for $p\leftrightarrow  q$.

Logical Equivalence

Two compound statements $S_{1}\left ( p,\,q,\,r,\,.... \right )$ and $S_{2}\left ( p,\,q,\,r,\,.... \right )$ of component statement p, q, r …. are called logically equivalent or simply equivalent or equal if they have identical truth values and we can write 

$\Rightarrow S_{1}\left ( p,\,q,\,r,\,.... \right )\equiv S_{2}\left ( p,\,q,\,r,\,.... \right )$

Note:  

• $p\to q\equiv \left ( \sim p \right )\vee q$

• $p\leftrightarrow q\equiv \left ( p\to q \right )\wedge \left ( q\rightarrow p \right )$

• $p\leftrightarrow q\equiv \left ( \sim p\vee q \right )\wedge \left ( p\,\,\vee \sim q \right )$

Converse, Inverse and Contrapositive of Statement

Given an if-then statement “if p, then q” we can create three related statements.

A conditional statement consists of two parts, a hypothesis in the “ if'' clause and a conclusion in the “then” clause.

For instance, consider the compound statement, 

“If it rains, then they cancel the picnic.”

Here, 

“It rains” is the hypothesis.

“They cancel the picnic” is the conclusion.

• To form the converse of the conditional statement, just interchange the hypothesis and the conclusion. The converse of the statement (1) is “if they cancel the picnic, it rains.”

• To form the inverse of the conditional statement, take the negation of both the hypothesis and the conclusion. The inverse of the statement (1) is “if it does not rain, then they do not cancel the picnic.”

• To form the contrapositive of the conditional statement, interchange the hypothesis and the conclusion of the inverse statement. The contrapositive of the statement (1) is “If they do not cancel the school, then it does not rain.”

Tautology and Contradiction (Fallacy)

• Tautology: A compound statement is called a tautology if it is always true for all possible truth values of its component statements

• Contradiction: A compound statement is called a contradiction if it is always false for all possible values of its component statement. A contradiction is also called a fallacy.

• The negation of a tautology is a contradiction and negation of contradiction is a tautology.

Algebra of Statements

• Idempotent Laws: If p is any statement, then 

(i). $p\vee p\equiv p$            (ii) $p\wedge  p\equiv p$

• Complement Laws: If p is any statement, then

(i). $p\,\vee \sim p\equiv t$       (ii) $p\,\,\wedge \sim p\equiv f$    

(iii) $\sim\sim p\equiv p$           (iv) $\sim t\equiv f$ 

(v) $\sim f\equiv t$ 

• Identity Laws: If p is any statement, then 

(i) $p\wedge  t\equiv p$              (ii) $p\wedge  f\equiv f$

(iii) $p\vee t\equiv t$                   (iv) $p\vee f\equiv p$

• Commutative Laws: If p and q be any two statements then

(i) $p\wedge q\equiv q\wedge p$     (ii) $p\vee q\equiv q\vee  p$

• De Morgan’s Laws: If p and q be any two statements, then 

(i) $\sim\left ( p\vee q \right )\equiv \sim p\,\,\wedge \sim q$ 

(ii) $\sim\left ( p\,\ \wedge  q \right )\equiv \sim p\,\,\vee  \sim q$ 

• Associative Laws: If p, q and r are any three statements, then 

(i) $\left ( p\wedge q \right ) \wedge r\equiv p\wedge \left ( q\wedge r \right )$

(ii) $\left ( p\vee q \right )\vee r\equiv p\vee \left ( q\vee r \right )$

• Distributive Laws: If p, q and r are any three statements, then

(i) $p\wedge \left ( q\vee r \right )\equiv \left ( p\wedge q \right )\vee \left ( p\wedge r \right )$

(ii) $p\vee \left ( q\wedge r \right )\equiv \left ( p\vee q \right )\wedge \left ( p\vee r \right )$

Solved Examples:

Example 1: Show that the compound statements $\left ( p\vee q \right )\wedge \sim p$ and $\sim p \wedge q$ are logically equivalent.

Solution: Truth values of $\left ( p\vee q \right )\wedge \sim p$ and $\sim p \wedge q$ are as follows:

Clearly, $\left ( p\vee q \right )\wedge \sim p$ and $\sim p \wedge q$ have identical truth values.

$\therefore \left ( p \vee q \right )\wedge \sim p \equiv \,\,\sim p\wedge q$ 

Example 2: Show that $p\to \left ( p\vee q \right )$ is a tautology

Solution: Truth values of $p\to \left ( p\vee q \right )$

Thus, for all possible truth values of p and q, the compound statement $p\to \left ( p\vee q \right )$ is true.

Example 3: Prove that $q\,\,\wedge \sim p\equiv \sim \left ( q\to p \right )$

Solution: $\sim\left ( q\to p \right ) \equiv \,\sim \left ( \sim q\vee p \right )$

$\Rightarrow \sim\left ( q\to p \right ) \equiv \,\sim \left ( \sim q \right )\wedge \sim p$

$\Rightarrow \sim\left ( q\to p \right ) \equiv \, q\,\,\wedge \sim p$

Solved problems of Previous Year Question

1. Which of the following is tautology?

1. $A\wedge \left ( A\to B \right )\to B$

2. $B\to \left ( A\wedge A\to B \right )$

3. $A\wedge \left ( A\vee B \right )$

4. $\left (A\vee B  \right )\wedge A$

Ans: (a)

$\Rightarrow A\wedge \left ( A\to B \right ) \to B$

$= A\wedge \left ( \sim A\vee B \right )\to B$

$=\left [ \left ( A\wedge \sim A \right )\vee \left ( A\wedge B \right ) \right ]\to B$

$=\left ( A\wedge B \right )\to B$

$=\,\, \sim A\,\,\vee \sim B\vee B$

$= t$

2. The Boolean expression $\sim\left ( p\vee q \right )\vee \left ( \sim p\vee q \right )$ is equivalent to 

1. $\sim q$

2. $\sim p$

3. $p$

4. $q$

Ans: (b)

$\Rightarrow \,\,\sim \left ( p\vee q \right )\vee \left ( \sim p\wedge q \right )$

$= \left ( \sim p\,\,\wedge \sim q \right )\vee \left ( \sim p\wedge q \right )$

$=\sim p\wedge \left ( \sim q\wedge q \right )$

$=\,\,\sim p$

3. The statement $\sim \left ( p\leftrightarrow \,\sim q \right )$ is 

1. equivalent to $p\leftrightarrow q$

2. equivalent to $\sim p\leftrightarrow q$

3. a tautology 

4. a fallacy

Ans: (a)

Practice Question:

1. $\sim\left ( p\vee \left ( \sim p\vee q \right ) \right )$ is equal to

1. $\sim p\wedge \left ( p\,\,\wedge \sim q \right )$

2. $\left ( p\,\,\wedge \sim q \right )\vee \sim p$

3. $\left ( p\,\,\vee \sim q \right )\vee \sim p$

4. None of these

2. $\left ( p\,\,\wedge \sim q \right )\wedge \left ( \sim p\wedge q \right )$ is 

1. A tautology

2. A contradiction

3. Neither a tautology nor a contradiction

4. None of these

3. If $p\to \left ( q\vee r \right )$ is false, then the truth values of p, q and r are, respectively

1. T, T, F

2. F, F, F

3. F, T, T

4. T, F, F

Answer: 

1. (a)

2. (b)

3. (d) 

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Conclusion:

In this chapter, we have elaborated on concepts and solutions to questions on the topic of Mathematical reasoning.  Everything you're looking for is available in a single location. Students can carefully read through the Concepts, Definitions, and questions in the PDFs, which are also free to download and understand the concepts used to solve these questions. This will be extremely beneficial to the students in their exams.

Study Materials for Mathematical Reasoning:

These study materials will aid you in comprehending Mathematical Reasoning, ensuring a solid foundation for further mathematical pursuits.

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