What Is Boolean Logic?
You may have come across the term ‘Boolean logic’ at some point in your career and wondered, what is Boolean logic, exactly? You may be expecting a complicated answer to the question, but you'll be surprised at how interesting and easy to comprehend it is.
Boolean logic began as a tool for mathematics, then evolved into something we use in our daily lives, sometimes without even realizing it.
Don't you ever wonder how you get accurate results when you type gold-striped black bags into a search engine? Or how do marketers categorize target audiences while dealing with massive amounts of data?
Buckle up, you're about to get a behind-the-scenes look at what Boolean logic has to do with those questions.
What Is Boolean Logic?
Boolean algebra is a branch of logical mathematics that portrays logical relationships between variables. It analyses and categorizes variables as true or false.
This algebra model was named after its creator, the self-taught English mathematician George Boole. In 1847, George proposed the basic rules of Boolean logic. Later, other mathematicians expanded on these foundations to accommodate more theories.
Simply put, Boolean logic has three main operators, which are "AND," "OR," and "NOT." These operators help us in channeling our digital requests in a form that helps us get relevant results.
In other words, it's a method of breaking down large amounts of data into smaller categories that match our criteria.
Thus, Boolean logic is regarded as a basic concept in computer science, search engines, and key programming languages.
It also became an extremely useful tool for marketers, researchers, and a variety of other professions.
How Does “And” Help You Be More Specific?
In Boolean logic, the “AND” operator helps in obtaining more definitive results. It primarily works by matching data to all of your conditions.
While it works on specifying the results, it filters out anything that doesn’t match what you've entered in your phrase.
Assume you're creating a target audience and want to reach out to people who share certain interests. Reading, traveling, and sports are the most common of these interests.
To reach this audience, enter the following information: reading “AND” traveling “AND” sports. In exchange, users who meet all of those criteria will be introduced to your products. However, if a user doesn't meet one of these criteria, he won't reach your target audience.
You can include “AND” as many times as you want for greater precision!
Let's say you want to reach female runners between the ages of 25 and 45 who own pets. If you enter: females “AND” running “AND” ages 25-45 “AND” pet owners, then anyone that checks all of these points will appear in your target audience.
How Does "OR" Expand Your Options?
Moving on to the second operator that can help you increase your results, "OR." This operator indicates that you have a candidate if one of your conditions is met.
The way the “OR” operator categorizes data is less specific than the “AND.” Basically, the more conditions are met, the more your results will expand.
For instance, if you want to reach people who like pop, country, or rock music, use the “OR” operator as follows: pop “OR” country “OR” rock music.
If a user listens to or searches for any of those music genres, he will appear as one of your target audiences.
How Does “Not” Help You Eliminate Possibilities?
You now can probably anticipate what the "NOT" operator means. You're correct if you expected it excludes specific categories from your results. The “NOT” operator disqualifies the conditions you specify in your phrase.
Suppose you want to create a target audience of swimmers who are above the age of 18. “NOT” should be used in such situations as follows: swimmers NOT ages 1-18. By doing so, anyone that's under the age of 18 won't make it to your target audience.
How Does Boolean Logic Work in Digital Circuits?
In this section, we’ll explain how Boolean logic became the foundation of digital circuits. There are logic gates in circuits, which are devices that serve as building blocks.
They’re in charge of performing logical functions in digital circuits such as those found in tablets, phones, and memory devices.
These logic gates make decisions based on the signals that they receive from their inputs. Most logic gates have two inputs and one output.
Since logic gates are based on Boolean logic, their terminals are one of two binary conditions. These conditions are either true, denoted by a 1, or false, denoted by a 0.
The binary output is determined by the logic circuit used as well as the combination of inputs. Consider the logic gate to be a light switch, where an input gives signals to turn off in the form of 0 and signals to turn on in the form of 1.
You may be wondering by now, what's the role of "AND," "OR," and "NOT" in such circuits? Actually, the logic gates are created using these operators.
"AND" Gate
Similar to what has been explained above, both input conditions must match in order to produce the desired output. This means that if both inputs are true, the output will be true. If one of the inputs is false, the output is also false.
"OR" Gate
The output of the "OR" gate is true if both or one of the inputs is true. As a result, if one input is true and the other is false, the output will be true.
"NOT" Gate
The "NOT" gate is referred to as a logic inverter. This gate only accepts one input and reverses its logic state. If the input is false, the output will be true. Similarly, if the input is true, the output will be false.
Conclusion
The answer to the question "What is Boolean logic?" is illuminating. The more you explore it, the more you discover how it relates to almost everything in our lives.
Even if you don't use Boolean logic in your line of work, you most likely use it every single day when making decisions.
Just think about how you make specific decisions using "AND," how you eliminate opportunities using "NOT," and how you increase them using "OR."