Ask HN: Recommendations for Learning Logical Reasoning? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recommendations for Learning Logical Reasoning?

12 pointssupz_k16 comments

I think logical reasoning is a great skill to develop. Do you have any recommendations for books/blogs/tutorials online?

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I found this course to be a nice intro: https://www.coursera.org/learn/logic-introduction

Unlike a lot of Coursera courses, the course is a series of interactive (mostly text) pages and some multiple-choice questions. In something like this, where sometimes you can breeze through, and sometimes you need to take a few minutes, I really like that.

Depends on what is meant by learning logical reasoning.

Raymond Smullyan has a bunch of puzzle books that are easily approachable, and some more formal books.

George Polya has a book called "How to Solve It."

There's a great graphic novel "Logicomix" that can give a good introduction to people involved in analytic philosophy.

Thanks for the all resources. I'm mainly looking for a mathematics-based approach. "How to solve it" looks promising. Thanks.

Super Thinking: The big book of mental models, Weinberg and McCann

Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke

How to Decide, Annie Duke

Asking the right question: A guide to critical thinking, Browne & Keeley

Thinking in Systems, Meadows

A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston

My computer science education included CS philosophy where a.o. this was a course text.

Thank you.

I am not quite sure what are you looking for specifically, but if you are looking for a good book that teaches critical thinking from the academic philosophy perspective focusing on arguments, rhetoric and logic, I highly recommend the book "Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide" by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp. Only 300 pages of well written text (IMO). Hope this helps, and if not...it is still a quite useful and good book.

Math is still the best, most direct and fastest route towards your goal that I know of. Here below is a nice free book:

https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/

In fact any intro to discrete math, real analysis, abstract algebra, number theory,..., or combinatorics book would work.

I would specifically single out geometry, for its axiomatic nature.

I wholeheartedly second this advice.

Thanks! That makes sense.

I would recommend the book, Introduction to Logic by Irving M Copi and others. It has a large number of interesting exercises too.

Another choice would be the book, 'The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric : Understanding the Nature and Function of Language' by Sister Miriam Joseph.

This site has the ultimate guide for self-learning logic: https://www.logicmatters.net/tyl/ (TYL: Teach Yourself Logic)

CS157 (Computational Logic) at Stanford has made all its lectures etc. public. You can find it here: http://intrologic.stanford.edu/stanford/index.php

I attended the course - and learned a lot!

One of the best introductions:

https://forallx.openlogicproject.org/forallxyyc.pdf

Highly recommended. Also provides good preparation if you want to go on to study topics like non-standard logic and automated proof systems.

If you want to extend this topic of reasoning, try Erik Angne’s Course in Behavioral Economics

https://www.amazon.com/Course-Behavioral-Economics-Erik-Angn...

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