[ferreinm]

Unless you're in Honours Philosophy or going to Law school this is not a bird course. After the first test, half the class dropped the course. After the second test, 50% of the students were failing the course.

I'm a Philosophy major so I like to think (whatever that means). Logic gets really frustrating which makes it fun! It's fun to do in your spare time but not as a course. I was never exposed to Logic at all prior to taking this course. So when I saw ∀x(Ax → Bx) for the first time I knew I just blew $500 on a course that I was going to have to redo. Luckily, I passed... barely.

I strongly recommend taking the other philosophy courses and even Psychology 2H03 (Cognition) prior to taking Logic. Now if I were to re-do the course I'd get an A in it. You need to have some exposure to logic before doing it otherwise it's really overwhelming.

We were given 3 tests (you can drop the lowest one) and an exam. The exam was worth 50% and really hard. It wasn't cumulative and I wish it was. You don't learn how to do the first part until you get to the second test. If that doesn't make sense to you now it will when you're in the course. You don't learn it until after the test.

Dr. Vorobej was a good professor. He made it enjoyable. He made fun of us at times with things like, "I graded your tests can anyone think of a Shania Twain song that might reflect your grades?" People would start shouting out, "That don't impress me much" or "Up, up, up can only go up from here" knowing that we failed. I'm pretty sure I failed the test he was referring to as did most others.

It is a good course, just make sure you're ready for it.

This is my opinion of the course as a math major.

The first few weeks was review of basic logic, ie. and,or,not,implicatio n, biconditionals and truth tables. We also went over converting statements from English to logical notation and vice versa.

We later covered things like quantifiers and rules of inference.

The major focus of the course is derivations, which are actually fun when you get the hang of it. They're like solving puzzles.

The courses Computer Science 1FC3 or Math 1C03 would probably be useful to take before hand, but it is in no way necessary. The textbook and lectures were more than adequate to learn the material.

I thought Vorobej was amazing as a prof.

My only gripe with the course is that that it doesn't really explain the 'why' of what we're doing; they simply present methods and you are to learn them, even if you don't understand why they were developed in the first place.

In terms of easiness, I will say that I ended up with a 12 and I can count on my hands the number of lectures I attended. I think if you have a background in math, it shouldn't be very difficult as long as you study and try to keep up.

Anyone thinking of dropping this course anytime soon?

Hey will you please please be able to help me out with this course in your spare time?? i really need the help

has anyone taken this with with Dr Arthur?
How were the assignments/quizzes/exam weighed?

If you are interested in puzzles and problem solving I think you will find this course very intriguing. I took this course in the winter of 2013 with Dr Vorobej and I very much enjoyed his lectures. He is an excellent professor who made the content easy to understand. This is definitely the kind of class that you need to show up for. Even one lecture can throw you out of the loop. I found the lecture content to be very retainable, and i used the textbook to do the practice problems for the most part. Another good thing about this course is that it builds up on itself in such a way that if you understand the derivations for sentential logic, predicate logic will take you like one day to master, which is the latter third of the class.

The set up of the course was more than fair I would say. He gave out bonus marks and rescaled 2 tests as well as the exam.

A lot of people say that the mark distribution for this class is an inverted bell, and I agree. Either you get it, or you don't. With a little bit of effort and practice, this course may be very rewarding. Its really good prep for the logic games for the LSAT if thats why you want to take it.

This was the first philosophy course I ever took and despite the intimidating reviews I read, I went for it and it turned out to be one of my favourite courses at mac! So I would even recommend this as an elective, as it was for me.

So don't be intimidated ... i find the courses that i do best in are the most challenging and intriguing!!

This course really wasn't as bad as everyone made it seem.
Half the class did drop after the first few quizzes, but I think those were just the people too lazy to do the readings and only depended on lectures (which, I must admit, weren't really that helpful and lacked important details). Also, this is one of those courses where if you get lost along the way (even for just 1 chapter), you'll be clueless the rest of the course. I knew it would be difficult going into the course, though, so I made sure I really worked my butt off. I did make some silly mistakes along the way, though, but I ended up with an A-, and I'm not a Math major or anything.
I liked professor Arthur, too. He's a sweet guy, and even made accommodations for students who missed quizzes, didn't hand in their weekly assignments on time, etc. I wouldn't mind taking another course with him.