Lesson 1: Introduction and Preliminaries

Defining discrete mathematics is hard because defining mathematics is hard. What is

mathematics? The study of numbers? In part, but you also study functions and lines and triangles
and parallelepipeds and vectors and . . . . Or perhaps you want to say that mathematics is a
collection of tools that allow you to solve problems. What sort of problems? Okay, those that involve
numbers, functions, lines, triangles, . . . . Whatever your conception of what mathematics is, try
applying the concept of “discrete” to it, as defined above. Some math fundamentally deals with stuff
that is individually separate and distinct. In an algebra or calculus class, you might have found a
particular set of numbers (maybe the set of numbers in the range of a function). You would
represent this set as an interval: [0, ∞) is the range of f (x) x2 since the set of outputs of the
function are all real numbers 0 and greater. This set of numbers is NOT discrete. The numbers in
the set are not separated by much at all. In fact, take any two numbers in the set and there are
infinitely many more between them which are also in the set. Discrete math could still ask about the
range of a function, but the set would not be an interval. Consider the function which gives the
number of children of each person reading this. What is the range? I’m guessing it is something like
{0, 1, 2, 3}. Maybe 4 is in there too. But certainly there is nobody reading this that has 1.32419
children. This output set is discrete because the elements are separate. The inputs to the function
also form a discrete set because each input is an individual person. One way to get a feel for the
subject is to consider the types of problems you solve in discrete math. Here are a few simple
examples:

Investigate!
Note: Throughout the lessons you will see Investigate! activities like this one. Answer the
questions in these as best you can to give yourself a feel for what is coming next.

1. The most popular mathematician in the world is throwing a party for all of his friends. As a way
to kick things off, they decide that everyone should shake hands. Assuming all 10 people at the
party each shake hands with every other person (but not themselves, obviously) exactly once, how
many handshakes take place?

2. At the warm-up event for Oscar’s All Star Hot Dog Eating Contest, Al ate one hot dog. Bob then
showed him up by eating three hot dogs. Not to be outdone, Carl ate five. This continued with each
contestant eating two more hot dogs than the previous contestant. How many hot dogs did Zeno
(the 26th and final contestant) eat? How many hot dogs were eaten all together?
3. After excavating for weeks, you finally arrive at the burial chamber. The room is empty except for
two large chests. On each is carved a message (strangely in English):

If this chest is This chest is filled

empty, then the with treasure or the
other chest’s other chest contains
message is true. deadly scorpions.

You know exactly one of these messages is true. What should you do?

4. Back in the days of yore, five small towns decided they wanted to build roads directly connecting
each pair of towns. While the towns had plenty of money to build roads as long and as winding as
they wished, it was very important that the roads not intersect with each other (as stop signs had
not yet been invented). Also, tunnels and bridges were not allowed. Is it possible for each of these
towns to build a road to each of the four other towns without creating any intersections?

(Attempt to answer the Investigate before proceeding)

One reason it is difficult to define discrete math is that it is a very broad description which
encapsulates a large number of subjects. In this course we will study four main topics: combinatorics
(the theory of ways things combine; in particular, how to count these ways), sequences, symbolic logic,
and graph theory. However, there are other topics that belong under the discrete umbrella, including
computer science, abstract algebra, number theory, game theory, probability, and geometry (some
of these, particularly the last two, have both discrete and non-discrete variants). Ultimately the best
way to learn what discrete math is about is to do it. Let’s get started! Before answering more
complicated (and fun) problems, reviewing mathematical statements, sets, and functions in the
framework of discrete mathematics.

Mathematical Statements
Investigate!

While walking through a fictional forest, you encounter three trolls guarding a bridge. Each
is either a knight, who always tells the truth, or a knave, who always lies. The trolls will not
let you pass until you correctly identify each as either a knight or a knave.
Each troll makes a single statement:
Troll 1: If I am a knave, then there are exactly two knights here.
Troll 2: Troll 1 is lying.
Troll 3: Either we are all knaves or at least one of us is a knight.
Which troll is which?
In order to do mathematics, it must be able to talk and write about mathematics. Perhaps your
experience with mathematics so far has mostly involved finding answers to problems. To embark
towards more advanced and abstract mathematics, writing will play a more prominent role in the
mathematical process. Communication in mathematics requires more precision than many other
subjects, and to consider the basic building blocks, which is the mathematical statements.

Atomic and Molecular Statements

A statement is any declarative sentence which is either true or false. A statement is atomic if it
cannot be divided into smaller statements, otherwise it is called molecular.

Example:

These are statements (in fact, atomic statements):

• Telephone numbers in the USA have 10 digits.

• The moon is made of cheese.
• 42 is a perfect square.
• Every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.
• 3 + 7 = 12

And these are not statements:

• Would you like some cake?

• The sum of two squares.
• 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + · · · + 2n + 1.
• Go to your room!
• 3 + x = 12

The reason the sentence “3 + x 12” is not a statement is that it contains a variable.
Depending on what x is, the sentence is either true or false, but right now it is neither. One way to
make the sentence into a statement is to specify the value of the variable in some way. This could be
done by specifying a specific substitution, for example, “3 + x 12 where x 9,” which is a true
statement. Or you could capture the free variable by quantifying over it, as in, “for all values of x, 3 +
x 12,” which is false. In the next lesson, will discuss quantifiers in more detail at the end of this
section. You can build more complicated (molecular) statements out of simpler (atomic or
molecular) ones using logical connectives. For example, this is a molecular statement:

Telephone numbers in the USA have 10 digits and 42 is a perfect square.

Note that we can break this down into two smaller statements. The two shorter statements are
connected by an “and.” We will consider 5 connectives: “and” (Sam is a man and Chris is a woman),
“or” (Sam is a man or Chris is a woman), “if. . . , then. . . ” (if Sam is a man, then Chris is a woman), “if
and only if” (Sam is a man if and only if Chris is a woman), and “not” (Sam is not a man). The first
four are called binary connectives (because they connect two statements) while “not” is an
example of a unary connective (since it applies to a single statement). These molecular statements
are of course still statements, so they must be either true or false. The absolutely key observation
here is that which truth value the molecular statement achieves is completely determined by the
type of connective and the truth values of the parts. We do not need to know what the parts actually
say, only whether those parts are true or false. So to analyze logical connectives, it is enough to
consider propositional variables (sometimes called sentential variables), usually capital letters in
the middle of the alphabet: P, Q, R, S, . . .. We think of these as standing in for (usually atomic)
statements, but there are only wo values the variables can achieve: true or false.1 We also have
symbols for the logical connectives: ∧, ∨, →, ↔, ¬.

Logical Connectives.
• P ∧ Q is read “P and Q,” and called a conjunction.
• P ∨ Q is read “P or Q,” and called a disjunction.
• P → Q is read “if P then Q,” and called an implication or conditional.
• P ↔ Q is read “P if and only if Q,” and called a biconditional.
• ¬P is read “not P,” and called a negation.

The truth value of a statement is determined by the truth value(s) of its part(s), depending on the
connectives:

Truth Conditions for Connectives.

• P ∧ Q is true when both P and Q are true
• P ∨ Q is true when P or Q or both are true.
• P → Q is true when P is false or Q is true or both.
• P ↔ Q is true when P and Q are both true, or both false.
• ¬P is true when P is false.

Note that for us, or is the inclusive or (and not the sometimes used exclusive or) meaning
that P ∨Q is in fact true when both P and Q are true. As for the other connectives, “and” behaves as
you would expect, as does negation. The biconditional (if and only if) might seem a little strange,
but you should think of this as saying the two parts of the statements are equivalent in that they
have the same truth value. This leaves only the conditional P → Q which has a slightly different
meaning in mathematics than it does in ordinary usage. However, implications are so common and
useful in mathematics, that we must develop fluency with their use, and as such, they deserve their
own subsection.
Implications

An implication or conditional is a molecular statement of the form P → Q where P and Q

are statements. We say that
• P is the hypothesis (or antecedent).
• Q is the conclusion (or consequent).

An implication is true provided P is false or Q is true (or both), and false otherwise. In
particular, the only way for P → Q to be false is for P to be true and Q to be false.

Easily the most common type of statement in mathematics is the implication. Even statements that
do not at first look like they have this form conceal an implication at their heart. Consider the
Pythagorean Theorem. Many a college freshman would quote this theorem as “a2 +b2 c2.” This
is absolutely not correct. For one thing, that is not a statement since it has three variables in it.
Perhaps they imply that this should be true for any values of the variables? So 12+ 52= 22??? How
can we fix this? Well, the equation is true as long as a and b are the legs or a right triangle and c is
the hypotenuse. In other words:
If a and b are the legs of a right triangle with hypotenuse c, then a2 + b2 = c2.

This is a reasonable way to think about implications: our claim is that the conclusion (“then”
part) is true, but on the assumption that the hypothesis (“if” part) is true. We make no claim about
the conclusion in situations when the hypothesis is false. (Note: However, note that in the case of
the Pythagorean Theorem, it is also the case that if a2 + b2 = c2, then a and b are the legs of a right
triangle with hypotenuse c. So , it can also expressed this theorem as a biconditional: “a and b are
the legs of a right triangle with hypotenuse c if and only if a2 + b2 = c2.”)

Still, it is important to remember that an implication is a statement, and therefore is either

true or false. The truth value of the implication is determined by the truth values of its two parts. To
agree with the usage above, we say that an implication is true either when the hypothesis is false, or
when the conclusion is true. This leaves only one way for an implication to be false: when the
hypothesis is true and the conclusion is false.
Example:

1. Consider the statement:

If Bob gets a 90 on the final, then Bob will pass the class.

This is definitely an implication: P is the statement “Bob gets a 90 on the final,” and
Q is the statement “Bob will pass the class.” Suppose I made that statement to Bob. In what
circumstances would it be fair to call me a liar? What if Bob really did get a 90 on the final,
and he did pass the class? Then I have not lied; my statement is true. However, if Bob did get
a 90 on the final and did not pass the class, then I lied, making the statement false. The
tricky case is this: what if Bob did not get a 90 on the final? Maybe he passes the class,
maybe he doesn’t. Did I lie in either case? I think not. In these last two cases, P was false, and
the statement P → Q was true. In the first case, Q was true, and so was P → Q. So P → Q is
true when either P is false or Q is true.

Just to be clear, although we sometimes read P → Q as “P implies Q”, we are not insisting
that there is some causal relationship between the statements P and Q. In particular, if you claim
that P → Q is false, you are not saying that P does not imply Q, but rather that P is true and Q is false.

2. Decide which of the following statements are true and which are false. Briefly explain.
1. If 1 1, then most horses have 4 legs.
2. If 0 1, then 1 1.
3. If 8 is a prime number, then the 7624th digit of π is an 8.
4. If the 7624th digit of π is an 8, then 2 + 2 = 4.

Solution. All four of the statements are true. Remember, the only way for an implication
to be false is for the if part to be true and the then part to be false.

1. Here both the hypothesis and the conclusion are true, so the implication is true. It
does not matter that there is no meaningful connection between the true
mathematical fact and the fact about horses.
2. Here the hypothesis is false and the conclusion is true, so the implication is true.
3. I have no idea what the 7624th digit of π is, but this does not matter. Since the
hypothesis is false, the implication is automatically true.
4. Similarly here, regardless of the truth value of the hypothesis,
the conclusion is true, making the implication true.

It is important to understand the conditions under which an implication is true not only to
decide whether a mathematical statement is true, but in order to prove that it is. Proofs might seem
scary (especially if you have had a bad high school geometry experience) but all we are really doing
is explaining (very carefully) why a statement is true. If you understand the truth conditions for an
implication, you already have the outline for a proof.

Direct Proofs of Implications

To prove an implication P → Q, it is enough to assume P, and from it, deduce Q. Perhaps a

better way to say this is that to prove a statement of the form P → Q directly, you must explain why
Q is true, but you get to assume P is true first. After all, you only care about whether Q is true in the
case that P is as well.

There are other techniques to prove statements (implications and others) that we will
encounter throughout our studies, and new proof techniques are discovered all the time. Direct
proof is the easiest and most elegant style of proof and has the advantage that such a proof often
does a great job of explaining why the statement is true.

Example:

Prove: If two numbers a and b are even, then their sum a + b is even.

Solution.

Proof. Suppose the numbers a and b are even. This means that a =2k and b =2j for some integers k
and j. The sum is then a + b=2k + 2j =2(k + j). Since k + j is an integer, this means that a + b is even.

Notice that since we get to assume the hypothesis of the implication, we immediately have a
place to start. The proof proceeds essentially by repeatedly asking and answering, “what does that
mean?” Eventually, we conclude that it means the conclusion.

This sort of argument shows up outside of math as well. If you ever found yourself starting an
argument with “hypothetically, let’s assume . . . ,” then you have attempted a direct proof of your
desired conclusion.

An implication is a way of expressing a relationship between two statements. It is often

interesting to ask whether there are other relationships between the statements. Here we introduce
some common language to address this question.
Converse and Contrapositive

• The converse of an implication P → Q is the implication Q →P. The converse is NOT logically
equivalent to the original implication. That is, whether the converse of an implication is true is
independent of the truth of the implication.
• The contrapositive of an implication P → Q is the statement ¬Q → ¬P. An implication and its
contrapositive are logically equivalent (they are either both true or both false).

Mathematics is overflowing with examples of true implications which have a false converse. If
a number greater than 2 is prime, then that number is odd. However, just because a number is odd
does not mean it is prime. If a shape is a square, then it is a rectangle. But it is false that if a shape is
a rectangle, then it is a square.

However, sometimes the converse of a true statement is also true. For example, the
Pythagorean theorem has a true converse: if a2 + b2 =c2, then the triangle with sides a, b, and c is a
right triangle. Whenever you encounter an implication in mathematics, it is always reasonable to
ask whether the converse is true.

The contrapositive, on the other hand, always has the same truth value as its original
implication. This can be very helpful in deciding whether an implication is true: often it is easier to
analyze the contrapositive.

Example:

True or false: If you draw any nine playing cards from a regular deck, then you will have at least
three cards all of the same suit. Is the converse true?

Solution. True. The original implication is a little hard to analyze because there are so many
different combinations of nine cards. But consider the contrapositive: If you don’t have at least
three cards all of the same suit, then you don’t have nine cards. It is easy to see why this is true: you
can at most have two cards of each of the four suits, for a total of eight cards (or fewer).
The converse: If you have at least three cards all of the same suit, then you have nine cards.
This is false. You could have three spades and nothing else. Note that to demonstrate that the
converse (an implication) is false, we provided an example where the hypothesis is true (you do
have three cards of the same suit), but where the conclusion is false (you do not have nine cards).
 Understanding converses and contrapositives can help understand implications and their
truth values:

Example:

Suppose I tell Sue that if she gets a 93% on her final, then she will get an A in the class.
Assuming that what I said is true, what can you conclude in the following cases:
1. Sue gets a 93% on her final.
2. Sue gets an A in the class.
3. Sue does not get a 93% on her final.
4. Sue does not get an A in the class.

Solution. Note first that whenever P → Q and P are both true statements, Q must be true as well. For
this problem, take P to mean “Sue gets a 93% on her final” and Q to mean “Sue will get an A in the
class.”
1. We have P → Q and P, so Q follows. Sue gets an A.
2. You cannot conclude anything. Sue could have gotten the A because she did extra credit for
example. Notice that we do not know that if Sue gets an A, then she gets a 93% on her final. That is
the converse of the original implication, so it might or might not be true.
3. The contrapositive of the converse of P → Q is ¬P → ¬Q, which states that if Sue does not get
a 93% on the final, then she will not get an A in the class. But this does not follow from the original
implication. Again, we can conclude nothing. Sue could have done extra credit.
4. What would happen if Sue does not get an A but did get a 93% on the final? Then P would be
true and Q would be false. This makes the implication P → Q false! It must be that Sue did not get a
93% on the final. Notice now we have the implication ¬Q → ¬P which is the contrapositive of P → Q.
Since P → Q is assumed to be true, we know ¬Q → ¬P is true as well.

As we said above, an implication is not logically equivalent to its converse, but it is possible
that both the implication and its converse are true. In this case, when both P → Q and Q → P are true,
we say that P and Q are equivalent and write P ↔ Q. This is the biconditional we mentioned earlier.

If and only if

P ↔ Q is logically equivalent to (P → Q) ∧ (Q → P).

Example:

Given an integer n, it is true that n is even if and only if n2 is even. That is, if n is even, then n2 is
even, as well as the converse: if n2 is even, then n is even.

You can think of “if and only if” statements as having two parts: an implication and its
converse. We might say one is the “if” part, and the other is the “only if” part. Also sometimes say
that “if and only if” statements have two directions: a forward direction (P → Q) and
a backwards direction (P ← Q, which is really just sloppy notation for Q → P).
Let’s think a little about which part is which. Is P → Q the “if” part or the “only if” part?
Consider an example.

Example:

Suppose it is true that I sing if and only if I’m in the shower. We know this means both that if
I sing, then I’m in the shower, and also the converse, that if I’m in the shower, then I sing. Let P be
the statement, “I sing,” and Q be, “I’m in the shower.” So P → Q is the statement “if I sing, then I’m in
the shower.” Which part of the if and only if statement is this?
What we are really asking for is the meaning of “I sing if I’m in the shower” and “I sing only if
I’m in the shower.” When is the first one (the “if” part) false? When I am in the shower but not
singing. That is the same condition on being false as the statement “if I’m
in the shower, then I sing.” So the “if” part is Q → P. On the other hand, to say, “I sing only if I’m in
the shower” is equivalent to saying “if I sing, then I’m in the shower,” so the “only if” part is
P → Q.

It is not terribly important to know which part is the “if” or “only if” part, but this does
illustrate something very, very important: there are many ways to state an implication!

Example:

Rephrase the implication, “if I dream, then I am asleep” in as many different ways as possible.
Then do the same for the converse.

Solution. The following are all equivalent to the original implication:

1. I am asleep if I dream.
2. I dream only if I am asleep.
3. In order to dream, I must be asleep.
4. To dream, it is necessary that I am asleep.
5. To be asleep, it is sufficient to dream.
6. I am not dreaming unless I am asleep.

The following are equivalent to the converse (if I am asleep, then I dream):
1. I dream if I am asleep.
2. I am asleep only if I dream.
3. It is necessary that I dream in order to be asleep.
4. It is sufficient that I be asleep in order to dream.
5. If I don’t dream, then I’m not asleep.
Necessary and Sufficient.

• “P is necessary for Q” means Q → P.

• “P is sufficient for Q” means P → Q.
• If P is necessary and sufficient for Q, then P ↔ Q.