Boolean algebra

Boolean algebra (or Boolean logic) is a logical calculus of truth values, developed by George Boole in the 1840s. It resembles the algebra of real numbers, but with the numeric operations of multiplication xy, addition x + y, and negation &minus;x replaced by the respective logical operations of conjunction x∧y, disjunction x∨y, and complement ¬x. The Boolean operations are these and all other operations that can be built from these, such as x∧(y∨z). These turn out to coincide with the set of all operations on the set {0,1} that take only finitely many arguments; there are 22 n such operations when there are n arguments.