Talk:Well-formed formula
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|||||
| Mathematics rating: | Stub Class | Mid Priority | Field: Foundations, logic, and set theory | ||
| Please update this rating as the article progresses, or if the rating is inaccurate. Please also add comments to suggest improvements to the article. | |||||
[edit] don't you think...
Don't you think it'd be better that the article would be under the term "Well-formed formula" and that "WFF" will redirect to there?
[edit] Note
The pronunciation is amusing. I've never heard anyone pronounce it in any way other than "double-yoo eff eff". KSchutte 17:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WFF 'N PROOF
The Trivia is fairly accurate, but only fairly so. But even trivia deserves a respectable correspondence to reality, even if involves only trivia about trivia. First, the trade-marked name of the game is "WFF 'N PROOF", all upper-case. Second, "WFF" alone was never meant as the pun, whatever myths may have evolved to the contrary. Besides being the standard abbreviation in logic for "well-formed formula", "WFF" was the name adopted for a series of games dealing with the concept of "WFFhood" (or should that be "WFFship", or even "WFFness") that were created during the period when WFF 'N PROOF was evolving. There was an accompanying series of games created about the same time called the "PROOF" games that dealt with the concept of proof. I remember well what I believe to be the first utterance ever on planet earth of the term "WFF 'N PROOF". It occurred on a warm, sun-shiny afternoon in the Spring of 1960 on the back-yard lawn of a graduate law student named Charles Padden when the two of us were at Yale Law School. Charles had just popped a can of cold beer for my benefit, and handed it to me with the question, "So, how are the games coming along?" My response was, "Well, the WFF and PROOF games ... Oh, shit! we've given them the wrong names. They should be called "WFF 'N PROOF". That was the birth of the name of the first series of 24 games that dealt with 13 ideas: the concepts of WFF, PROOF, and 11 rule-of-inference schemas that formulate the basis of standard two-valued propositional logic in Jan Lukascieicz notation using the powerful subordinate-proof techniques of Frederic B. Fitch. So, clearly, it was the full name "WFF 'N PROOF" that was the intended pun with respect to the famous Yale singing group, the Whiffenpoofs. However, it did lead to some confusion during the period when we both had mail-boxes at the Yale Station postal facility. We somewhat frequently received each other's mail. I, who am tone deaf, remember well one delightful invitation to sing in Denver. -- Layman Allen18:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)18:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)18:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)18:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)18:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)18:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)~~
- This is going to sound like an annoying wikipedia response that favors sourcing over knowledge, but is this written down anywhere else? After all, we don't know you are who you say you are; it would be nice to see this fascinating discussion already existing elsehwere. (And I'm slightly confused: where did the idea of "WFFhood" come from, if not from the term well-founded formula? Is there another WFF?)
- As for the all-caps part, that's a topic of much debate in wikipedia and most media - just because a name is trademarked all capital letters does *not* mean it has to be written that way; the rules of English can still apply. But M*A*S*H and eBay and Yahoo! (with that damn exclamation mark) have muddied the waters on this so much that it's hard to be stringent any more, alas. - DavidWBrooks 19:36, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
