mathlogicconjunctive-normal-formboolean-algebra

Convert this logic sentence to Conjunctive Normal Form


I am struggling to convert this sentence to CNF:

(A ∨ B) ⇔ (C ∧ D).

I have already tried to use the Biconditional elimination logic rule to eliminate the ⇔.

(A ∨ B) → (C ∧ D) ∧ (C ∧ D) → (A ∨ B).

Then I eliminated the → with the Implication elimination logic rule. Now I have

¬(A ∨ B) ∨ (C ∧ D) ∧ ¬(C ∧ D) ∨ (A ∨ B).

I am pretty much stuck here. My professor says I should use Distributivity rule to reduce the sentence. I can't seem to find anything that matches the requirements of Distributivity rule. So, I can't seem to use Distributivity rule before doing some logical rule that I do not know of.

What am I missing here? Can Stack Overflow help me to resume the conversion to CNF?


Solution

  • You began with the expression:

    You tried to perform the first few steps. Here I added brackets to be clear and correct:


    Apply the De Morgan negation law to ¬(A ∨ B) and ¬(C ∧ D):

    Simplify the right half:

    The distributive law for ∨ over ∧ states that: X ∨ (Y ∧ Z) ⇔ (X ∨ Y) ∧ (X ∨ Z).

    We apply the law to the left half, with X = (¬A ∧ ¬B), Y = C, Z = D:

    Apply the distributive law to two subexpressions in the left half:

    Remove the extra brackets because ∧ is associative and commutative:

    Rearrange the variables, and we have our final formula in conjunctive normal form (CNF):