Truth table : Truth value of a compound statement constituting several statements

Definition Of Truth Table

Truth table is a table indicating the truth value of a compound statement constituting several statements. The statements are compounded by various connectives e.g. …… AND, OR & NEGATION etc. each one has a significance and therefore the truth of compound statement has to be considered taking these into considerations.

• A truth table has a number of columns and rows. The number of columns depends upon the number of constituent elements and how involved over their relationships. 

• The initial columns, two or three depending on the constituent statements. These give all possible combinations of the constituent statements.

• The remaining columns are the output columns giving the truth values of the compound statement as a function of certain relationship between constituent statements.

• The number of rows in a truth table is determined on the basis of the constituent statements. In case of 2 constituent statements, there are 4 rows and for 3 constituent statements, there are 8 rows.

The truth table is very useful in finding out the validity of an equivalence relation between function. For practical purpose, they help in designing and testing the electronic circuits to perform a given operation based on a certain relationship.