If I help you get an A in math, then you will give me ten thousand
dollars. I like this statement. Do you? You might be laughing and saying
to yourself 'yeah right,' but in the mathematical world of logic, this
statement holds true just because of the way it is written. A statement
like this is called a conditional statement because it has an
if-then structure. All conditional statements say something like, 'If
this happens, then that will occur.' Do you see how the statement I made
to you earlier fits the if-then structure?
You can make
conditional statements from anything you can think of as long as you
have the if-then structure. Let's look at these examples.
If Carlos gets a car, then Lily's dog will be trained.
If Sam eats chocolate ice cream, then Judy eats double chocolate ice cream.
If a square is a rectangle, then a rectangle is a quadrilateral.
Notice how all of these are structured the same. All of them start with an 'if' part followed by a 'then' part.
