(A′)′ = A — Boolean algebra laws

exam standardinvolution / double negation

Answer

verified equivalent (both sides → A)

Why this example is worth doing

Double negation, the shortest law on the page and the one that quietly does the most work. Every De Morgan manipulation ends by cancelling a pair of bubbles, and the bubble-pushing technique used on the gate diagram pages is nothing but involution applied graphically: two inversions on the same wire annihilate. The page draws that equivalence between the algebra and the schematic explicitly, because students who have learned bubble pushing as a drawing trick often do not connect it to a law they already know.

Try your own input in the Boolean laws & theorems. Every law, both duals, each with a truth-table proof you can check.

How the answer is reached

The law

A′′ABoth sides have the same truth table over the union of their variables.

Truth table

Truth table — columns #, A, F
#AF
000
111

Compare with

Open the Boolean laws & theorems

This input is entered in the tool itself — it is too rich for a link to carry.

Note:

Notation this page assumes

  • Symbols: · is AND, + is OR, ⊕ is XOR, a prime or an overline is NOT. The field also takes ∧ ∨ ¬ ~ ! & | and the words.
  • Operator precedence, tightest first: NOT, then AND (including juxtaposition), then XOR/XNOR, then NAND/NOR, then OR, then IMPLIES, then IFF.
  • In a minterm index the first variable is the most significant bit, so over [A, B, C] minterm 5 is A·B̄·C.

Sources

  • Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854)
  • Shannon, “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits” (1938)