Where We Name Names

Hollie Hissam.

Jill Johnson

Kimberly Kosier

Sharon Souder

Melissa Miller

Stacy Schuettler

Cara Cardell

Jenna Jones

Andy Adkisson

Bo Boaz

Debbie Dunn

What do they have in common?

Their first names and their last names begin with the same letter. Which begs the question: what about their middle names? If we assign each of them a middle initial that is the same as their first and last names and total the letters in their adjusted names, then divide by the round of the tournament to be played next (i.e., the third, or 3), do you know what number you get?

You guessed it: 32.

Curiously, the law of the excluded middle [name] states that the formula "P ∨ ¬P" ("P or not-P") can be deduced from the calculus under investigation. It is one of the defining properties of classical systems of logic. However, some systems of logic have different but analogous laws, while others reject the law of excluded middle entirely. (This is what led to the creation of firm flow.)

The law is also known as the law (or principle) of the excluded third, or,in Latin: principium tertii exclusi. Yet another Latin designation for this law is Tertium non datur: "there is no third (possibility)". This is why have three identical initials for a monogram is so rare. The numerology here is frightening, no?

The law of excluded middle is related to the principle of bivalence, which is of course a semantic principle instead of a law that can be deduced from the calculus.

For some finite n-valued logics, there is an analogous law called the law of excluded n+1th. This is useful for understanding billing. But if the negation is cyclic and '∨' is a "max operator", then the law can be expressed in the object language by (P ∨ ~P ∨ ~~P ∨ ... ∨ ~...~P), where '~...~' represents n-1 negation signs and '∨ ... ∨' n-1 disjunction signs. It is easy to check that the sentence must receive at least one of the n truth values (and not a value that is not one of the n).

So you see, this helps us to understand why no one is 32d place in the pool.