I know Emily posted a new entry about this, but I thought I would put it right next to your question.
Boolean opperators are used in searching. You can use them in the major search engines (Google, yahoo, etc) or in Pro quest type places as well. They are usually "and" "or" and "not"
"or" will give you the most results, essentially two searches ie: cats OR dogs
"and" will limit your serach results to hits with both the words cats AND dogs
"not" will give you the fewest, but has to be used in certain contexts. it will give you one and the other can't appear there as well cats NOT dogs
Hope that helps, it'll probably be on the Praxis, I know I had a couple of study questions about it.
I'm a bit curious about Boolean also. I know what it is but I don't know how to use it effectively. How can I teach it if I don't know it well myself? Is this something that we might get some practice with...or did we do it last summer and I have completely spaced it out? That is ALWAYS a possibility with me.
One simple way to practice boolean with our students (or ourselves if we need it) is to use Venn diagrams to show what it means... Please know this is pretty simplistic, but it gets the idea across.
Say you have your Venn with one circle being cats and the other, oh, lets say it is horses.
If you search for "4 legs and teeth" the center section would be filled, showing the results would include both horses and cats (yes other things could fit that too, but again this keeps it simple).
If you searched for "4 legs NOT house pet" only the section that was just for cats would be filled.
If you searched for "whiskers or mane" you would have everything but the center filled in.
3 comments:
I know Emily posted a new entry about this, but I thought I would put it right next to your question.
Boolean opperators are used in searching. You can use them in the major search engines (Google, yahoo, etc) or in Pro quest type places as well. They are usually "and" "or" and "not"
"or" will give you the most results, essentially two searches
ie: cats OR dogs
"and" will limit your serach results to hits with both the words
cats AND dogs
"not" will give you the fewest, but has to be used in certain contexts. it will give you one and the other can't appear there as well
cats NOT dogs
Hope that helps, it'll probably be on the Praxis, I know I had a couple of study questions about it.
I'm a bit curious about Boolean also. I know what it is but I don't know how to use it effectively. How can I teach it if I don't know it well myself? Is this something that we might get some practice with...or did we do it last summer and I have completely spaced it out? That is ALWAYS a possibility with me.
One simple way to practice boolean with our students (or ourselves if we need it) is to use Venn diagrams to show what it means... Please know this is pretty simplistic, but it gets the idea across.
Say you have your Venn with one circle being cats and the other, oh, lets say it is horses.
If you search for "4 legs and teeth" the center section would be filled, showing the results would include both horses and cats (yes other things could fit that too, but again this keeps it simple).
If you searched for "4 legs NOT house pet" only the section that was just for cats would be filled.
If you searched for "whiskers or mane" you would have everything but the center filled in.
Amy
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