Assuming no previous study in logic, this informal yet rigorous text covers the material of a standard undergraduate first course in mathematical logic, using natural deduction and leading up to the completeness theorem for first-order logic. At each stage of the text, the reader is given an intuition based on standard mathematical practice, which is subsequently developed with clean formal mathematics. Alongside the practical examples, readers learn what can and can't be calculated; for example the correctness of a derivation proving a given sequent can be tested mechanically, but there is...

The theory of -trees has its origin in the work of Lyndon on length functions in groups. The first definition of an R-tree was given by Tits in 1977. The importance of -trees was established by Morgan and Shalen, who showed how to compactify a generalisation of Teichmuller space for a finitely generated group using R-trees. In that work they were led to define the idea of a L-tree, where is an arbitrary ordered abelian group. Since then there has been much progress in understanding the structure of groups acting on R-trees, notably Rips' theorem on free actions. There has also been some...

Assuming no previous study in logic, this informal yet rigorous text covers the material of a standard undergraduate first course in mathematical logic, using natural deduction and leading up to the completeness theorem for first-order logic. At each stage of the text, the reader is given an intuition based on standard mathematical practice, which is subsequently developed with clean formal mathematics. Alongside the practical examples, readers learn what can and can't be calculated; for example the correctness of a derivation proving a given sequent can be tested mechanically, but there is...