Intro Logic Books (differences between Peter Smith, J.J. Smith and P.Teller)

[renkov]

I want to get started with FOL and decided to get through some very basic book first.
Currently looking at:
A Modern Formal Logic Primer - Teller
An Introduction to Formal Logic - P.Smith
Logic: The Laws of Truth - J.J. Smith

These 3 books are frequently recommended I just don't know which one is more appropriate for someone who already have read Lang's Basic Mathematics and gone through some basic Calculus.
Is some of these more math oriented or I should just pick whatever?

Thanks in advance.

 

[SSequence]

I want to get started with FOL and decided to get through some very basic book first.
Currently looking at:
A Modern Formal Logic Primer - Teller
An Introduction to Formal Logic - P.Smith
Logic: The Laws of Truth - J.J. Smith

I guess I can give an (incomplete) opinion on this. I haven't heard about the third book.

I have gone through the first-half of the first book in quote (that was more than 5 years ago). It is written in a terse and easy to understand style, so I think that might be good for a first one. I think I should have gone through the second-half of book too (which I didn't), since I stopped reading on first sign of difficulty. This wasn't a good idea I think because all the other introduction of predicate logic that I have tried to go through (since then) seem to be harder than one in this book (and hence I had to stop reading).

But I think due to brevity for a more comprehensive coverage one would definitely need to cover at least one more book with similar title (but somewhat more advanced coverage). For a first pass, the book above should be fine. Another good book similar to first one is http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytbu/forallxcam.pdf, which I found recently. The coverage is, again, slightly terse.

The second book (in quote) is also probably an easy read (easier compared to many other books with similar title). But I think it might have a lot of text. You would probably need to take significantly more time to read.

So both of the first two books should be fine I think (both seem to be introductory books on similar level). It partly depends on how much time you want to spend.

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I do think I should mention one thing. I feel that logic can be a bit difficult to internalize (perhaps unless you keep at it continuously for a long time?). Maybe this is true for lot of other topics too.

That's why it might be a good idea to make notes while learning (from any book). Otherwise there is a good chance that one would forget it very fast. At least that was the case for me (my retention isn't good). I think I forgot what I learned (five years ago) pretty fast (even when I did all the exercises etc.). With notes at least I would know that I could get back to remembering things much quicker.