Armstrong's axioms
Okay kiddo, so imagine you have a bunch of boxes. Each box contains some information about things. Like one box might say "dogs have fur" and another box might say "cats have whiskers".
Now, sometimes we want to combine the information from different boxes. So we might take the box about dogs and the box about cats and put them together. But we have to be careful!
We don't want to accidentally create conflicting information. Like if we combined the boxes and it said "dogs have fur" and "dogs don't have fur" at the same time. That doesn't make sense!
This is where Armstrong's Axioms come in. They are like rules that help us make sure we don't accidentally create conflicting information.
One of the axioms says that if two boxes have information in common, we can combine them and still only have one box with that shared information. So if we have one box that says "dogs have four legs" and another box that says "mammals have four legs", we can combine them and get a new box that says "dogs and mammals have four legs".
Another axiom says that if some boxes have the same information, we can remove one of those boxes and still have all the same information left. So if we have one box that says "dogs have fur" and another box that also says "dogs have fur", we can get rid of one of those boxes and still know that dogs have fur.
These axioms help us make sure we combine our boxes of information in a way that makes sense and doesn't give us conflicting or redundant information. And that's important when we want to understand things clearly and make good decisions based on what we know!
Now, sometimes we want to combine the information from different boxes. So we might take the box about dogs and the box about cats and put them together. But we have to be careful!
We don't want to accidentally create conflicting information. Like if we combined the boxes and it said "dogs have fur" and "dogs don't have fur" at the same time. That doesn't make sense!
This is where Armstrong's Axioms come in. They are like rules that help us make sure we don't accidentally create conflicting information.
One of the axioms says that if two boxes have information in common, we can combine them and still only have one box with that shared information. So if we have one box that says "dogs have four legs" and another box that says "mammals have four legs", we can combine them and get a new box that says "dogs and mammals have four legs".
Another axiom says that if some boxes have the same information, we can remove one of those boxes and still have all the same information left. So if we have one box that says "dogs have fur" and another box that also says "dogs have fur", we can get rid of one of those boxes and still know that dogs have fur.
These axioms help us make sure we combine our boxes of information in a way that makes sense and doesn't give us conflicting or redundant information. And that's important when we want to understand things clearly and make good decisions based on what we know!