Truth tables date back as far as 1902 to logician Charles Sanders Peirce, who used them as a method to display algebraic logic. Truth tables have evolved over the years. As more people rely on them to represent logical outcomes, they have become more useful in other fields, and are now instrumental in business process and automation.
What Is a Truth Table?
A truth table is essentially a rule represented as a table. However, there is more to these tables than just this basic definition. They are a way to represent information and the logical flow of what input data does next.
Truth tables are built into Excel like tables complete with rows and columns. At the top of the table, in the column headers, are the conditions that the rule is based on expressed in a noun/verb structure.
For example, if you were to create a truth table that was pulling the type of car from a list of automobile manufacturers, you may have a column with a heading that reads “CarType In List.” “CarType” would be the noun and “Contains” would be the verb. The rows below this would then express the different types of cars. It is important to note that a truth table has the ability to compare all of the possible combinations from multiple inputs; it is not limited to the input from one single column.
This helps businesses by allowing the truth table to close the loop with an output. The last column in a truth table expresses the output after collecting the data from the input or inputs. The output may be another piece of data or it may be the instructions for what type of action to take by calling a flow. Just as they have the ability to handle multiple inputs, truth tables have the ability to return more than one outcome.
Key Tricks for Building Truth Tables
Traditional truth tables’ reliance on math may make it a bit difficult to put into a business perspective. However, when you look to truth tables as a way to determine logical outcomes, it is easier to see how they are applied toward business and process automation. Thinking this way helps you understand some key tricks that will make creating and using truth tables easier so that you can leverage them to help your business process flows and automation.
