I wish I had read these reviews before I chose this unit. At first it seems really interesting and common sense, but after a few weeks it gets much harder to follow with very little support. The assessments are much harder than the content and practice exercises you're given and often have components that weren't in the materials. The problem set, which is worth 30% of the grade, has very little in it that you get taught in the unit and seems like a totally unfair assessment of learning. This will bring down your GPA, stay away!

Undoubtably a challenging unit. Formal logic has been a part of the philosophical tradition for a very long time now. That said, contemporary literature has challenged its perceived importance, arguing that formal logic is no more central to philosophy than decision theory and statistical reasoning—subjects which are often ignored in academic philosophy. However, the unit is not terrible. There’s a certain satisfaction one gets from solving logic problems and mapping huge truth trees that take up a whole A3 sheet of paper (as long as one gets the correct answer!). If you’re an independent student who is self-motivated, you shouldn’t have any problems keeping up with the content, and a good grade in this unit will be something you can be really proud of.

The title of this unit is misleading and deceptive. There is nothing in the content on defeating your foes with reasoning, you will learn the theory of propositional and predicate logic which has very little practical applications. The unit is not taught, so you will have to learn independently with very little help. It is not recommended as a broadening unit unless you really know what you are getting involved with.

I did the summer school version of the unit, and most of the time I was stressed about it. Just when you think you had a grasp on what was happening within the unit, the quiz questions would completely throw you off. When you got to the exam, it was even harder. It has potential to be a really interesting unit, just the way they go about teaching it really puts you down.

I really enjoyed this unit up until the exam. I would have prefered face to face lectures, it does seem a bit slack that they have you simply rewatching past lectures. Attending the tutorials is an absolute must and the problems require a fair amount of time and practice to become proficient. It would be a hard unit to go alone so it would be best to pair up with someone from the beginning to nut out problems together. The exam was killer, almost nothing in the lectures prepares you for the complexity you will face in the exam. After doing the problem sets and weekly quizzes I had a grade of 98% then went into the exam and encountered a component that was given a total of about two minutes attention in the lectures but made up about 30% of the exam. I’ve never been so frustrated, I literally felt sick leaving that exam, I felt like I totally bombed. I only just managed to scrape in a D.

This unit is so lacking in teaching. Sam has put in the least amount of work possible. Only teaches you the very basics and apart from weekly tests that are worth almost nothing, the assessments are more complicated than anything you will be shown, around 20% of questions are deliberately different from anything in the book or lectures so as to “spread the grade curve”. Even if you do all the examples in the textbook, they are nowhere as hard as the exam. I found the unit so interesting but, Sam just doesn’t teach you what you need to know. Do not take if you care about your GPA.

Best unit ever. The exam was definitely the most challenging, but in the end was HDable.

This unit cost me my graduation, Thanks for the misleading email Sam, real class act. If you received the email telling you that this was an "easy" unit with MCQ finals, you're in for a rude awakening.Unit is "easy" and the coordinator keeps to his words of keeping assessments as MCQs, some with 10 options that is. Think algebra except now, you have linguistic involved. If you're thinking this is gonna be something like MKTG1204, walk away right now and pick another broadening.