Decisions

Decisions

In Section 4.1, we discussed the notion of indeterminacy{values in programs that are not
known to the programmer when they write the program. When dealing with indetermi-
nate information, we must have a method of making decisions. In real life, decisions are
complicated, based on incomplete information and thousands of variables. In computer sci-
ence, decisions are more straightforward and ultimately result in one of two possible choices.
Because of this clear dichotomy, programming languages base decision making on Boolean
algebra{the study of true and false statements. This explains why one of the basic datatypes
summarized in Table 4.1 is Boolean.