Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/iii/paper-124/5/ii/solution

Proceed by structural induction on a Boolean formula . A leaf computes or , so its measure is , equal to its leaf count. If the root is an AND gate with subformulae computing , then
by property 2; the induction hypothesis bounds this by the sum of the two subformula sizes, which is the size of . Property 3 gives the identical argument for an OR gate. Consequently every formula computing has size at least , so is a formula-size lower bound.

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