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Is there an easy condition (for example based on clauses) that implies that a formula in CNF is a tautology? Or is this as hard as for general formulas (not in CNF)?

I first thought of $F$ is a tautology iff every clause of $F$ is a tautology. But this is not true, only the direction from left to right works.

user136457
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1 Answers1

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No, you are right.

A Conjunctive Normal Form is a statement which is a conjunction of a series of clauses where each clause is itself a disjunction of a series of literals (permissably including negations).

Such a statement is a tautology if and only if each and every clause is a tautology. A clause is a tautology if and only if either (1) one of the literals is a true valued constant or (2) the clause contains both a literal and its own negation.

Graham Kemp
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  • Ok, thanks. Then I was right and my teaching assistant wrong, nice to know. I was wondering where my mistake was. :-)

    Thank you very much.

    – user136457 Feb 23 '15 at 16:26