It’s always fun to show students examples of logic “in the real world” when we begin talking about proofs. I really like the old Direct TV commercial that is basically one long conditional statement in the form of “If you give a mouse a cookie…”.
This is a project I’ve done with my students in the past. It’s interesting to see what kind of advertisements they come up with. First, students find an ad. Honestly, the best ones are ripped out of magazines. Then, they answer the questions about the ad. The example that I would put on the back of the assignment was a Sketchers ad with Kim Kardashian. When I hand out the assignment, we go over this ad together and talk about the implied messages the ad is sending. Then, students come up with conditional statements.
It’s just a quick project/homework assignment, but it keeps my students from asking “When are we ever going to use this?” when we start proofs. Anything that keeps whining about proofs to a minimum is great in my book!
