The minterms and maxterms may be used to define the two standard forms for logic expressions, namely the sum of products (SOP), or sum of minterms, and the product of sums (POS), or product of maxterms. These standard forms of expression aid the logic circuit designer by simplifying the derivation of the function to be implemented. Boolean functions expressed as a sum of products or a product of sums are said to be in canonical form. Note the POS is not the complement of the SOP expression.

SUM OF PRODUCTS (OR of AND terms)

The SOP expression is the equation of the logic function as read off the truth table to specify the input combinations when the output is a logical 1. To illustrate, let us consider Table 6.