Convert statement from English to logic: "to pass philosophy it is not necessary to make notes every week" I saw this on a previous thread,

To pass philosophy it is not necessary to make notes every week.

Let $p = \text{Pass phil}$ and $m = \text{make notes}$,
Then basically what the sentence is is,
if you take notes or you don't take notes, then you will pass philosophy. 
So is it

$m \lor \neg m \implies p$

?
 A: If this was given as part of a logic assignment, it was a poor example.
Many statements in English cannot be converted into logical form using the standard propositional logic ($p$, $q$, $\land$, $\lor$, $\lnot$, $\to$, etc.). This is true in your case, and the reason is the use of the term necessary. Usually, statements about necessity can only be correctly expressed with Modal logic (or some other form of quantifiers). We use $\Box$ to mean "it is necessary that". In this case, we could write the statement:
$$
\lnot \Box (p \to m)
$$
which we read "It is not necessarily true that if you pass, you took notes."
The problem with your suggestion,
$$
(m \lor \lnot m) \to p,
$$
is that it says "whether you take notes or not, you will pass" which the speaker certainly did not intend to imply!
User @fleablood also had a suggestion,
$$
\lnot (\lnot m \to \lnot p).
$$
This one is better; it seems to read as "it is not the case that if you take don't take notes, you won't pass". But taking a closer look, it's logically equivalent to $\lnot m \land p$, so it just says "you won't take notes and you'll pass", which makes no sense.
(The reason @fleablood's translation didn't work has a lot to do with the word "if". "If" in English usually doesn't correspond very well to the logical connective $\to$. There are whole areas of philosophy devoted to translating English statements correctly, but one popular way that seems quite effective is to use the $\Box$ I mentioned earlier.)
A: The sentence boils down to "It is not that case that if you never take note you fail" or it is not the case that for all cases, if you don't take notes you will fail.
So $x$ = a potential student.  $M(x)$= x takes notes.  $P(x)$ = x passes.
$\lnot (\forall x|(\lnot M(x)) \implies (\lnot P(x)))$.
Although it is important to realize that $\forall$ does not mean all students that actually take the class but all hypothetical students that could take the class.  There might not actually be a student who didn't take notes and passed but there could be.
Maybe... There may be more to this.
A: If the sentence "to pass Philosophy it's not necessary to take notes every week," is followed by, "indeed Alice did it last semester," then we may be tempted to translate it with
$$ \neg\forall x (P(x) \rightarrow T(x)) \enspace. $$
We would interpret "it's possible" as an understatement for "it's been done."  It's not clear that this strengthening is justified.  If, on the other hand, the sentence is followed by, "suppose a student had superhuman memory," then we are better off translating into modal logic:
$$\neg\Box\forall x (P(x) \rightarrow T(x)) \enspace.$$
With or without alethic modalities, I'd go with a first-order logic.  "Alice passed philosophy" and "it's raining" are sentences; "to pass philosophy" and "to take notes" are not. 
A: The statement is that taking notes and passing philosophy are not correlated.  There is no implication in either direction between $P$ and $M$.  All four assignments of truth values to $P$ and $M$ are allowed.
Also, your proposed answer isn't correct as it's a tautology.
A: You might use:  $(m\land p) \lor  (\neg m \land p)$ which is equivalent to $p$.
See truth table at: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=truth+table+((m%26p)or(~m%26p))
