Course Information

ICS 6B
Boolean Algebra and Logic

Fall 2013

Instructor

Prof. Sandy Irani
Office: DBH 4042
Office Hours: Mon. 1:00PM-2:00PM
Email: irani@ics.uci.edu

Teaching Assistant

Zach Butler
Office: DBH 4091
Office Hours: Tues. 3:30PM-4:30PM
Email: zbutler@uci.edu

Readers

Yasser Altowim
Office: DBH 2081
Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00AM-12:00PM
Email: yaltowim@uci.edu

Zana Ghaderi
Office: DBH 3065
Office Hours: Thursday 3:00PM-4:00PM
Email: zghaderi@uci.edu

Meeting Places and Times

Lecture will be held MWF 9:00-9:50 in PCB 1100. You are responsible for anything said in class, including class announcements. If you have to miss lecture for any reason, please ask one of your classmates to fill you in on what you missed.

There are two discussion sections for this class. Each section meets one hour per week. This is an important time to get questions answered about homework problems.

Obtaining Assistance

The best way to get your questions answered is by coming to lecture, office hours or discussion and asking them there. In general, if I'm not busy with something else, I am happy to answer short questions while I am in my office, so feel free to stop by during other times in the week.

All email with questions about course material should be sent to the following email address: ics6b-questions@ics.uci.edu. This is an alias for the instructor, the TA and the readers. It ensures that we all see your message and the response. It also gives you better turnaround time.

  • Please also include the following information:

    For questions about grading on homework, please go to the office hours of one of the readers or you can send an email to them directly. For questions about grading on quizes, you can either ask Zach or me.

    Course Announcements

    Homework and Quizes

    On each Monday, a new homework assignment will be posted to the class web page. The new homework covers the material that presented in lecture that week. The homework is due the following Wednesday in lecture. The homework will be graded by the following Tuesday and can be picked up in discussion section. The purpose of discussion section on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon is to answer any questions you may have on the graded homework in preparation for the quiz that will given on Friday morning in lecture. No solutions to homework or quizes are distributed. The purpose of discussion sections and office hours are to answer any questions you may have about solutions to quizes or homeworks. You are highly advised to learn the correct solution to quizes and homeworks since I will typically re-use a couple questions (perhaps with some minor modifications) from homework on quizes and will take some final exam questions from the quizes.

    Absolutely no late homework assignments will be accepted. .

    The weekly quiz will be given every Friday at the beginning of lecture. The quiz will be handed out at 9:00 AM, sharp and will be picked up at 9:15 AM, sharp . There will be no make-up quizes given. When we tabulate your final grade, we will drop the two lowest quiz scores and the two lowest homework scores. However, in exchange for this, we will make absolutely no allowances if you arrive at a quiz late or turn in your homework late. This holds even if you have a perfectly valid reason to miss a homework assignment or a quiz. If for some reason you fail to make it to a quiz or hand in a homework assignment, that will count as one of your dropped quizes or homework assignments, no matter how legitimate your reason is.

    There will also be one midterm on Monday of week 6.

    Grades for the assignements and quizes will be posted through EEE. If you have questions regarding grading, please see the person who graded that particular item.

    Text

    This quarter you will be using a web-based interactive, animated offering as your "textbook". The material includes interactive exercises which will count towards your grade. Here are the directions for subscribing:

    1. Go to ucidmfall13.zyante.com. Bookmark this site - this is your site for the entire quarter.
    2. Click on Subscribe at the top right.
    3. Enter in your UCI email, name and password. Your email will be your login.
    4. Click Subscribe at the bottom of the form and use your credit card or Paypal account to pay the subscription price of $25. Note: a Paypal account is not required. If you don't have a credit card or a Paypal account, contact support@zyante.com.
    Contact support@zyante.com for help or with any questions regarding obtaining a subscription.

    Course Structure

    The grading criteria for the course is: Note that there is a tiny bit of credit given for completing the course evaluation towards the end of the quarter. It is available through EEE and is usually released a couple weeks from the end of the quarter. If enough students complete the evaluation then I have access to the list of students who completed the evaluation. However, I do not see any evaluation results until the quarter is over and grades have been turned in. Even after the quarter when I do see the evaluation results, they are completely anonymous. Thus, there is no risk to you in being completely honest in your evaluation. I take these evaluations very seriously and use them to improve my teaching.

    Missed Midtern or Final Exam Policy

    The final exam will be on Wednesday, December 11, 8:00AM-10:00AM.

    Academic Honesty

    The Bren School of ICS and the University have already established an academic honesty policy. Read it.

    Violators of academic honesty policies are subject to the penalties described in the Bren School of ICS policy. They are also subject to an immediate course grade of F, and you will not be allowed to drop the course to avoid the grade. Also be aware that a single documented case of academic dishonesty may preclude you from switching into computing majors, registering for computing minors, joining the ICS Honors Program, and graduating from a computing major with honors.

    Guidelines to avoid plagarism:

    We expect that: