Richard E. Pattis Professor of Teaching Department of Computer Science and Department of Informatics Donald Bren School of Information   and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697 pattis@ics.uci.edu Office: 4062 Bren Hall Phone: (949) 824-2704 Fax:     (949) 824-4056		Teaching and learning are mirror images. This calligraphy appears in Inversions, a book by Scott Kim, who learned to write in this style.	Students accepted to CMU would wear this badge when visiting the campus; I sometimes wore it too, because I admit I'm still a student, learning new things.

I have put my collection of Quotations for Learning and Programing on the web. I hope to continue expanding
(and correcting) it. I always welcome feedback (e.g., corrections, misattributions, other quotations).

I am starting to index, annotate, and put on the web various Education-Related Video Clips.

Here are two websites that I try to read every day; each includes a mix of interesting Computer Science
articles that I read selectively. If an incoming freshman reads 5 articles per day, they will have read
almost 7,500 articles by the time they graduate.

YCombinator (links).
ACM Tech-News (summary + links).

Spring 2022 Teaching Schedule

Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) 193: Tutoring in ICS
No Final Exam; grade based on attendance and timely submission of Journals (and Final Assignment)

My Schedule:I'll be in class (lecture/yellow) and/or will hold office hours (gray) all days, except Thursday.

Please note that my office hours are open. There is no need to schedule an appointment ahead of time. Just drop by.
And, if we need to meet privately, we can do that too. If you want debugging help, please explore the problem
thoroughly before dropping in, and be ready to report on your attempts and failures to solve it when we meet.

Time/Day	Monday	Tuesday (Help available in all Labs 9am-5pm; not just your Lab)	Wednesday	Thursday (Help available in all Labs 9am-5pm; not just your Lab)	Friday
12:00-12:30			ICS 33 Staff Meeting DBH 4013
12:30-  1:00			ICS 33 Staff Meeting DBH 4013
1:00-  1:30	Lecture A: ICS 33 HIB 100		Lecture A: ICS 33 HIB 100		Lecture A: ICS 33 HIB 100
1:30-  2:00	Lecture A: ICS 33 HIB 100		Lecture A: ICS 33 HIB 100		Lecture A: ICS 33 HIB 100
2:00-  2:30	Lecture B: ICS 33 HIB 100	Office Hours DBH 4062	Lecture B: ICS 33 HIB 100		Lecture B: ICS 33 HIB 100
2:30-  3:00	Lecture B: ICS 33 HIB 100	Office Hours DBH 4062	Lecture B: ICS 33 HIB 100		Lecture B: ICS 33 HIB 100
3:00-  3:30		Office Hours DBH 4062
3:30-  4:00	Office Hours DBH 4062	Lecture: ICS 193 ALP 2200	Office Hours DBH 4062		Office Hours DBH 4062
4:00-  4:30	Office Hours DBH 4062	Lecture: ICS 193 ALP 2200	Office Hours DBH 4062		Office Hours DBH 4062
4:30-  5:00	Office Hours DBH 4062	Lecture: ICS 193 ALP 2200	Office Hours DBH 4062		Office Hours DBH 4062

Interesting Snippets

An excerpt from the chapter "He Fixes Radios by Thinking!" from the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character (start at the bottom of page 18: "One day I got a telephone call..." and finish at the bottom of page 20: "...never thought that was possible.") Explains why debugging is best accomplished by thinking, not fiddling.

A short opinion piece on Plagiarism from the NY Times.

A short opinion piece on What Straight-A Students Get Wrong from the NY Times. I too have run across many students whose goal is to graduate with a 4.0 (more at CMU than UCI). I hope they fall short of that mark early in their studies, so they can be freed to pursue getting an education, both inside and outside the classroom. At every school that I have, taught, I have recommend , but so far been ignored, that all entering students receive 1 unit of credit for a course called "Getting an Education Sanely". Every student would uniformly be assigned a grade of A-; then, pursuit of a 4.0 becomes an asymptotic fantasy.

Genius is a Thing that Happens from Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. Why Mathematics (and Computer Science) students should not be discouraged by smarter classmates.

Want Kids to Learn Math (or CS): Level with them that it's hard from Jordan Ellenberg's Washington Post editorial. Admitting these subjects are difficult encourages the most effective learning tool that students have: asking questions.

A new cure for Short Bowel Syndrome (Brainstorm to Breakthrough: A Surgical Procedure is Born).

Cartoons:

• If Charles Schultz wrote Karel the Robot
• Arlo and Janis: The hardest teacher
• Doonesbury: Walden's Last B

De Millo, Lipton, and Perlis: Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs Communications of the ACM, May 1979; Volume 22, Number 5, Pages 271-280.

My 2006 SIGCSE Talk

Philosphical Musings

The following dialog is from the transcript of "Between Time and Timbuktu" (a synthesis of the writings of Kurt Vonnegut). For more on Bokononism, from which this passage is inspired, see The Books of Bokonon (from the novel "Cat's Cradle").

Narrator: In the beginning, G-d created the Earth, and he said, "Let there be mud." And there was mud. And G-d said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And G-d created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud-as-man alone could speak. "What is the purpose of all of this?" man asked politely. "Everything must have a purpose?" asked G-d. "Certainly." said man. "Then I leave it to you to think of one for all of this," said G-d. And he went away.

Stony Stevenson: I feel very unimportant compared to you [G-d].

Voice of Bokonon: The only way you can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.

Stony Stevenson: I got so much, and most mud got so little.

The following dialog is from Robert Bolt's play "A Man For all Seasons" about the life of Sir Thomas More.

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!