Richard E. Pattis
Associate Teaching Professor
  and SCS Freshman Advisor
Computer Science Department
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
pattis@cs.cmu.edu
Office: 5122 Wean Hall
Phone: (412) 268-8342
Fax:     (412) 268-5573

(~2005)

Freshman, Mathematics Department (1972)

 

(Arm) Wrestling with Problems in AI (1976)


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.


Advising Information (SCS Freshmen)


Spring 2007 Schedule

Teaching Duties: 15-100 (sections J,K,T)       15-200 (Fall 2006)

Please note that my office hours are open. There is no need to schedule an appointment ahead of time.
Just drop by; the wait is never long.

If you want debugging help, ensure that your program is on your Andrew space, or you have it on a USB
memory drive (or, just bring it loaded on your portable computer).

Time/DayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
10:30-11:30 15-100 J,T
Wean 5419CD
Office Hours
Wean 5122
15-100 J,T
Wean 5419CD
  15-100 J,T
Wean 5419CD
11:30-12:30 15-100 K
Wean 5419C
Office Hours
Wean 5122
15-100 K
Wean 5419C
  15-100 K
Wean 5419C
12:30 - 1:30 Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
  Office Hours
Wean 5122
1:30 - 2:30 Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
 
 
Office Hours
Wean 5122
2:30 - 3:30 Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
 
 
Office Hours
Wean 5122
3:30 - 4:30 Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
Office Hours
Wean 5122
 
 
 
 


Interesting Snippets

While developing a manuscript for a textbook on the Ada programming language in the late 1980s, I wrote a chapter on EBNF and began teaching it on the "first" day of my CS-1 class: primarily as a microcosm of programming, but also as a practical tool for later describing the syntax of Ada. These 21 pages (less than 1/4 the size of the original Karel book) discuss the sequence, choice, option, repetition, and recursion control structures (along with "procedural" abstracton via named EBNF rules). They explore various methods of proving that tokens satisfy descriptions, that descriptions are equivalent (and how to simplify them), and the difference between syntax and semantics. I have continued to use this approach until this day in my CS-1 classes.

A new cure for Short Bowel Syndrome

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.

If Charles Schultz wrote Karel the Robot

Arlo and Janis: The hardest teacher

Doonesbury: Walden's Last B

My Favorite Graph: I show this graph (and its associated article) in class after discussing general graph theory terminology (up to connected components). It is scary and compelling at the same time.

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.


Philosphical Musings

Doubts are such tiny things. A mind with no room for doubts must have no room for thoughts either. -R. Pattis


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 this?" man asked politely. "Everything must have a purpose?" asked G-d. "Certainly," said man. Then I leave it up 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.

SS: I got so much, and most mud got so little.


SIGCSE 2006 Talk

You can click here to download the zip file of my SIGCSE 2006 Talk. It contains all the PowerPoint slides, which contain many high-resolution photos as well as half-dozen low-resolution videos (it occupies almost 100Mb). If you load the talk into powerpoint, and select View | Notes Page, you can see most of the text that I presented during the actual talk -minus adlibs.

CS-1: Forwards and Backwards

You can click here to download the zip file of my Last CMU Talk.

Collection Class Problems (for APCS Workshop): July 2007

You can click here to download the zip file of collection class problems.
You can click here to download the zip file of more collection class problems.
You can click here to download the zip file of evening's problem.