Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

In the second session of my Computer Systems Organization class for the fourth week of the third term, I took up four variable applications of Boolean algebra and K-mapping.

It was basically already old hat to them, having dealt with the practice for several meetings at that point.

The first new thing that I wanted to introduce to them with this expansion was how the truth table looked like with four inputs (which now has a length of sixteen instead of eight).

Second was that in the K-map, which is now a four by four grid, they could group ones up to eight at a time, which is still an integer exponent of two.

I also listed down what specific shapes of groupings they could make. For a group of eight, it is either two by four or four by two. For four, it is one by four, four by one or two by two. Lastly for two, it is either one by two or two by one.

There is, clearly, only one way to group one group of one.

I also told them how many variables their term was going to have depending on the grouping. For eight, it would have one variable. Four would have two. Two would have three, and one would have four.

For three variables, it was four – one, two – two and one – three.

So we had several examples of these, just to make sure that they understood the concepts, and what false assumptions they were making.

These are third year students, who already purchased the textbook required, and yet I found out the hard way that they still needed to be given a list of the specific instructions on any procedure that I was demonstrating.

Because otherwise, they got the false impressions that the distribution theorem can only be used three times in row while proving two functions are the same, and that in grouping, a particular cell can only be grouped twice.

Session 975 also carried around a load of misconceptions. Class dismissed.