This page is meant to provide students with more insight into the course. First, I will discuss a number of things that some students have mentioned in the CAPEs and other sources of student feeddback. This is to just give you a bit more information than the CAPEs themselves do. I have a lengthy discussion of what is by far the most common complaint, the length of the midterm exams. And finally, I say a few words about academic dishonesty.

Miscellaneous CAPE issues (and other sources of student feedback)

The vast majority of students provide very positive feedback on the CAPEs, a fact that I am happy about. Two things that are common remarks are that many students find the class to be fun, and ‘laid back’ in a certain sense. Actually, to be more specific, it is my lecturing style that is often kindly described that way. The material itself isn’t all that fun, I suppose (and few students describe it that way), and while the class isn’t all that difficult, the grading and such isn’t laid back, but is taken pretty seriously. I am a fairly relaxed laid back person, and I try to make the logic lectures as interesting as possible given limitations imposed by the subject matter, and I’m happy that most students respond positively to those elements of the class.

But there are a few things that some students complain about, and even though it is only a very small minority that have made these complaints, you may as well know about them so that if you think you are likely to find the same things irritating you can plan appropriately. First, much to my amazement, in the most recent CAPEs a couple of students remarked that they thought I dressed too casually. I do often wear shorts and either a button down shirt with a collar or a tee-shirt, and this is pretty casual. Not sure why this would be material for complaining, but there it is. Obviously I’m not going to alter how I dress, but if you are the sort of person likely to find shorts distractingly inappropriate, then you might want to consider signing up for the class during another quarter when someone else is teaching it.

Second, the occasional word or expression that would be edited form prime time TV can find its way out of my mouth. The language isn’t that bad, actually. But if the occasional R-rated word is the sort of thing that is likely to piss you off (that’s an example of the sort of thing you might hear in lecture), then you might want to consider signing up for the class during another quarter when someone else is teaching it.

Third, the content of the lectures has been mentioned. Some quotes are ""He wrote the book, and his lectures are a regurgitation of his words as typed (very clearly and with good explanations) in the book. Don't bother going to lecture. Read the book and do the extra problems provided online if you need to. Class is a waste of time," and "He wrote the book but the material is the same as that in professional books." I'm not sure what to make of this myself. I did write the book, and the two reasons were i) the available commercially published texts are extremely expensive (at least $80), and I didn't like forcing students to pay that much, the bookstore can put a reader togehter much more inexpensively, and ii) those expensive commercial texts aren't designed specifically for the course here at UCSD, and so incolude stuff that is unnecessary, and don't have some things we need. So the text I wrote is specificallly designed to cover all and only the material for the course. Of course then the lectures will be very similar. If there was somethng I felt I had to lecture on that wasn't in the book, then I wouldn't have ddone a good job writing the book. If for some reason you want to use a text that includes material I won't be lecturing on, and won't be on any exams, and costs a lot more, let me know and there are several I can recommend. As for not going to lecture, this is risky advice. Some students who pick up on the material quickly can safely skip lectures and learn the material from the book. And I don't require attendance. But, many students don't pick up on the material that quickly, and for them attending the lectures goes a long way towards helping them to understand the material better and get a good grade. So before you follow the advice to 'skip' lecture, make sure that you are able to learn the material on your own from the text -- the student(s) who advise skipping lecture don't stand to suffer any negative consequence if you end up getting a worse grade than you want or could have received. As for the 'professional' books comparison, I assume that the student means 'commercially published' books. Three publishers have in fact contacted me about 'professionally' publishing the book, but of course I have turned them down. It would be the same book, but with a hard cover, and an $80 price tag. (And as a side note, I should mention that I have only heard this complaint 3 times in 10 years of teaching, and all three were within a 3 week span, and all three used very similar langauge, including the word 'regurgitate'...)

 

Fourth,

There are a lot of other comments that are common on the CAPES that I don’t know what to make of, but here are some examples so that you can make an informed decision. About 20% of students say that lectures are too slow, and that I boringly cover the material at a snail’s pace and repeat things too many times. About 20% say that I blaze through the material so fast that I must not care whether or not anyone understands it. About 5% of the students complain that I am difficult to talk to or approach and am not easily accessible (though they never give more details: I have office hours every week and make appointments when students can’t make those, and so I have no idea what these students are on about, and I usually answer all emails sent to me from students the same day, but there you have it). About 25-30% remark that I am approachable and accessible. A lot of students complain that the midterm exams are too long. This is a complicated issue that I address at length below. The short story is: the exams aren’t too long at all.

Anyway, I think that about covers most of the themes. Like I said, overall student feedback is very positive, but you should be aware of the negatives even if they are the minority, I suppose, so that you can be prepared.

On what seem to be extremely rare occassions, some students can get a very strong negative reacction to me. Just below is probably my favorite CAPE drawing, by an obviously disgruntled student. I think the student was angling to get his artwork published in the CAPE, but that was right when the CAPE decided to stop publishing student artwork (probably in part due to drawings like this), so his labors would have gone unappreciated. While there are aspects of the representational accuracy of this that could be questioned, it is pretty amusing. (In case you can’t make out the details: I believe the squiggly lines are meant to represent gaseous odors wafting from me; the two bottles are labeled ‘BEER’ and ‘ABSOLUTE’; the comment is “He looked like he came to class drunk everyday. I could never ask him any questions because he smelled so bad! DAMN!!!”)

[click here for a large version ]

Midterm Exam Length

Perhaps the most common complaint I receive concerns the length of the midterm exams. Many students do not finish the midterms in the allowed time, and feel that this is unfair. I will provide several reasons why it is not unfair.

 

1. Why an exam should be so long that most student will not finish:

This is easy. Part of our job ('us' being myself and the TAs) is to assign grades. I don't like it, and the TAs don't like it. But the university requires it, and in order to do our jobs we have to do it. Of course, we could carry out the job of assigning grades by just randomly assigning letters to people, perhaps by rolling dice. But in order to do our jobs well, we have to assign grades that reflect a student's mastery of the material. This means many things, but in particular in means we should not assign two students the same grade when one has gained demonstrably more ability than the other. That's just the way it is. So far I assume that this is unobjectionable.

Now suppose that the exam were such that most or half or even a third of students could finish it in the time allowed. That means that the good students will probably ace it. And it also means that the excellent students will also ace it. And then we will have no way to discern the good-but-not-excellent students from the excellent students. That is, we will be giving the good-but-not excellent students the same grade as the excellent students. And thus, by the above criterion, we would not be doing our jobs well, because we would be giving two students the same score when one has demonstrably more ability than the other. And in fact, not only would we not be doing our jobs well, we would be failing in a way that was unfair to the students, since we would be giving Mary, who spent 6 hours a week doing proofs, and timing herself on the practice exams until she knew she would be able to ace the exam, the same grade as Bill, who spent 2 hours a week doing proofs, and played basketball instead of working though the practice exams, and may deserve a good grade, but not as high a grade as Mary. In that case, I think Mary would have a legitimate gripe that the grading was unfair.

This is called a ceiling effect. If the best possible achievement level is set too low, then one looses the ability to discern the good from the excellent, as both groups will get the best possible score. But by making the exam so difficult that only the excellent will ace it, we are assured that we will be able to discern the good from the excellent, and assign grades correctly (say, As and A+s for the excellent students and A-s and B+s for the good students), and thus do our jobs well. So as far as I can see, the issue of fairness demands that the exam be difficult to the point that the vast majority of students will not be able to ace it.

Period. The complaints I get from students are typically of the form ‘I couldn’t finish it, so the exam is unfair’. But just because you can’t finish the exam, it does not follow that it is unfair. An exam is unfair if it is such that the grade you eventually get does not reflect your knowledge, or the exam does not provide you with the opportunity to display your level of mastery of the material. But how long the exam is does not affect this. (Actually, that’s not quite right. If the exam were too short or too easy, then it would be unfair because it would not provide students an opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of the material.)

To sum up: a fair exam is one that reliably sorts students into different groups based on their mastery of the material. It is not possible for an exam to fail at this by being too long. A fair exam must be such that it is long and/or difficult enough so that none or very few students will ace it (no ceiling), but also has problems that are graded in difficulty so that none or very few students will bomb it and get 0 points (no floor effect). And in between it must be able to sort students into groups, by distinguishing the good from the very good from the excellent, and the average from the below average from the marginal from the failing. So long as an exam does these things, it is fair, as far as I can see.

Some students try to make their point this way: why is time a factor? If I understand the material, why does it matter how fast I can do it? And why is rushing through things when mistakes can be made given priority over being careful and avoiding mistakes? The answer is that long exams do neither of these things. Consider the following analogy. Suppose that in a fourth grade class I am teaching multiplication. Mary takes the multiplication table home, memorizes it, practices a lot of problems, and gets to the point where when she sees ‘6 x 7’ she immediately thinks ‘42’. The multiplication exam the students take has 100 problems, and they are given only 10 minutes. Because Mary has studied as hard as she has, and has mastered multiplication, she can do the exam easily in 10 minutes and get all or most (she might make one or two careless errors) right. Bill, on the other hand, learns what multiplication is. He understands the basic idea. And he also learns how to solve multiplication problems. But he hasn’t worked at the tables as much as Mary has, and so he often has to add the numbers: he knows that you can tell what 6 x 7 is by adding 6 to itself 7 times. Of course, Bill bombs the exam. While Mary looks at ‘6 x 7’ and immediately knows it is 42 because she has worked these problems before, Bill has to spend about 20 or 30 seconds adding up numbers. Now at the end of the exam, Bill complains that the exam is too long, hence unfair. He complains that he understands what multiplication is, but that he had to rush – if he only had more time he could have finished the entire exam, and so the exam is unfair. I think it is clear that Bill has no gripe coming. He simply does not understand the material as well as Mary, and furthermore, Mary did not have to ‘rush’ or ‘be sloppy’ to complete the exam. It is just that she mastered multiplication to the point that she could do multiplication problems quickly, efficiently, and accurately. This is how the logic midterms are structured. They are structured so that those students who have put sufficient time into the material will be able to ace it, and complete the exam accurately without rushing or being sloppy. If you find that you have to rush, or be sloppy, then the proper conclusion is not that the exam is too long or is designed to put careful workers at a disadvantage, but that you have not mastered the material.

Three final points on the issue of exam length. First, there are practice exams in the text that are exactly the same format as the real exams. Therefore, there is no reason that anyone should complain that ‘I didn’t know that the exam would be so long’. You know exactly how long the exam is. If you want to know if your level of preparation for an exam is sufficient for you to get a really high score, then take one of the practice exams, give yourself 45 minutes, and take the exam. If you really want a good gauge, take the exam in a place where there is a level of distraction similar to a lecture hall full of students taking an exam – maybe a table at the library would be about right. Then you can see if your mastery of the material is such that you can finish the exam efficiently in the time allowed. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone not having a good idea of how long the exams are.

Second, every exam I have ever given always has a few students who ace it. So it is also inaccurate to think that I design exams that require that students are as familiar with logic as I am (I actually heard this one). In fact, there are usually a few students who finish the exam with 10 minutes or more to spare, and get all or almost all of the questions right. For the most part, these are the students like Mary who simply worked enough problems to get to the point where they knew they could do the exam. So it is simply not true that the exams are set up so that students can’t ace them.

Third, the final exam, which counts for half of the entire grade, does not have the time constraints of the midterms. The final is about twice as long as the midterms, but you have 4 times the time. That means that even if you are a student who for some reason performs better with more time, more than half of the exam points are set up to accommodate your preferred way of doing things.

 

2. Why you should not be bothered by the length of the exams.

This one is easy too. You shouldn't be bothered because it is irrelevant. Think about it. I could put 10,000 proofs on the exam, and it wouldn't matter. What would happen is that the best students would get through 10 or 15, and this would be the highest score and give me some idea of about where to set the grades for an A. And the fact that there were another 9,985 proofs that nobody got to would be completely irrelevant. Your grade will be based on how well you do on the exams, and how well you do on the exams has nothing to do with how long the exams are (except for the case where the exam is too short, which would be a case where the length of the exam would set an artificial limit on how well one could do).

I hope this clears things up. It's not that I'm being a hard-ass, but that most other professors (except in the sciences and math where average scores on exams is often 50% or less) haven't really thought through the process of doing a good job of grading, and hence make exams too easy, and hence get students to expect that all exams should be finishable. If anything I'm actually too soft, because the exam should be set so that nobody, not even 10%, can ace it. By making it the length as short as I have, I am probably impairing our ability to tell the A+ students from the A students.

Enough about the length of the exams. The exams are fair, practice exams and solutions are available to help you prepare for them, and each quarter there are in fact some students who ace the exams with time to spare. As far as I can tell, there is nothing at all unfair about the exam situation. If you prepare sufficiently you will do well on the exam. If you don’t, you won’t. That’s exactly how a fair exam should be.


Academic Honesty

Academic honesty is taken very seriously in this class. I will pursue all cases of academic dishonesty to the fullest extent I can. The moral is, don’t do it.

In the context of this class, you are OK if all work you turn in is your work, and you do not allow others access to your work so that they can turn it in under their names. This includes both homework and exams.

As for homework: I encourage students to make use of whatever materials they can, and to study together in groups, in order to achieve a greater understanding of the material. The crucial thing is that when you write out your homework you need to do it yourself. The work needs to be a reflection of your understanding of the material. You should not copy anyone or anything else. When you turn in your homework, you are putting your name on it, and thus taking credit for that work. If the work was done by anyone else other than you, that is plagairism. The TAs will notice when more than one homework has identical wording, either to another homework, or to homework solutions from previous quarters. (As a matter of historical record, homework solutions from previous quarters are typically not identical, but do sometimes have overlap. The problem is that if you have access to a previous quarter’s solutions, then so do other people, TAs will notice the similarity, and you will get nailed. Four students found that out the hard way one quarter.) Besides, the homework does not take that long to do. And furthermore, doing the homework is meant to prepare you for doing well on the exams. So if you cheat, and even if you do not get caught, the best case scenario is that you will get the same points you would get if you did it yourself, and you will be less prepared for the exams. But that is the best case. If you cheat, you run a non-zero risk of being caught, failing the class, and having the incident going on your permanent record. That’s a high price to pay for such little potential gain. At least that’s how I would look at it if I were a student.

As for exams, let me just tell you now that it will not pay off to try to cheat on exams. The exams are different from quarter to quarter, and so even if you have access to exams form a previous quarter, this won’t help you. Furthermore, we take measures, which are extremely effective, to make sure that copying from anyone else during the exam won’t work. If you do copy from others, the odds are higher than you think that you’ll be detected and will end up failing the course and having bad things go on your permanent record. Make your life and my life a lot easier and don’t do it.