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Reading Assignment and Discussion Topics
Computer Science 111

for class on Tuesday February 29, 2000

Please skim Chapter 4 section 4.2.2, then read sections 4.3 and 4.4 up to page 152 of the Schneider and Gersting text, and be prepared to discuss the following:

Will Benjamin bike to his morning class? He only rides his bike to class if he overslept, but even then if it's raining he'll walk and just show up late to class (he really hates to bike in the rain). But if there's an exam that day he'll bike if he overslept, even in the rain.

This is a situation in which the true/false output (Ben bikes) depends on the values of three true/false inputs (it's raining, Ben overslept, there's an exam scheduled). Please figure out how to represent this situation in three different ways: as a Boolean expression, as a truth table, and as a circuit diagram. As you do this, consider how you might convert one representation into another in some systematic way.

When you deal with circuits, feel free to use AND and OR gates with more than two inputs: an AND gate produces a 1 if all of its inputs are 1 (and a 0 otherwise); an OR gate produces a 1 if any of its inputs is 1 (and a 0 otherwise).