Orientation and teaching the basics

The Library was involved more heavily in New Student Orientation this year (incoming First-Years and Transfer Students). We had a longer session, 30 minutes, all to ourselves. Overall it was a great success, though we certainly had some mixups.

It always gets me thinking about better ways to teach things, and I thought up a good metaphor for explaining Boolean searching. This would come after the "technical" explanation of combining sets.

Three Boolean operators go into a restaurant (no, really, this isn't a joke), AND, OR, and NOT. They want to order dessert. Here is the desert menu:

• Strawberry shortcake (strawberries, cake, & whipped cream)
• Chocolate eclairs
• Chocolate covered strawberries
• Fruit tart with blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries
• Banana split with chocolate sauce and whipped cream
• Fresh sliced mango

AND is very precise and orders "Chocolate AND Strawberries". OR is a greedy-guts and wants everything with "Chocolate OR Strawberries". NOT is allergic to strawberries and so orders "Chocolate NOT Strawberries".

What does each one get? (Remember, this is a restaurant and two people can get the same thing, and each person can get more than one dish.)

Answers:

• AND gets Chocolate covered strawberries
• OR gets Strawberry shortcake, Chocolate eclairs, Chocolate covered strawberries, Fruit tart, and a Banana split
• NOT gets Chocolate eclairs, and a Banana split

Extra credit question: Can AND and NOT share a dessert?

What do you think? Does it help explain AND, OR and NOT? Or does it just make you hungry?