SLOG #5

This week we finished up chapter 3, and there were a couple things we went over. We further discussed proof of limits, which was certainly lots of help, considering the problems I had with the material prior to this week. There was also proof by cases which was somewhat new, and the example we did wasn't all that hard to grasp, so no problems there. The last thing for this chapter was disproving, which other than the approach, had nothing too hard or difficult. So ending for this chapter wasn't too bad, and other than a few rules of inference to review, everything looks good. Towards the end of the week, we began to chapter 4 and got introduced to some new material. As of now, it is clear that this chapter will focus on running-times for various programs, how we can measure them, and maybe learning steps to increase their efficiency. The introductory stuff looks pretty easy, and even though it is bound to get harder, i'm very much looking forward to this chapter.

SLOG #4

In my last post I stated that chapter 3 was quite easy to grasp, and it was! However, with the introduction of new material during the week of February 11th, there was a definite jump in difficulty for this chapter. Initially    we went through structure and some simple examples, but with this new stuff we went more in depth with harder and more advanced problems. There were couple things that proved challenging. For example using more of the definition associated with a specific predicate in a problem proved troublesome, because first there was realizing when is a good time to use the definition and next how to incorporate it into your solution. Another challenge was the proof about limits, and particularly the problem that we went through in the lecture, where we had change around the equation to make things work out. In both scenarios, the difficulty was mostly due to my inability to approach the problems and the lack of specific knowledge required to solve them. So the best solution was practice, and after going through similar problems a couple of times, I got familiar with techniques required for each type of problem, which made the problems much easier to deal with.

SLOG #3

These last two week have been the start of some challenging stuff. At the beginning, chapter 2 seemed real difficult, with all the equations and rules to remember, however, things looked more difficult than they actually were. After spending some time and becoming familiar with the rules and equations, labs and assignment became easier. The hardest part about this section, probably was  the translation between English and Symbolic form. Considering the fact that there is just so many ways to state one thing, questions can become quite confusing at times. In addition there are also some important keywords such as "yet" or "unless", that aren't that straight forward when you're translating to symbolic form.

So chapter 2 definitely came with some challenge, but lucky for me, chapter 3 wasn't too bad. Other than getting a simple grasp on the structure and learning the procedures, the proofs themselves weren't that hard. Although i'm sure this was due to the lack of more complex questions, which we will probably see later on!

SLOG #2

So this week was pretty interesting, with the introduction of conjunction, disjunction, and negation, came some challenging problems. But obviously before one could go at these problems, there is the task of understanding how exactly each tool is used or expressed, and then there comes the hard parts. For me, these parts included figuring out equivalent expressions and translation from English to symbolic form. For example, I had some difficulty translating couple of the tutorial questions. One in particular was "No Course has more than 2 prerequisites". My initial answer was something in the line of, for all 'y' and for all 'x', P(x ,y),  x < 3 , but soon after I realized that we can introduce other variables and that if we can prove it for one then it becomes True for all (since we declare that at the beginning that the following is True for all courses in 'C'). So basically other than few mistakes here and there, everything went was OK this week.

SLOG #1

First couple of weeks and already behind course work....not good. But, I've made it my duty to keep due dates in my calender now, so hopefully no more late submissions. Now let's get down to business.

I had my thoughts about this course before starting the class, In a sense I was expecting much more mathematics being involved, and by that I basically mean the stuff we are learning in MAT135/136 combined with programming or some ugly mixture like that. However, as of now the course is quite different from that, well, actually much different from that. I believe this course places a lot of emphasis on communication and ensuring that we have the required tools and skills to transfer ideas back and forth with accuracy and efficiency. With that said, it seems that problem solving is also a significant part of the curriculum, and although we haven't seen anything too crazy in that area, i'm sure the brain hurting problems are on their way.    Anyways, enough with that, let's talk about the lectures and the material we covered in these previous weeks. In these last few lectures, they were couple of things that gave trouble, but overall I found most things easy to grasp, especially things like the use of symbols, as it is something that I've already become familiar with in my Gr. 12 data management class. The few troubles that I encountered were mostly related to conversions, such as converting a sentence to code or vise versa, however, I overcame these problems by spending some time actually coding the examples from the lecture slide, or in other cases I would look over the annotated slides, as there are little things on there that can be helpful. For example, I like Danny's use of diagrams as it gives another perspective to the problem, which can become useful when you have difficulty understanding something. 

So, overall i'm pretty happy with the course, it can be challenging at times but fun at the same time, and more importantly I believe it offers lots of good tools and skills that are surely to become useful. As of now nothing seems to difficult to understand, and hopefully that won't be changing anytime soon :)