END OF CLASSES ! WOOT WOOT

Fall break was a huge relief and gave us a well deserved time-off.

Now that we have finals coming up soon and the last assignment due, I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of how to work this course.
The strategy is simple:
1. Find a group of people you are comfortable working with.
2. Spend a couple of hours first just reading the assignment and then reading the relevent lecture slides.
3. Spend some time on piazza making sure you understand what is being asked.
4. Work on each question together with the group.

I tried dividing up the work but then I realized I'm never going to learn how to do the question that I wasn't in my part.
Instead we made sure to do each question together and clear our doubts out loud.

I still need to work on my dislike for big-O,Omega and Theta questions but the tutorial exercise helped a great deal and I think I have it down.
Hopefully I'll be able to do them in the finals too.

GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE ~

More BIG stuff...

Starting on a bright note, I got a 100 on the assignment and did even really good on the midterm.
So I'm really happy with my progress in this course.

However, this week we've stayed on track with the 'BIG' functions and moved to Big-Theta and Big-Omega and I have to say, not a 'Big' fan. lol sorry that was a bad pun.

It encompasses complexities which I think is a very important thing for a CS student, since a program has to be not only working but also the quickest and the most efficient.

I feel like I spent a lot more time on the tutorial exercise this week but hopefully this will help me get better hang of it.

BIG O's

First off, I have to say that this midterm was definitely better than the last and I'm pretty sure I did really well on my assignment too !

Secondly, the name big O is really hilarious, I don't even know if that's an appropriate thing to 'slog' about but seriously it cracks me up.

So big O's seem a bit more complex than I'd like. It's one of those things where I understand what we're doing in class and then when I look at it again I'm lost.
However Larry's slides are very helpful and they are easy enough to understand at first glance.

I'm learning better ways to study 165, and one of the best things that's helping me is study groups.
Though we occasionally do get distracted and end up going to coffee breaks, it definitely helps when we do concentrate and get productive.

Can't wait for the grades on A2 and midterm !!

Intense Preparation Time

So next week is the second midterm and I really really really really want to do well on it.
I've been practicing a lot more of proofs and seem to get the hang of it.
What bothers me is if I have to 'disprove' something. Only because usually then we have 'there exists' instead 'for all' and finding an example that fits is usually so time consuming.
I'm still really anxious about how am I going to manage it in the midterm because I have enough time on the assignment  but no one is going to allow me 20-30 mins for that one question.

Anyway, mostly done with A2 and the office hours were actually helpful and Larry cleared a major doubts quite easily.

(Fingers crossed for A2 and midterm !!! )

PS- Goodluck to everyone else too !!!

I can't think of post names anymore...

Floor -> the largest integer less than or equal to that number
Ceiling -> the smaller integer greater than or equal to that number

So this is what we are working on now. 

The concept seem easy but the proofs are a whole new thing. It's not exactly difficult but it does seem a little complicated.

I'm hoping to do well on A2 to make up for the midterm mishap. Its due in just over a week now and I feel like this time I'm going to start going to office hours.

More Proofs !!

So, as expected I didn't do great on the midterm but surprisingly I didn't do that terribly ! Thanks to whoever corrected my paper and was so lenient in the correct ! :)

 In class we've continued doing proofs. I'm not sure of how well I'd be able to do them if I wouldn't have had a little bit of understanding from MAT137 already.

We also did disproving by taking the negation.

The class was cut short due to thanksgiving holiday. 

Week 5 ...!

Midterm Troubles...

Sooo...midterm !
I have to say, not really my best test. I knew I'd practiced similar questions but in that moment, when I was squeezing my pencil super tight and everyone around me seemed to know everything on the paper, I was sitting there with a blank mind.
Looks like I have to work on my test fear.. :(

Moving on .. we started proofs ! I feel like this is where the course gets intense.
I'm hoping the proofs are similar to the ones in MAT137 in some way or other.

Hopefully my spirits will be higher for next week!

(Hope the grading for the midterm isn't that severe !! )

Week 4...

This week brought stress in the form of Assignment 1.

Questions that seemed easy at first glance kept getting more and more confusing as I pondered different ways of answering them.

This assignment made me realize my weakness with Venn diagrams. It took several tries and study sessions with my friends before we could all settle on the same answers. As usual my problem with negation came up when asked to negate an English sentence. The word "unless" confused me into believing it is an 'iff' statement, but only now have I realized it means 'if not' when used in logic. 

The lecture this week was interesting and the activity to solve a problem made the lecture fun. Transitivity and Bi-implications seems easy enough to understand. 

As of now, mid-term seems to be the only thing on my mind and I hope the mix of English with symbols doesn't confuse me.

(Goodluck to everyone !! :D ) 

Less confusion ...More practice...

Week 3

This week was surprisingly more simple and easy to understand. Prof. Larry's examples make things very easy and I'm pretty sure I'm going to use the example of red Ferrari quite often now. 

Like I mentioned earlier, being in MAT137 definitely helps as everything we covered this week has been covered in calculus, and I've already learnt things like Venn diagram, conjunction and disjunction in high school. 

Negation is however something that still confuses me. I still haven't got the hang of exactly how to do it. Certain times I get it right and other time when the answer seems simple enough, it still turns out wrong. So far negation seems to be the only thing that frustrates me the most. 

The truth tables helped greatly and cleared some small doubts. 

The laws seemed simple enough as I have learnt them in high school boolean algebra. 

I hope to clear my doubts in negation as soon as possible as they seem to be a major part of the assignement. 

(So glad I took MAT137 and CSC165 together ! )

The story so far...

Mathematical Expression & Reasoning for Computer Science

The course so far has been both highly interesting and made quite easy to follow. While it isn't as easy as I expected, it definitely is fun to learn. Prof. Larry's slides (and memes) are extremely helpful and have greatly improved my understanding of the course. The examples provided and the exercises we do in class  are really useful. I especially love the fact that while the subject is "mathematical" expression, we still learn the concept in terms of everyday English which then translates to Math.

I have observed from personal experience that going through the notes/slides before and after the lecture is extremely beneficial. Not only does it first prepare us for what we'll be learning in the following lecture, but reading them after makes it easier to understand where we went wrong, or what we did understand perfectly.

Having taken Math in high school, the introduction to the use of quantifiers, sets and Venn diagrams in Lecture #2 was comforting. MAT137 and CSC165 seem to be have started off with the same basics which makes it so much more easier to follow. While I do still get confused sometimes, I hope to solve my problems with more practice and probably more study sessions with my friends. 
Study sessions with classmates is something I personally recommend as it proved very fruitful. It is much easier to understand a concept when there can be a discussion on a particular question and the doubts can be asked back and forth and even cleared promptly. 

All in all, good course, cool lectures. I'm one step away from confusion.
So far, so good :)