So it hasn't been a good week.
I've barely had any time to focus on this course and after looking at the tutorial questions, I know I am in trouble. In fact, I would say I completely confused as to what's going in lectures too. I plan on spending some more time reading over the notes to hopefully attain some knowledge.
In the past, the tutorial has been really helpful for my understanding of proofs and lecture material. I hope the same can be said after tomorrow. I can't really add much more today, other than the fact that I really hope we move on from big O and what not soon.
Cheers everyone, and good luck -- I know I will need it.
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Sunday, 21 October 2012
No time for proofs...
These past 2 weeks have been tough.
It's mid-term season at UofT and to be perfectly honest, I have had little time to focus on CSC236 with all the assignments and tests I have been receiving. With another couple of assignments and a mid-term this upcoming week, I feel I will only digress even further in my understanding for this course's material.
Thankfully, the lectures of this class have been brilliant so far and I understand them most of the time. I know, subconsciously at least, that understanding the lectures and doing well on assignments are two different beasts. However, with the amount of work I have received in the previous week, I understand some compromises have to be made. Even better, I am so glad that our assignment is due in November, the month which should be relatively freeing from a dreadful October.
Before I sign off, I would like to say working with these recursive functions for proofs hasn't been as hard as I had thought they would be. Maybe I shouldn't get over-confident before practicing first hand rigorously but I feel more confident about them than I thought I would have.
I know I will have a tutorial and 2 lectures for this course in the upcoming week, but sadly my mind will be elsewhere; the mid-term and the other assignments that are due this week. Hopefully, I'll understand enough to focus on the weekend for A2.
Cheers!
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Short Week
If I were to describe how I felt about the test in one word, it would be regret.
I had mowed down the first question with ease. I gave the 2nd question a glance and realized it was oddly similar to the question on the assignment: I was confident I could get it with relative ease. So I decided I would turn to the last question and see what that's about. To my dismay, it was Structural Induction. Usually in cases like this, I prefer going for the easy question first and in this case, I most definitely should have. I tried my hardest to get the last question but I just couldn't conclude it in a way I felt comfortable with my answer. I looked up and I realized I had less than 5 minutes to finish question 2. This is when I realized I had made a mistake.
So yes, the test wasn't that great for me. We only had one other class, due to the shortened week from Thanksgiving, which was focused on recursion. I'll be frank with you guys, I am not a big fan of big O and what not. This will definitely be the hardest part of the course for me. The lecture wasn't particularly that hard to follow but I am a bit pessimistic when I do it on my own.
Anyways, that's all from me. For next week, I hope to feel slightly more confident (let's not set the expectations too high!) about recursion.
Cheers!
I had mowed down the first question with ease. I gave the 2nd question a glance and realized it was oddly similar to the question on the assignment: I was confident I could get it with relative ease. So I decided I would turn to the last question and see what that's about. To my dismay, it was Structural Induction. Usually in cases like this, I prefer going for the easy question first and in this case, I most definitely should have. I tried my hardest to get the last question but I just couldn't conclude it in a way I felt comfortable with my answer. I looked up and I realized I had less than 5 minutes to finish question 2. This is when I realized I had made a mistake.
So yes, the test wasn't that great for me. We only had one other class, due to the shortened week from Thanksgiving, which was focused on recursion. I'll be frank with you guys, I am not a big fan of big O and what not. This will definitely be the hardest part of the course for me. The lecture wasn't particularly that hard to follow but I am a bit pessimistic when I do it on my own.
Anyways, that's all from me. For next week, I hope to feel slightly more confident (let's not set the expectations too high!) about recursion.
Cheers!
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Introduction and first month in CSC236
Welcome, dwellers of the internet, to the blog about my experiences in the Theory of Computation (CSC236).
Before I begin to talk about the first few weeks of coming back to proofs, I feel I need to introduce myself. My name is Wahaj, as implied by the URL. I am a 2nd year student specializing in Computer Science. Computer science, among many other things, is one of my passions. That said, proofs are definitely not one of my strong suits and I did not particularly enjoy CSC165. Other than computer science, I am very passionate about Hockey, European Soccer, and practically anything related to Space.
Now, let's talk about CSC263. After taking this course for about 4 weeks, I must say I am very surprised: this course has been significantly more interesting than CSC165. So far, we've been through almost 4 types of induction: Simple Induction/Mathematical Induction, Complete Induction, Well-Ordering, and Structural Induction. Mathematical induction is by far the easiest to understand, at least in my opinion. I believe this is mostly because it's working with equations and being able to manipulate them, which I happen to find quite fascinating. Complete induction was a bit trickier for me to understand, specifically regarding the fact that you assume that your statement is true for everything except the final case. However, once I got my mind around the whole idea, I have started to feel a lot more comfortable with it. Well-ordering induction was really easy to understand during the lecture but I feel I need to practice it a few times until I can say I am completely comfortable with it.
Structural Induction on the other hand, I am quite shaky about. Maybe it was because I was far more focused on finishing Assignment 1 on Friday but I felt it was by far the most difficult type of induction: I will definitely need more practicing on this one.
Now I don't want to talk too much about the assignment but I would like to talk about question 4. That question, while not being particularly that easy, was very interesting. It was all about figuring out all the possibilities there could be inside the binary string and that reminded me of my Battleship assignment for CSC148. Specifically speaking, the part of the assignment where we had to make the program automatically place ships on the board without arriving to any conflicts (without going off the board). That too, was all about analyzing the possibilities of where a ship can be randomly placed. I would like to preface this paragraph with the fact that I would like to imagine I made some significant progress in answering Q4, which could be a totally incorrect assumption.
That's all for this blog post. Hopefully, next week when I start posting regularly, it will be far smaller.
Cheers!
Before I begin to talk about the first few weeks of coming back to proofs, I feel I need to introduce myself. My name is Wahaj, as implied by the URL. I am a 2nd year student specializing in Computer Science. Computer science, among many other things, is one of my passions. That said, proofs are definitely not one of my strong suits and I did not particularly enjoy CSC165. Other than computer science, I am very passionate about Hockey, European Soccer, and practically anything related to Space.
Now, let's talk about CSC263. After taking this course for about 4 weeks, I must say I am very surprised: this course has been significantly more interesting than CSC165. So far, we've been through almost 4 types of induction: Simple Induction/Mathematical Induction, Complete Induction, Well-Ordering, and Structural Induction. Mathematical induction is by far the easiest to understand, at least in my opinion. I believe this is mostly because it's working with equations and being able to manipulate them, which I happen to find quite fascinating. Complete induction was a bit trickier for me to understand, specifically regarding the fact that you assume that your statement is true for everything except the final case. However, once I got my mind around the whole idea, I have started to feel a lot more comfortable with it. Well-ordering induction was really easy to understand during the lecture but I feel I need to practice it a few times until I can say I am completely comfortable with it.
Structural Induction on the other hand, I am quite shaky about. Maybe it was because I was far more focused on finishing Assignment 1 on Friday but I felt it was by far the most difficult type of induction: I will definitely need more practicing on this one.
Now I don't want to talk too much about the assignment but I would like to talk about question 4. That question, while not being particularly that easy, was very interesting. It was all about figuring out all the possibilities there could be inside the binary string and that reminded me of my Battleship assignment for CSC148. Specifically speaking, the part of the assignment where we had to make the program automatically place ships on the board without arriving to any conflicts (without going off the board). That too, was all about analyzing the possibilities of where a ship can be randomly placed. I would like to preface this paragraph with the fact that I would like to imagine I made some significant progress in answering Q4, which could be a totally incorrect assumption.
That's all for this blog post. Hopefully, next week when I start posting regularly, it will be far smaller.
Cheers!
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