Burned out...

Every week has become an infinite loop of assignments, mid-terms and quizzes.

So I said last week how I was looking forward to A3. I lied...kind of. This last week just sucked. I got a lot of my marks and they were not as good as I had hoped. That bears down on a working mind and probably has made me skeptical of A3. I don't know if I am still over it or not. I just know, I haven't felt too good about any assignment/mid-term since the last A2 for this very class (and that didn't turn out that well either).

I am looking at A3 now and there are 2 questions that look like they could be quite fun (the ones regarding DFSA) while the others I am quite skeptical about, specifically question 4 which just looks like a nightmare. Whatever we learned this week, I don't have a particular name for it per say (Finite Automata? Maybe...), is what I would want to continue learning. Working with DFSAs and NFAs has just been loads of fun and interesting.

I can't really add more than that about this previous week; I am slightly worried about A3 but that's how I felt about A2 and A1 as well so I have my fingers crossed that I will continue having the epiphanies.

Cheers!

P.S. Looks like next week I will do my "walk-through" of a question that I liked or gave me some trouble. I think I will do it on one of the questions from the assignments because those were fun to work with.

"The Man" has dealt me a blow!

So we got the marks of A2 back this week.

Not good. These were my first thoughts. A clear contrast is evident between my thoughts after finishing A2 (and having looked at the solutions) and looking at the mark given to me.

So let's talk about why I am in such a mood. I personally felt I did really well on my proofs; they were pretty clear and really had nothing wrong with them. I was correct, more or less. So why was I given a "passable" on my first question from A2? I did not explain how I achieved my first equation and I was missing, according to the marker, the n = 1 base case.

Yes, my answer was clearly missing an explanation of how I achieved my equation. I never thought it would be necessary to put that onto the final assignment that I handed in. This was also the case for A1 and I was not docked any marks then (where I did not show how I achieved an equation but rather only proved it would work for all n.)

The base case problem? I felt, since my equation only had 2 cases (one with n < 2 and then n > 1), that I felt only one case was necessary. The marker disagreed; fair enough. The problem here lies in the fact that both these errors cost me 12.5% on A2 (each). Even if they were considered to be errors, I would feel they are very much so MINOR DETAILS, to what is otherwise in my honest opinion, a fairly good proof.

Now enough whining about A2. I must say last week's lectures were very interesting. Why?  Since they were very much so related to the lectures we were having in my other course, CSC207. In that course, we focused on regular expressions. I can't really recall what they were called in this course (they were just referred as Languages IIRC but not sure), but the formatting was very similar (long story short: I had a quiz to study for, so I picked my poison.).

I hope we continue moving forward with these, it's always great to see related courses. Furthermore, I realize the time has come for me to decide something to do for my problem on this SLOG (and walk through it). Hopefully this week, I can get on that. Last but not least, I look forward to A3 -- as I mentioned in an earlier blog, the assignments in this class have been pretty interesting so far and I hope the trend continues.

Cheers!

Out of sight...out of mind!

So I am late by a day. Sue me!

I have had no time to focus on CSC236 after the assignment finished. None at all. So basically I want to talk about the test we had this previous week because I've done little else (due to another major assignment due this week).

I spent a lot of time trying to understand correction. In fact, by the time I had finished preparing for the test, I was probably more ready for that than what we actually got. I know one could argue that the assignment should have prepared me but let's be honest here, you can't expect one assignment alone to prepare me for a test. However, it did make me feel more comfortable with winding down and what not where as I was COMPLETELY uneducated about correction.

So when I found out just before the test that there would in fact be no correction what so ever, I was heavily disappointed. I think I did alright at best on the test we got. I didn't finish all the of question on there and my problem did seem to be the test itself. As I mentioned earlier, my intuitiveness is just a bit slower than other peoples and when you put a clock in-front of me (or at my side as it were), doubly-so. I think I wrote the formats of the answers well enough so we'll see how far that gets me. I've actually been trying to avoid thinking about the test but here we are...

Anyways, here's hoping.
Cheers!

If wishes were fishes...

I love how the titles of this blog have taken such an ominous turn in the past few weeks.

Well, test #2 is imminent and I feel mildly prepared. That isn't good. I felt a lot more prepared for the first test, and look at how well that turned out (hint: read earlier blog posts).

I'll get more to the test later but I am more interested in talking about the assignment. I must say, other than the improvement in lecture quality from 165, the assignments have been far more interesting too. After understanding how to do questions, I really did feel a sense of accomplishment which was completely missing in every assignment in 165. I guess you can say it hit the "problem solving" button in my head like some of the actual programming classes.

I think this was because I really had time to think about the questions. I read them over multiple times over a week or so to understand how I would figure them out. Yeah, I realize I didn't need that much time, but my point is, I set the assignment on the "keep warm" setting for a while. I also re-read many of the notes online and the text book for this course to help facilitate my progression. Next thing you know, I was having epiphanies left and right. Something just clicked.

This leads me to believe that maybe tests aren't particularly that important in this type of course. I know people will disagree with me on this one but I feel that when you're given some time to do proofs, you think out all the possible scenarios, which you chip away at to give you that "AHA!" moment. I don't think you can do that with tests and that's what I feel is missing. Maybe for future exams, we could have some easier proofs that test you on basic knowledge and this harder question which everyone gets 24 hours before the exam. I know I am just rambling but it's something that should be considered in my opinion.

Anyways, I am off to go try some more proofs in the aim that I feel more prepared for tomorrow's test.

Cheers and Good luck!