CSC165 Slog week 8

This week is a super busy week, since 165 assignment 2 and 108 assignment 2 are due next week and term test will be on Wednesday; when this two things come together, it really brings me lots of pressure and drives me crazy; and also I still have an economics test on Monday night. The assignment takes a long time to think and to do, and especially when I am stuck on a question. And right now I am struggling and stuck on Claim 1.2 and 1.3 in the assignment, they are challenging questions to prove. I really hope the test and assignments can be separated into different times, so that I can do better on both test and assignment. On the other hand, this week’s lecture is confusing, I do not understand many of the parts such as big-Oh of polynomials and non-polynomials. Also, sometimes there are lots of notes to take, and I can’t follow the lecture very well when being busy taking notes. Even though we have course notes but it does not include all the notes in class, so I think it would be helpful if the notes from class can be posted on the course page. For now, I really need to catch up on these things. This chapter is hard and proof is new to me, so it is really needed to study and I don’t have enough time, but I will try my best. Even though I don’t get a chance to go out or do anything about Halloween, Happy Halloween!!!

CSC165 Slog week 7

This week’s lecture is a little bit confusing for me. I don’t fully understand the content. Some proofs I found a way to prove it; it might be wrong because it’s different from the solution, but I don’t know why, and I just did not think in that way. Sometimes I try to do proof, but my answer is always different from the solution, and I don’t understand why I am wrong. Maybe that’s because I haven’t done a lot of proof and don’t know the how to do it in the right way and I don’t fully understand all the concepts so can’t apply them. In Friday’s lecture, the penny piles was also a little confusing, I didn’t really understand the purpose of doing it, and there were some open questions that couldn’t be solved. On the other hand, the new assignment that was just posted seems to be very hard, I didn’t understand many of the questions when I took a look at it. Also, when I did the first assignment, I felt like I spent lots of time on finding and typing symbols in computer; so I hope maybe we could change another way to write assignment. And just found out that the due date is around the CSC165 test and I got another test and assignment due in those couple days, so I need to start the assignment early, and this makes me feel lots of pressure. And proof is hard!

Also, I found out that verifying proof is the hardest thing to do since it really needs students to fully understand the whole statement rather than just doing algebra to prove a statement without thinking deeply.

When I went on other students' slog, I found a person who also has the same view as me.
http://cs1t8.blogspot.ca/2014/11/week-7.html#comment-form

Problem Solving: Folding

Folding

Fold a strip of paper. Some of the creases point vertex up, some down. Predict the sequence of ups and down for any numbers of times you carry out the folding operation.

Plan: We decided that one of us would fold the paper until we could not clearly see the pattern and the other would record, then predict the sequence of the pattern based on the patterns we have.

The Pattern we have from the first fold to the fifth.

 U

UUD

UUDUUDD

UUDUUDDUUUDDUDD

UUDUUDDUUUDDUDDUUUDUUDDDUUDDUDD

At first, we thought about creating an equation for the pattern, but we did not succeed on that. Then we thought since we folded the paper in half each time, it might have something to do with symmetric. So we started to stare at the pattern we have. As I compared the first letter to the last one, the second to the second last, and so on, I found out the pattern!

We divided the pattern into the first half, the middle and the second half.

U

UUD

UUDUUDD

UUDUUDDUUUDDUDD

UUDUUDDUUUDDUDDUUUDUUDDDUUDDUDD

The first pattern depends on the way you hold the paper, and in this exercise the first pattern would be U since we folded the right end first then unfolded the entire strip.

For the first half, just simply copy the whole previous pattern.

The middle part is always the same as the first pattern.

For the second half, reverse of the first half and change each letter to the other.

Anther way:

U

UUD

UUDUUDD

UUDUUDDUUUDDUDD

UUDUUDDUUUDDUDDUUUDUUDDDUUDDUDD

The middle part is always the same.

The letters in red are symmetrical. They copy the letter in red in the previous pattern as the first half of the pattern (only for red letter), and the second half is the reverse of the first half and it changes each letter to the other (only for red letter).

The rest in black are all in the pattern of UD.

CSC165 Slog week 6

The test result was posted this week and the class average is low 80s which surprised me. It makes me worry that will the difficulty for the next test rise. But the fact that I spent too much time on a difficult question which caused me did not have enough time for an easy question really upsets me, and it makes me realize that I need to mange my time more properly next time so that my mark would not be affected by this again. 

In the lecture of this week we continued on proof, focused on the structure of proof and also learned something new such as proving something false, trying to switch the direction to think and work and proof by cases. For this week’s lecture I understand most of it but there is just a little confusion on some slides and I think I will figure it out later. Because of the math mid-term, I had less time spent on cs, but I will spend more time studying cs after. However, I just found out that there will be an assignment 2 due at the end of October, this make me a little bit anxious because I still have another term test around that time and two other assignment from other classes.

Jacky was also struggling with proof at first, but he found a way to solve it out. Maybe I should try to practice proof in the way he suggested.
http://cs1t8.blogspot.ca/2014/10/week-6-slack.html#comment-form

CSC165 Slog week 5

In this week, I began to learn about proof started with the structure of proof and there was a mid-term on Wednesday. I didn’t do very well on the test because the time was tight, I didn’t finish the last part of the second last question which I believe I could do it if I spent couple more minutes, and did the last question wrong. Before the test, I felt lots of pressure because I was not very confident with this course since this is my first test and when doing the previous term test, I got many of the questions wrong. But I spent time working on it and figured it all out eventually; this helped me a lot on the test. On the other hand, for the proof I just learned, it seems to be fine for me and it is somehow like math. Since there was a test in this week, the content we learned is much less than the previous weeks and this gives me a chance to understand the new content more fully. Friday’s lecture was oaky for me, although I got lost in the last part.

CSC165 Slog week 4

Slog week 4

This week in csc165 I first learned about proof and the term test coming in next week made me feel somehow anxious. I feel like unprepared for the test because I haven’t done any exercise for this course and I didn’t spend enough time on it. Sometimes I feel like I've finished all the work because I don’t have any homework; however, it’s extremely important to review and preview. I planned to study for the test in weekend. 

This week conjunction, disjunction and negation were introduced. First, I found the idiom is interesting to read. Secondly, the silly English trick part is interesting but it requires to think more carefully when doing logic since the way people use "and" and "or" in daily life is little different than the way these two words are used in cs. Thirdly, the part of negating a statement by using rules is reasonable. By comparing the original statement and its negation; then translating them into English form, it can be seen that they are the opposite to each other.

On the other hand, the first assignment is due this week; I struggled with this assignment because of the same reason, the lack of exercise. But when I worked with my partner and we discussed, I felt much better and it helped me lot. At the same time, I also found out I didn’t know how to draw the Venn diagram for implication; my partner helped a bit and I do much better right now though I still need to practice more.