Post #5: Reading week update

As reading week comes to a close, I can conclude that it was mainly productive -- I say 'mainly' because as productive as I would like myself to be, I am prone to getting distracted by certain television series (note to self: finishing the entire first season of Girls in one sitting is not healthy nor socially acceptable, even though it is a good series).

However, I did get caught up in my other classes, and now I have started to seriously review the lecture slides / notes for 165. The proofs that we have been doing so far in lectures have been straightforward, but I definitely need to spend more time looking at the general structure of the different types of proofs (proof by contradiction, direct proof, etc.) in order to be able to quickly identify which proof I should be using in my answers. This familiarization of the different proof structures will no doubt be of immense help when it comes time to write next week's tutorial quiz.

Also, I have begun to think about possible problems that I could solve using Polya's method. So far, I have found some interesting problems in "Alice in Puzzle-Land: A Carrollian Tale for Children Under Eighty." (As an aside, if you have not read this book yet, you should! The author is extremely witty and writes in true Carrollian style. Plus, it's an eclectic mix of Alice-meets-logic puzzles -- how could you resist?) 

The 'knights and knaves' logic puzzle was actually created by the author of Alice in Puzzle-Land, so there are a lot of these types of problems there. Safe to say, I will be writing up my solution to one of those problems very soon. 

Post #4: Midterm-midlife crisis of sorts

This week has been crazy. Next week is going to be crazy. I think I may very well be going crazy. 

But I am extremely happy about one thing -- the CSC165 midterm. When I heard that there was going to be a snowstorm today, I actually hoped that classes would still be continuing. Next week is going to be extremely hectic because I have 2 assignments due and another midterm at the end of the week, so in a sense, the midterm happening today could not have been more perfectly timed. 

The midterm went pretty well, which is an additional bonus. I must admit however that I was fairly surprised that the questions were mostly drawn from material in the lectures; I was prepared to see a lot of translating between symbolic and English expressions, proving symbolic equivalences, drawing Venn diagrams and the like. Since I had mentally prepared myself for more "computational"-type questions, the cheat sheet that I had prepared (with all the laws and properties) wasn't too useful during the actual test. Having said that, all the work put into creating the cheat sheet was not truly wasted. Writing down things always helps muscle memory (and consequently, later recall speed of the material) and gives you a clearer picture of what it is you are actually writing down. That last sentence probably sounded funny and wordy, but it's true. There is something about the physical act of writing down ideas that somehow solidifies your understanding of them.

Well anyway, the first section of the midterm was pretty straight forward. The only problem I encountered was that I constantly needed to flip back and forth between page 1 and page 2, which was time-consuming and a little bit irritating. But other than that, it was A-OK. 

Then came the second section, with the delta epsilon statements. This was probably the section that was the most confusing for me, mainly because I did not understand what the question meant by "the negation symbols applies only to predicates such as ... and ..." When I negated the statements, I looked at my answer and thought: this can't be it -- it's too straightforward and simple. Perhaps I'm missing something here. What do they mean when they say the negation symbols apply only to the predicates? Isn't this just the usual meaning of negation? I ended up leaving my answers as they were, doubtful that they were what the question was actually looking for. But as it turns out, my answers were right all along (hooray for the same-day release of midterm solutions). Currently, I'm still confused about what the question meant, so I'll be sure to ask my TA next week. With the exception of my quasi-shoddy explanations for S1 and S2, I thought this section went pretty well. 

The last section of the midterm was straight-forward and surprisingly refreshing. It was significantly shorter than the previous two sections, and did not require any explanations (phew).

All in all, the midterm was fair and the lengths of the sections were well proportioned given the time constraints. I'm definitely getting into the rhythm of things in 165 (although I have been falling a bit behind these past few days... I have to read up on proof structures for sure this weekend!), and look forward to next week.

Until then, ciao.