Week 10

    Got my midterm back this week; I didn’t do as well as I thought. I got the easy proof wrong that the class averaged an 8.9 on and the other two right but lost two marks on each of them because I didn’t comment. In MAT137 we also do a lot of proofs and we do not have to be as clear in our explanations. For the most part as long as we figure out the “trick” to the proof we get the answer correct, whereas CSC165 is a lot more focused on form. I did not read the questions well enough and ended up losing out on free marks because of it.

    In this week’s tutorial we worked on Big O proofs which was very helpful but I’m not sure I got the correct answer. I did the quiz in an unorthodox way where my answer was different than anyone else I talked to after so I’m not sure if I got the proof correct.

Week 9

BIIIIG O PROOOOOFS!!!

    So far this is the most complex and confusing thing so far. I don't really understand them at all, definitely going to put in a little bit of extra work to make sure I can get them done for the exam in December. Our tutorial this week went well, as things get more complex the tutorials get more useful. It's very helpful to get an extra hour for focused work to recall the lecture information.

    We also had a midterm this week, it felt good. All of the proofs weren't too difficult and I figured them out with time to spare. However after the test I realized that I had forgot to comment anything, hopefully I won't lose too many marks due to that. In MAT137, we do not really need to be as precise while doing our proofs, as long as we figure out the trick we pretty much get the mark, but I am not sure that is the case in CSC165; because the proofs are easier the marking may be more restricted to form.

Week 8, The Max Slice

This week in class we covered more on Big O, omega, and simplifying different functions. A challenge for this week was to simplify an original max_slice program given by Larry. I simplified it down to both O(n²) and O(n).

The problem:

Take original max_slice program which runs on O(n³) and simplify it into both O(n²) and O(n).

Is this accomplishable?

Yes. The given statement is a lot more complex than it needs to be.

Devising a Plan

Finding the Connection:

It appears that a major problem with the complexity within the code is that they are not using some of the functions already defined within python, such as max.

Carrying out the Plan:

The goal was to eliminate a loop. I did this by instead of sorting based on max length in each section, just using the built in function max.

Next I had to eliminate one more loop. I added a variable in order to keep track of additional info I would need to record. I used the max function again in order to keep track of another variable to check if the max sum would increase by adding a number.

Looking Back

Examine the Obtained Solution:

Eventually I got what I call the Golden Sum, it seems to work for all numbers and instead of O(n³) or O(n²) it is just O(n) which is as simple as it gets because there is no way this could be done in any O less.

Week 7

Proofs! We are beginning to get more into solving proofs currently. I enjoy the puzzle solving dynamics involved with proofs and the tutorial this week was fun. It took me a while to figure out the “trick” involved in proving the statement but figuring out the steps along the way was a good learning experience.  Although getting into all of the introductions was a little bit tedious and seemed like common sense. We also began to get into algorithm analysis, and tracing code. I enjoyed this aspect and look forward to applying it in the future. Even in CSC108 it will be useful and I won’t have to rely on code visualizer as much. Which I currently find myself doing with many of the CSC108 assignments. The efficiency aspect of developing algorithms will be crucial in the future and this excites me. I feel like I am finally going to be able to put my coding to work in the near future and be able to apply what I've been learning to the real programming world.

Week 6

The test went as expected, I finished with a low eighty, which I am happy with. Although the class average was very high for a test. I am worried about future tests. Professor Zhang explained after our test that they would be harder in the future because of how ell everyone did. The subject matter in this course so far has been interesting and not too impossible, but I feel like it could get rather abstract when we get more in depth into the course. For some reason my brain is retaining this class a lot better than most others, it may be we are moving at a slower pace, or the subject matter is more interesting, or it might even be because it is a night class and I am more alert. Whatever it is, this class is not my largest worry right now.

Our tutorial was canceled this week and the lecture was only two hours so we did not cover much. 

Week 5

Midterms! This week we had our CSC165 midterm. I felt like I did well, with the questions being very close to the past exams I felt I was well prepared. I didn’t answer the last question and left it blank. Luckily it was only worth six marks and I will get one of those back because of the 20% rule for not answering. I should have studied our assignment more and better prepared for that category of question. If I had better prepared that aspect I believe I could have got near perfect on the test instead of the eighty-something I predict. In the future I plan to better prepare for the tests by studying a broader area of the content instead of just mainly past tests.

Our tutorial this week went well. Going over proof structures was very helpful not just for CSC165 but also MAT137. In calculus we are currently doing a lot of proofs but we never really went over the structure or the formal layout and I think understanding that helps a lot with solving the proofs. I look forward to the more complex proofs in the near future and I am excited to relate theorems and mathematical sequences to computer science.

Week 4

This week we got into more advanced logic, including De Morgan’s Laws. This course has continued to be all about logic which is kind of boring, but will probably be essential in time. I thoroughly enjoy the proof portion of this week’s lectures and love the problem solving dynamic it opens, this is what I have been looking for in computer science the whole time I have been involved.

This course has still been similar to MAT137 but I now see how they are branching off in different directions. I feel confident about the test coming up. However, it being my first ‘University’ test I am uncertain how difficult it will actually be. A lot of people are worried about it and even though we are allowed to bring a paper with whatever we want into it I am not sure. I have heard a lot of people saying things like, “I am not ready for this test… At all.” But I don’t really understand what the big deal is, I find that Larry has been going at a good pace where it isn’t hard to manage the information load if you just go over the notes once in a while.

This week’s tutorial was great, it demonstrated the class’s ability to share ideas and open up. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other in a fashion that formed all of our ideas into one definitive answer. We discussed how some answers were better than others even though they were both correct and formed outcomes that we could all agree on. The quiz was easy once going through the tutorial and I believe that the majority of the class believed the same.