Assignment Deadline Creeping Up

Thankfully the material introduced throughout this weak was clear. All confusions present in the material were resolved by the end of each lecture. However, this cannot be said about Friday's lecture due to my absence. Hopefully the annotated slides are posted within a few days allowing me to catch up on lecture materials. As always, the course notes are a great resource so if the annotated slides are missing, it will be no big deal.

The main focus during this week was put on Assignment #1. The questions were foggy at first but after covering new material this week, they do not seem to be too bad. Still, one should never underestimate material that is to be marked. You can never know how you will do until you get it back.

My aim, after learning from the first semester, is to finish every assignment one day before it is due. This way, a lot of stress can be avoided and mistakes are less likely to be submitted. Therefore, I have rationed my days to allow for completion of the assignment by Tuesday. A low mark at the beginning of the course can be discouraging so I will try my best to ace this assignment. Besides, the material will only get harder; might as well build a base.

I have been looking at blogs posted by other students and have noticed that my thoughts tend to be very long winded and verbose. I should probably cut down on the length to save the TAs time as it is not only my blog which will be read.

The Week of the First Quiz

The second week of CSC165 flew by. This is the point where shoppers tend to drop courses and open up space for those genuinely interested in the course. It is also the week in which the first graded material is given out; the quiz along with an assignment.

The concept of universal and existential quantifiers was easily understood but the idea of expressing these statements using functions and list statements in Python was confusing at first. Luckily, Python syntax tends to relate to English very closely so very often simply reading the lines of code will explain what it does. The only problem with these functions is knowing which set goes where. Do we check for S1 in S2 or S2 in S1? In order to improve my understanding, I will start to use these statements more often and even force myself at times just to get used to the syntax. Being able to quickly recognize what the code does instead of having to go over it one piece at a time is very valuable when writing time constricted pieces such as the exam.

When it came to stating quantifiers as claims about sets, I was confused at first but going over the examples together proved to be very useful. After working on all four examples together, this concept is now clear. Hopefully the teaching method of going over examples together as a class continues to be used. Simply learning theory and not going over examples can lead to very confused students.

The tutorial this week was what I was looking forward to. I was interested in seeing how it is carried out and if it will be worth sticking around instead of simply writing the quiz. The tutorial problems are done in groups while the TA walks around to aid confused students. This tutorial went really well and ended with a very easy quiz. This quiz was closely related to the tutorial problems so it seems like if you work on these problems beforehand and clear up any confusion during the work time, the quizzes should all continue to be easy. At least that is my hope.

So far the class has been going very well but my only issue is the randomness of the availability of annotated slides. The lectures are very well done and seem more beneficial to listen to than potentially miss verbal information due to focus being put on taking notes. If the annotated slides were available for all lectures, there would never be the worry to quickly jot down notes and answers to the examples and would also help for missed lectures. However, this issue is not very serious as course notes are already available in a very well written format. 

Another main event in the second week of CSC165 was assignment #1. At this point all of the questions are not very clear to me but this will hopefully change at the end of week 3. One reason for some questions seeming unclear is due to my absence during the Wednesday lecture due to medical reasons. As mentioned above, course notes are provided which should quickly allow for clarification on all unclear portions of this assignment. The tutorial is also coming up so any concerns may also be addressed at that point because of the assigned tutorial problems. Unfortunately, I have not been able to review all material covered in week 2 due to catch up required in other classes but I am aiming to be on schedule by the end of next week. 

Being my first blog, I am worried about the quality of posts and am looking forward to comments providing feedback.

First week: Check.

The first week back from the winter break quickly flew by. I had luckily kept my sleep schedule intact over the break so drowsiness was not an issue. However, it was tough at first to be actually doing work and commuting instead of just lying around and playing Dota 2. But enough of that, let's move on to what is important; CSC165.

I have always been fond of all computer science courses and CSC165 or Mathematical Expression and Reasoning for Computer Scientists was no exception. Prior to coming to class, I had been informed by friends that the course can be difficult to wrap your head around at first, which is true for all math related courses. Everything just clicks and seems easy after lots of work is put in, or like for most people, after you are done with the material. With this in mind, keeping up with material and practice exercises will be essential to doing well.

After the very boring and repetitive but necessary introduction to the course was out of the way, the course material covered quickly gained my interest. Being able to understand and solve problems is very important but the ability to document and express your process and results is equally so. In the first week only the very basics have been covered. Coupled with D. Heap's personality, this has resulted in a very relaxing and entertaining couple of lectures.

It wasn't the first week's lecture material that gained my interest but was due to the course notes. On the bus ride home, I decided to read through the course notes and managed to read ahead of what was covered so far (this was after the second lecture). Section 1.4 in the notes, linked above, shared some very interesting and fun problems. The statement claiming that one should be able to solve these problems after completion of this course has given me something to look forward to.

It probably was not necessary to blog or SLOG about the first week's classes but being my first blog, I decided to test out the system beforehand. The blog title could use some work and is tentative at this point.

Hello World!

Hello World.