courSe LOG Problem Solving Entry

We were asked to solve a mathematic problem in groups on the Friday of week 3. The problem is: folding a paper strip several times, try to predict how many creases point vertex up and how many creases point vertex down.
This is how me and my partner solve the problem:
Firstly, we planned to specify our rules. I am responsible for folding the paper strip and read the direction of the crease to my partner. On the other hand, my partner is responsible for writing the pattern of the direction of the crease down to keep track. After recording about 4 to 5 times, we planned to brainstorm about the solution.
Then, we carried out our plan. I folded the paper strip 4 times and my partner recorded the pattern.
Next, it is our brainstorming section. We initially spent a lot of time thinking about it. Even after the professor let us see the hint, we still had nothing. All we found is that the central crease always point vertex down. Suddenly, my partner came up with the pattern. The pattern is: copy the previous line to the right side of the central vertex down arrow, then every crease on the left side of the central vertex down arrow is opposite of the crease that to the central vertex down arrow with the same distance. Now we were able to write the pattern of the crease of a paper strip folded any times.
Finally, we checked our solution. We predicted the pattern of the strip after five times of folding and wrote it down. We tried really hard to fold the paper strip the five times, and read the pattern of crease. It is the same as our prediction.
Overall, we solved the problem successfully by following the steps of solving mathematical problem given by G. Polya.

courSe LOG Entry 10

This week only has two lectures and has no tutorial. We started a new chapter about computable materials. As usual, it is hard for me to understand. I also tried to understand the course note after the lecture but still not get the hang of it.

Fortunately, I found two teammates for assignment 3 this week. The deadline of this course's assignment and the deadline of CSC108's deadline is close. I really need to squeeze my time for the two works.

courSe LOG Entry 9

This week, we learned more about proving big-Oh and big-Omega. We learned about proving if a function is in the set of big-Oh that equations are not given. I can understand most of the part of the proof process. However, I still cannot fully understand the definition of big-Oh notation. I don't really understand the quantifiers when applying them into real problem. We are going to have a two day break next week so that it will be a great chance of reviewing the stuff we learned recently.

In this week's quiz, the question is really similar to the sample questions in the problem set. The instruction taught in tutorial section is more detailed than the material in the lecture. It is helpful as usual.

What is going to be challenging is the third assignment. My former teammate seems to not be willing to form a group with me again since my understanding of the course is not strong. I fear I may get a bad mark for this assignment. I am having trouble accessing course website right now. I hope I can view the assignment as soon as possible so that I can be prepared.

I think I did terribly in the second term test. I got a lot of marks off for question 1 and 3, which I am confident about and I know what the solution is. I think my problem for these two questions is that the proof format is not neat. I really should have written an aid sheet in advance. If it is not allowed, I don't need pull it out. If it is allowed, it would be really helpful. I am going to get my test next week and to see my problems.

courSe LOG Entry 8

This week's class, we learned about prove whether a function belongs to big-Oh set, and we learned about proving big-Oh by using limit techniques in Friday's lecture. On Fridays lecture, Danny had to write notes on the blackboard for some technological problems. Surprisingly, this is better for my understanding. His writing on the blackboard is much more clear than the writing on the powerpoint. He used to throw his notes all over one slide when using powerpoint for lecture. In contrast, on the blackboard, the notes are more organized. I am glad that I can take notes without obstacles. Better handwriting does help understand the course material.

The tutorial this week is helpful as usual. TA needs to spend more than an hour on explaining only two questions. That is the reason why the explanation and the analysis is clear and easy to understand.

The biggest challenge this week is the second term test. I was very frustrated last week when I heard about it because I was totally not prepared for it. I treated as the most important task in this week's study. However, I should have written an aid sheet before the test so that my format of proof may be better. We are not told if we are allowed to bring aid sheet so that I did not prepare one. The characteristic of this course is that material in the lecture is harder than the questions in the test. I did alright in the test. I am pretty sure the first and the last question is correct. I did not know how to solve the second question. I did not prove the negation. I proved the statement directly to show it is a contradiction. I am not sure if it is correct. I always have trouble understanding the statement when the statement has a lot of quantifiers.

courSe LOG Entry 7

In this week's lecture, we learned about the formal definition of big O notation and the worst case analysis of two algorithms. I was absent-minded when Danny talks about counting the steps of  insertion sort. The following analysis was based on the counting step. So, I have to have a look of Larry's note for compensation since Danny's handwriting is hard to recognize and I personally think Larry's note is more organized. I have to admit that I am still not used to Danny's teaching method. I found the lecture does not bring me help. I need to spend a lot of time studying on my own. I think Danny really should teach from basic and clarify and point out what is example and what is important concept etc.

The assignment goes pretty good. We spent more than 2 hours last Friday working on it and we came up solutions for all the questions. Then we put the answers together. I believe in my teammates since I am not that really good at this course.

I just realized that the term next is on next Wednesday. That is frustrating. I am not prepared for the test and the time lasts so little. I have a economic quiz due on Wednesday and I have to read through a whole boring and hard-to-understand chapter in order to be able to do the quiz. I don't have enough time. So, I am going to be really efficient this week. I hope I can do well in the second term test.

courSe LOG Entry 6

We finished course material about proof and started sorting algorithms this week. We learned about inferences related to proof and learned insertion sort and selection sort, which are two basics sorting algorithms. I did not catch up what is being taught at the end of proof. I learned about sorting algorithm in my grade 12 computer science class. I hope this can help me understand the material we are going to learn in the future.
This week's tutorial is the key for me to understand the course material of proof. Before the tutorial, I did not know what to start to prove a statement. Instead, I only know how to write the structure of a proof. During this week's tutorial, the TA made us work on the problem for an hour and ten minutes on the 3 problem set questions. Since there are so much time, I at least tried to start doing some proof. After the TA taking up the questions, I think I was more confident about proof. I think I did the quiz right because it is really similar to the question I just did.
Assignment 2 is going to due very soon, I found two teammates this week. Hope I can do well in assignment because it weighs a lot.

courSe LOG Entry 5

We continued learning about proof in this week's class. Danny helped us solve some sample questions. In Friday's lecture, we learned about proof that needs to discuss in different case.

I found that I need to concentrate every minute in this class. In Friday's lecture, I was unable to catch up what is being taught after just picking up my eraser from the ground. Maybe it is just that I missed the key point coincidentally. It is really hard to distinguish what is course material and what is irrelevant from Danny's lecture because some of his joke is weird and his voice is not that clear. So, the best way is to learn is to try to concentrate on the lecture. In addition, I still find that some of his writing is not recognizable. For example, in Friday's lecture, when proving n^2+n is even number, Danny writes something like "N closed under +, *", and then the problem is solved. It doesn't make any sense to me. I probably need to go to his office hour to ask him about it.

The mark of our first test came out this week. I got 2 marks wrong for the first question, which is my most confident part of the test. I could not make it for this week's Danny's office hour so that I did not get the test. I am going to get the test next week and look at it carefully to see what my question is. I am satisfied with the test since I was not confident at all for this class and treated it as the hardest class this semester before the test, but I also feel bad about not getting full mark. The first question is the easiest and I should do it right completely. Just be careful in the next test and listen carefully during the lecture.

couSe LOG Entry 4

What I learned this week is the structure of the proof. I learned about we need to make domain assumption and the antecedent assumption. Teacher assistant gave us some examples of more complex problems. The material covered this week is not much related to the material before so that it is like a fresh start. What is being taught this week is relatively easier to understand.

The biggest challenge of this week is the mid-term test. Fortunately, professor allows us to use an aid-sheet. I really like the idea of aid-sheet because it can help you go through the knowledge while taking notes of them and you can use is to help you during the test. After finishing the aid-sheet, the review is almost done. Since I am not confident about this course, I looked over both Danny and Larry's slides and the course notes. It takes a lot of time, but it is worth it. I also looked over all the problem sets, assignment 1, and the past tests. I basically looked at any course material that I am able to find. I am actually confident before the test.

The first problem in the test is really similar to the past test's first problem and it is easy to do. I am confident about getting the problems correctly. I can do the other two problems in the test, but I am not sure if I did them correctly. In terms of the second question, my answers of the negations and determining which statement is true are correct in terms of the solution Danny provided today during the lecture. I am not sure if I can get full mark with my explanation. I provided a counter-example for the wrong statement. I am sure my direction of the third question of the test is the same as the correct answer. However, I also have a different way of explaining the reason.

I tried my best for the test and I hope it goes well.

couSe LOG Entry 3

I found this week's course material challenging for me. During the lecture, it is hard for me to absorb what is being taught by professor Danny. The explanation on the slide is not clear enough for me to understand. Besides, I sometimes cannot hear what Danny is saying clearly. I always feel that the professor skips something that I cannot connect what I already know to what is being taught. I think the professor should give us some more easy examples to help us understand the concept. I am still unable to get used to the way how Danny teaches. I cannot follow where he is leading us. Sometimes, I don't even know which part I don't understand when I cannot catch up the lecture. It is really difficult for me to learn from lectures.

Fortunately, I found some help this week. I thought about looking for extra help provided by teacher assistant, but I feel like I may need them to teach me about the course from the beginning. Instead, I looked at another professor Larry's course note. There are some easy examples on the slides, and the explanation is more clear and easier to understand. I spent the whole evening on Monday going through professor Larry's note and I am confident about first three weeks' material.

Regarding to the assignment, I typed the answer to the computer on Sunday and sent it to my teammate. Then, my teammate made some changes. I am confident about the assignment because my teammate has said that she enjoys this course the most.

I am satisfied about this week's tutorial. Because of the studying on Monday, I understand how to negate and how to transform between implication, disjunction and conjunction. I can do the problem set by myself and I can understand what teacher assistant is teaching. I am sure I did the quiz correctly.

Mid-term test is on next Wednesday. I am anxious about it to be honest because the lecture is too hard and unclear for me to understand that I fear I have already missed something for sure. I should look over both professor Danny and professor Larry's notes and do the tutorial problem set one more time. Just try to find which part I do not understand and find some help to solve it.

courSe LOG Entry 2

This week's CSC165 class, we learned things about conjunction, disjunction and negation. I feel the stuff in this week is more difficult than last two weeks. Conjunction means and in English and disjunction means or in English. Their symbols are used to describe the relationship between sets. Negation is relatively harder to understand when applying it to problems.

What I enjoy this week is my seat during the lecture is good. On monday's lecture, I sat at the fifth row in the room. In addition, I sat at a good spot downstair in University College's lecture room. In the past two weeks, I did not get really good spot and I even had nowhere to sit in the second lecture of this semester. A good seat helps concentrate during lecture since there is one less disturb.

This week's material challenges me. I was unable to catch up when the professor taught about negation. I did not quite understand even after doing some review. I feel that I miss something so that I cannot fully understand the material. Fortunately, I know a person who lives in the same building as me also takes this course. I asked her about the course material today and it really helped me a lot. I also invited her to be my partner for the first assignment in this course. I believe I need a lot of extra help in the future.

Finding a partner is my biggest achievement of this week. It is really helpful that someone understands the stuff that I do not understand. Although I enrolled into the First Year Learning Community, it does not provide much opportunity for us to discuss the course material. Since she lives really close to my room, it is a really helpful achievement.

This week's tutorial did not go really well. The teacher assistant explained the questions clearly. However, I was unable to apply what he had taught during the following quiz. I made my answer really complicated, and I realized the question should be answered by using negation at the moment I walked out of the class room. I probably need to do a detailed review to understand the course better.

courSe LOG Entry 1

I have been studying CSC165 for two weeks. In this weeks' class, I have learned a lot of new stuff regarding sets. I learned how to express the relationship between different sets by using Python functions. I learned about implication, converse and contrapositive relationship between different sets. I believe they will all make my expressions more accurate. I feel that all the material being taught in the class needs some time to acquire. It is really necessary to spend time on reviewing this course after class. It takes me quite a while to understand how to use Python functions to express the relationship between two sets. It combines Python's programming language with math together. I worked on it for a long time to understand the code and the math. Overall, two weeks' classes bring me a lot of new knowledge. I think CSC165 inspires a lot of thinking.

The lecture is informative, helpful and evokes thinking. However, what challenged me this two weeks is that I am not able to understand what the professor has annotated on the slides clearly sometimes. I have to spend some time distinguishing the words so that I cannot use my brain to think about course material when taking notes. I feel that I don't understand anything by the end of some lectures because I did not think about it carefully due to the pace of class is fast and I have to take notes to catch up. However, when I do some review after class, I find I can understand. I think what challenged me this two weeks is that the pace of class is too fast for me so that I don't have time to think about and absorb the new knowledge during class. 

I am not confident about the course material after class, but when I finish the review after class, I become more confident. I can understand the concept of course material. I think I need to do some example questions to make sure I understand it completely.

The course material this week does relate to CSC108. During CSC108 this week's lecture, we were taught about how to define a function in Python. CSC165 covered function earlier than CSC108. I spend a lot of time thinking about the function in CSC165 since CSC108 has not covered that yet at that time. When CSC108 started teaching function, I found it is easy to understand since I spend a lot of time tinkling about it to understand the course material in CSC165.

I think the achievement this week that is worth to be told is that I can understand the course material. Understanding what is being told during lecture is essential. I am glad that I can understand the materials by doing review especially I feel I know nothing after the lecture.

We had our first tutorial section for CSC165 this week. Teacher assistant helped us understand two easy questions and gave us a quiz that is similar to these two questions. I think I can get full mark in the quiz since it is almost the same as the example question teacher assistant has covered before.

CSC165 is a little bit challenging and it requires a lot of thinking. It needs time to understand. I will try to keep the same studying attitude towards this course in the future.