WEEK 3

Blending Into

This was the third week of my campus life. After communicated directly with classmates and read their slogs on the website, I found bunch of approaches that I can use, which were workable and assisted me to learn better in this course. For instance, Ji Yong Choi chose to pick a set in the front (from http://165choi.blogspot.ca/2014/09/entry-1.html), which I thought it’s a good idea to focus on what the professor teach and to take advantage of the limited class time efficiently. Besides, yojello wrote that she insisted spending time after class to review professor's annotated slides and to make additional notes she had written (according to http://165slogs.blogspot.ca/2014/09/slog-week-1.html). This method helped me a lot, because it solidified the knowledge I learnt immediately, helped me memory them and encouraged me to get a better understanding. Most importantly, it explored the problem I have so that I could solve it in time rather than delaying it.

What I Learnt and Hardship

This week, we continued on math language (conjunctions, disjunctions, negations, truth table and manipulation rules). I began to know how to transfer an English statement into symbolic form, and the difference between math language and English in reality, especially for conjunctions and disjunctions.

For example:

In English, what we are accustomed to use “and” to express, should use the symbol “or” in math language. 

What I found difficult is how to master so much manipulation rules and do not mix them up. I knew it’s a better way to understand them instead of just memorizing. Therefore, I used truth table to express both sides of these laws, and then matched them, which drew a clear picture of the laws for me, and imprinted them in my mind.

Interesting Part

We did the folding experiment in this week. At first, my friends and I just imaged it and wrote the outcomes on the paper. However, then professor encouraged us to do it on the real paper. We experimented for different situations from once to n times. The more we did, the clear picture it showed. This process was interesting and impressive, and also inspired me to use flexible methods to solve problem. When I went back to home and recalled it, I searched some videos and instructions about this experiment, and had a better understanding on this.

# These related videos are worth of watching, I would like to share with you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_rM_c4kn1A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdyociU35u8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc8sWN_jNF4

WEEK 2  

Big Challenge

I am an international student, and this is my first year in Canada. All the things here for me is totally new and challenging. I make effort to adapt and adopt the brand-new language environment and professor’s style of lecturing in order to make myself and the other students in the same page. Interestingly, when I read classmates’ slogs, I found they encountered the similar problem with me, like Yahui Liu (http://yahuiliuslog165.blogspot.ca/2014/10/csc165-week-1.html). Although adaption is not easy, but I believe I can tackle this with my classmates together, and I can definitely gain and learn a lot in this process, not only academically.

What I Learnt

These two weeks the professor mainly talked about the transformation between computer language and human language in python, how to express quantifications in different ways (using quantifiers, Venn Diagrams, set relations, etc.) and implications. What made me happy was that the logic part overlapped some parts in MAT137, which was quite helpful for me to solidify the knowledge in both courses. 

The Difficulty and Solving

        In the first tutorial, we judged whether a statement was true or false, and drew the Venn diagram according to the situation. I was confused about whether we should draw an “O” in the Venn diagram.
For example:

Answer:

For (d) False: the statement is “all three python programs pass all three test suites”. At the beginning, I thought only an X in the region of T outside P was OK, because if I draw this X, this means, “no python program doesn’t pass all three test suites”, which was equivalent to the False statement. Thus, I could not figure out why there must be an O in the region of T inside of P.

After I found my problem, I devised a plan:
1) First, review all the slides and course note to get a better understanding in this part.
2) Then, summarize all the similar problems and see the difference between them.
3) If question still cannot be solved, consult TA about my confusion.
Finally, I solved this problem until I saw a quite similar problem on quiz 1. That problem didn’t have an O in the region of T inside of P because T can be empty set. But in the tutorial problem, we have already known that T = {there are three python programs}, which means T cannot be empty set. Therefore, there must be an O in the region of T inside of P.

Using the method suggested by Polya, I tackled the difficulty myself, which inspired me a lot, and interested me keenly to learn more on CSC165.

slogURL.txt

slogURL.txt