Comments About Fellow Bloggers

Throughout the semester I have been following along with posts from some of my fellow classmates. I found some of these points very interesting and also useful to acknowledge.

Ivan Zhang:
Ivan made a wonderful post about how people assume first year courses don't matter whereas in reality they do and in fact, they are very crucial to student's learning in future years. It is not a good habit to skip classes as this can be very dangerous and impact lives in negative ways. It may just start off as skipping one class but this can turn into not going to any classes or studying for any tests, etc. I really like the point Ivan makes about how first year courses lay down a foundation for students to build upon and I feel this is the most important thing students need to learn.
The post can be found here: https://medium.com/@ivanzhang/groundwork-1b15347b6ce1

Anam Alvi:
I came across a post Anam made earlier in the year (near Assignment 1) and I could directly relate to this post. It was about the first group assignment completed in university and how when I start an assignment and don't understand a question, it'll stay in the back of my mind until I solve it. She also discussed how she looks over 165 work during her commute to school everyday which is something I can relate to. Commuting approximately an hour each way, I find myself usually reading over notes or tutorial work for 165 and other classes which I find a very good technique to stay on top of all the materials I need to know.
The post can be found here: http://165slogs.blogspot.ca/2014/10/slog-week-3-obsessive-nature.html

Qasim Iqbal:
While I was struggling with time complexity questions, I tried to go online and figure out how to grasp a better understanding of this concept. I ran across multiple course log's talking about time complexity but one that really caught my eye was this one by Qasim. He added a screenshot of the code along with the number of steps per line which was very useful and I sat there looking at the code until I finally started to understand what we've been doing in class.
The post can be found here: http://qasim-csc165.blogspot.ca/2014/11/week-8-large-oh.html

These are just three of the many wonderful course logs I have come across throughout the semester and looking back at them now that we're coming to an end, I can say that it was a good learning experience. These course logs were a wonderful way to stay organized and also for students to seek others help when facing a challenging situation.

Fun With Folding - Math Problem

Earlier in the semester we were told to work through a problem called “Folding”. 

Understand The Problem
We were required to take a piece of paper and fold it in half from left to right. Then, we had to unfold the paper and see how many creases there were and what direction they were facing (either up or down). This process was repeated multiple times. 

Devise a Plan / Carry Out The Plan
While working on this with my partner, we decided to repeat the process five times and came up with the following information. A downward crease is represented by a “D” and an upward crease with a “U”

1.    D

2.    UDD

3.    UUDDUDD

4.    UUDUUDDDUUDDUDD

5.    UUDUUDDUUUDDUDDDUUDUUDDDUUDDUDD

After coming up with the result for the first five folds, we tried to identify a pattern. This did not take us very long as we quickly realized that the sequence prior to the current one appears at the end of the current sequence which can be easily noticed through the five sequences given above.

This was when Prof. Heap gave us permission to look at the hints. The first one said to think recursively which we did by noticing the previous pattern appears in the current one. However, the second pattern said to think symmetrically which took a little while. My partner made a key observation by noticing that half of the pattern occurs twice in some way. This took me a while to catch however my partner quickly understood this and decided to code up a solution to the problem.

Essentially, what we figured was that the previous pattern goes directly to the end of the current one, and the first part of this pattern is the opposite of the previous + ‘D’ but flipped. My partner made a program that emulated this and helped explain to me the small pieces I did not understand. There was a flip method that replaces the “D” with a “U” and vice versa. After flipping it, he also reversed the string. After this, he added a “D” which was the middle character of every pattern and then he added the previous pattern to the end. After finishing the program, we tested it and the result for the first five patterns were the same as what we had written down at the beginning so it seemed to be working. We tested it on a few more to confirm that our logic was right and it seemed that we finished the problem.

Look Back 
I found this very interesting how we started off by understanding the problem we had and then simply by devising a plan (to test the first few patterns) we were able to grasp this pattern and arrive at a solution. The program my partner came up with was also very interesting as it caught me by surprise not having extensive programming knowledge. 

Week 12

Conclusion
We are now done with the lecture material in this course and only A3 and the final exam remain. Looking back at the course, I really did learn a lot starting from the first week where I came in not knowing anything since the material was never taught to me before. I found this course very interesting and the tests, assignments to be challenging and rewarding too. I'm hoping to continue with computer science and looking forward to more logic courses in future years.

Week 11

Assignment 3

Having a day off on Monday meant that there was only 2 hours of lectures this week and also no tutorial. So far, in Wednesday's lectures we went over halting problems and uncomputable functions. There was not much in Wednesday's lecture however it was a little confusing and I will need to go over it to completely understand it. The final assignment was also posted and after looking over it, I don't think like the assignment is as difficult as the previous one however it will also take some time to ensure we get the proofs right. My partner and I decided to start on the assignment early and try to get as much of it done as quickly as we can to avoid any problems or misunderstandings closer to the due date.

Week 10

Test

Having received the test back today, I am extremely delighted with the mark I received. Initially I thought I would lose around four or five marks because I had to rush at the end of the test however it turns out I only lost one mark overall. This is amazing because I have received 97% on both my tests and a high mark on my first assignment too. Now hopefully I can do well on the second and third assignment and take that momentum into the final exam. I also feel like I am understanding everything in the lectures on the topic of Big-Oh and Big-Omega which is going to be crucial in the exam and third assignment. 

Week 9

Test

Well now the test is over with and out of the way. Now we just have one assignment and the final exam (along with 2 tutorial quizzes) left in the course. However, going back to the test, it was not very difficult and I had sufficient amount of time to complete it. The first question was very straightforward and I was able to complete that within 5 minutes however the next two questions required me to think for a few minutes before I got anywhere. For the second question, I noticed that I can negate the statement and make it into an implication and from that implication, I can easily prove the statement. For the last question, it was very similar to a question on the assignment and I looked over the sample solutions to the assignment so I believe I got the correct proof for that question as well. Unlike last test, the aid sheet I made for this test was very helpful because for one of the questions, it helped me solve a small mistake I encountered during the test and for another question, it helped me structure the proof into cases. Now, all that's left is to see how I did and prepare for the next assignment and exam.

Week 8

Lecture

In the lectures so far for this week, we mainly covered sorting algorithms and counting steps. We also went over the Big Oh for (n^2). Using insertion sort we proved the worst case upper bound by overestimating. At first I was very confused by what we were doing but as we kept going, I started understanding everything and also being able to predict what the next step would be. On Friday, we are going to prove the worst case lower bound and I assume we're going to do this by underestimating. I am hoping to be able to understand what we do and also be able to complete parts of it myself without first seeing how professor Heap does it. It's crucial that I'm on top of all the work because of our test next week which hopefully won't be too difficult or too long.

Week 7

Lecture

The lectures so far this week were interesting. We started off by quickly going over two proof exercises that we needed to complete in a set time period and I managed to get the first proof correct with the proper structure. However, for the second proof, I wrote down the entire structure but could not find the number required to make it work since it was an existential claim. Later on though when professor Heap went over the proofs I realized that it was not as hard to find the number as I initially thought. Wednesday’s lecture was about different allowed inferences which I found very useful to help guide the different proofs we will be completing in the near future. We also talked about the assignment very briefly which I am hoping to start as soon as possible. Lastly, we ended off by going over the different sorting methods. I am not the best at these sorting algorithms however I’m hoping to be able to practice them and understand them as best I can.

Week 6

Test

Having received the test back today, I am extremely delighted with the mark I received. Initially I thought I would lose around five or six marks because I had to rush at the end of the test however it turns out I only lost one mark overall. This is amazing because my assignment was not the best and hopefully this test will help balance out with the assignment mark. More than anything though, I am pleased that I am understanding what we are learning in the course and hopefully I can continue to succeed in this course.

Week 5

Test

Well now the test is over with and out of the way. The test was not very difficult however I was working a little slow and ended up having to rush a few things especially the last question which I think resulted in me getting it wrong. Apart from the last question, I feel I completed everything else correctly or maybe at most a few small mistakes (hopefully nothing major) and I can get a good mark on it. The example test that the professors posted was directly related to the test we completed which I felt was really helpful. The aid sheet I made was very unnecessary for this test in my opinion because I put a lot of other stuff that happened to not be on the test. However, this was the first test and now I know what to expect for the rest of the year and future years to come.

Week 4

A week away from the test and I’m starting to get mixed thoughts. On one hand, I feel like I understand what we are learning and on the other hand I am very nervous about the content and my preparation for this test. However, this week was more focused on the assignment and the lecture content.

Lectures

In the lectures so far we learned about transitivity and mixing quantifiers which I understand. After that we moved onto an introduction to proofs which was fairly similar to how we started off learning epsilon-delta definitions in MAT137 too. This is why I understood what Prof. Heap was talking about and I really liked his choice of using graphs to help people understand what he meant. However, on Friday we are going to look at examples of proofs and how to actually solve one so it will be interesting to see how comfortable I am with that.

Assignment

I enjoy the freedom to be able to pick my group members for the assignments because I feel that gives me the opportunity to pick students I know and work well with to maximize productivity and results hopefully. My group and I did not encounter any major difficulties in completing this assignment and we also went over each answer multiple times to ensure we did not miss anything. Hopefully we do well on this assignment and hopefully this assignment also helped prepare us for the upcoming test.

Week 3

Initially I was really confused by what we had learned in class this week however reviewing over the lecture slides helped me understand (or at least feel like I understand) what was taught. I can’t be certain that I have mastered the concepts covered in class this week however by reviewing over the lectures and working on the assignment, I will get a fair reflection of where I stand in this course.

Challenging Topics This Week

The thing that confused me the most in the lectures this week were the Venn diagrams. For explain, while working through the lecture we came across Slide 13 which asked to draw a Venn diagram showing which region(s) must not have any elements to still remain consistent with the implication that was given. I was very confused by this, (and I still am a little shaky with Venn diagrams) however, as we moved on we came across truth tables. I’ve seen truth tables before and I felt like this really helped me understand the implication. Personally, I like truth tables a lot better than Venn diagrams as they show all the possibilities of the implication and they are easier to create.

Tutorial

I found the tutorial this week to have some challenging parts but fairly straightforward. Question 2 of the tutorial was easy for me to understand and the first few parts of question 1 were also simple. It was near the end of question 1 where it got a little difficult and what I did not know was that to solve these, the simplest way is to introduce a third variable. Taking up these questions in the tutorial and listening to the explanation given by the TA really helped me.

New Topics I Learned This Week

Something new I learned this week would be what tautology, satisfiability and unsatisfiability are. Apart from that, I also learned the different laws in logic and set operations that are similar to the laws of arithmetic. This was easier to understand because it related to arithmetic and we have covered these laws many times over the years in different math classes.

Week 2

Two weeks into the course and so far I am understanding the topics we are learning. Hopefully I am able to keep up with the course and master the different concepts taught in class.

Relation to Other Courses

While reviewing over the week two lecture notes I came across implication and negation. These two topics looked familiar due to the fact that they were also covered in my MAT137 lecture and it helped me understand the concept. Another topic we briefly went over in MAT137 is vacuous truth. We are going to cover vacuous truth in CSC165 during Friday's lecture and knowing a little about it already will hopefully help me.

Tutorial

My tutorial Tuesday morning went fairly well. Coming into the tutorial, I was not sure if I completed the exercise correctly. However, my TA Jason went over the exercise very well and that helped me understand my mistakes. For question 2, there were some cases where I didn't use the minimum number of "X" or "O" combinations and there were cases where I didn't put one important "X" or "O". The main thing I took out of that lecture was the reference Jason used to describe how question two was supposed to be completed. He helped me clarify how to verify and falsify universal and existential claims. This was also explained on page five of the week two lectures. Thankfully, I understood the concept and hopefully completed the quiz correctly.

Week 1

The first week of class and university life in general was quite interesting. The difference between high school and university life is already evident. At first I felt like this would be a little overwhelming, however, I really enjoyed the first week as it was mostly introductions to the course material. This gave me a chance to adjust to this new lifestyle. Now on to more specific topics about this course:

New Topics I Learned This Week

First and foremost I learned about the importance of precision and the right level of precision. The ambiguity slide was really interesting and it helped me realize how the headlines provided can be interpreted in multiple ways by different people.

Challenging Topics This Week

Initially I was very confused by the streetcar drama exercise. I had absolutely no idea how to solve this. However, by working with my fellow classmates and using the problem-solving steps I was able to complete this question and at the same time understand how to approach problems that may seem difficult. The main difficulty I had with this question was realizing that the sum was not unique; somehow I managed to miss this important fact and without it I would not been able to solve the question.

Relation to Other Courses

I have MAT137 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday before I have CSC165. Therefore, before learning about quantifiers and universal / existential claims in CSC165, I was taught it in MAT137 which helped me understand the material very well. The course material in these two courses seems to be relative so far and I feel like this will help me understand several concepts.

Introduction

Hello!

My name is Jahid Ahmed and this is my CSC165 blog. This blog will feature my weekly experiences throughout this course.