SLOG 6

This week we started learning about computability. I understood pretty much everything we did until the stuff on reductions. I found the building the halt function using the initialized function to be confusing. I think the most confusing thing for me was the f_prime function because I don't know where that comes from. I'll have to read the course notes to see if I can get a better understanding. If I don't I will have to go to office hours to try and get a better explanation.

We also big omega proofs and general big oh proofs. I liked the big omega proofs because they were polynomials and I find big oh and big omega proofs for polynomials are pretty easy. The general big oh proofs were much more trickier. You can't just follow a simple procedure to prove them like the proofs with polynomials. You actually have to use the definitions of each function being in big oh to come up with a B and a C. The tutorial questions are on general big oh proofs so that will be good practice for me to get more comfortable with them.

In tutorial, I think I got 2/2 on the quiz because it was a polynomial big oh proof and I really like those and can do them pretty easily so I found the quiz to be pretty easy.

SLOG 5

This week the new thing that we learned was proving big-Oh using limits. Proving that the limit is infinity is not too complicated but I was kind of confused when the actual whole proof was written out. I think the most confusing part was the whole n >= n' thing when translating the limit to its definition because no actual value for n' was chosen that's just what was written in the proof. So I'm not sure if that's the way you're supposed to do it or if you actually do have to pick a n' because writing the whole proof is kinda simple if you don't. I guess I'll see the way you're supposed to do it on the tutorial work next week and hopefully that clears all my confusion. If it doesn't, I'll have to look at many more examples.

We also did a lot of examples of proving different polynomials being in or not being in big-Oh. I really enjoyed this because they seem like they're actually really easy to do. It's really easy to tell if the polynomial is actually in big-Oh or not since you just have to look at the highest degree. And the examples made it really clear how to actually show they are in big-Oh. Hopefully, I really do understand this stuff pretty well and I can do the tutorial work pretty easily.

I think I did okay on the test. I'm pretty sure I did the first and last proofs correctly but I know I made a mistake on the second one. I think most of the proof was correct but I realized like 2 minutes after handing it in that my chose of w would not always work and immediately thought of one that would always work. So hopefully even with that error, I still get a decent mark.

The quiz in tutorial was so easy that it wasn't easy. When doing it I completely over thought what was actually happening in the function and realized at the end that it was actually really, really simple. Because it took me so long to figure out what the pattern was, I think my explanation for how I got my answer wasn't very good.

SLOG 4

This week we did more on sorting algorithm analysis and also learned about O, Ω, and ϴ. I really understood the definitions O, Ω, and ϴ and I feel like proving that a function belongs to them is not really that hard, so I really enjoyed that part of the lecture. I found determining the worst-case running time and more specifically the lower bound worst running time to be kind of confusing. For the example of finding the lower bound in class I did not get why each loop was at n/3 iterations. There were 3 loops so I don't know if it came from that or something completely different. I will have to look at more examples and try calculating some on my own to hopefully fully grasp the concept. 

I'm pretty confident that I got 2/2 on the tutorial quiz because it was pretty similar to a question for the work we had to do and I did not find that question particularly difficult. I also finished the assignment and although I'm pretty sure I knew whether each claim was true or false, I'm not sure if I did all the proofs correctly. There are only a couple where I am really confident they are completely correct.

SLOG 3

So we finished up proofs and started on sorting algorithm complexity. When we started on proofs, I really did not know how to approach them at all. Learning the proof structures really helped. When you write down the proper proof structure, it is a little easier to visualize the problem and you always have a place where you can start. I'm still not too great at actually proving the problems but I'm getting better. I just need to do some more practice and get even more comfortable doing them. I'm pretty sure I didn't get 2/2 on the tutorial quiz this week because I ended up confusing myself and didn't have time to completely start over.

We only really covered the very basics of sorting algorithm complexity and I think I understand it all so far. I feel like it will probably get much harder eventually and probably pretty confusing so I'm not looking forward to that.

This week I need to get started on the assignment and get a bunch of practice in for the test since both of those are coming up in a week.

SLOG 2

This week we learned a lot of new material in class. Some highlights include how to negate a statement, truth tables, and various laws. I feel fairly confident negating statements as we went over numerous examples in class and after doing some practice on my own I think I can do alright with them. The truth tables also seem fairly simple to use although we only did simple examples and I think that they probably would not seem so straight forward with much more difficult examples. The laws are little bit confusing because I have never seen them written symbolically. Seeing them written this way will take some getting used to.

Last week's quiz did not go as planned. I was not careful enough with my work and write down the answers backwards. Not reading the question carefully and not watching what I'm writing down has been a problem for me in the past so I really need to work on that and read things over multiple times. I think I got the answer right for the quiz this week right though.

I did the assignment and I feel like it was really fair. It was a little challenging but not overly difficult. There is one question that I'm too sure about but I still have a week to think it over and hopefully it and all the other answers right.

SLOG 1

We're two weeks into the class and I feel like things are going pretty smoothly so far. What we have done so far has not been too complicated as they are just the basic things to know before getting into much more difficult things like proofs.

Something new that I have learned is how to verify and falsify quantifiers. I have experience doing this in other classes but I never knew that there was just one general goal you would try to show to verify/falsify each quantifier.

The fact that everything so far has been explained well and we are given a number of examples is the thing I have enjoyed the most so far about the class. I have done most of the things we have learned so far in other classes but I never really understood a lot of it before doing it in this class. This has me feeling fairly confident about the material learned so far although I will obviously need to spend more time doing exercises for practice and to make surely I truly grasp all the concepts.

The one thing that is a little challenging is the everyday language of implications. There are so many different ways to say an implication and a lot of times it does not seem like the sentence is even implying anything. I will have to look over the notes and remember each of the general forms of an implication so that I can identify implications easier.