Week in Review #9: The last few updates

Week 12 has just been completed. We are now down to our last assignment of the year. Due to the CDF outage that occurred recently, Professor Heap changed the A3 deadline from Nov. 28 (yesterday) to Monday, Dec. 1. (Like any other year, 2014 is going by so quickly. Oh, and let's say thank you to Prof. Heap for being so kind to us.)

I am not very pleased with my mark for Assignment 2. The class average was 75% this time. That's still awesome. I could have done way, way better despite Prof. Heap changing the deadline for it once again. I lost many (precious!) marks for proving a false claim and misunderstanding the definition of floor. I fell into the "0" trap numerous times. (Grr.) The comments on MarkUs and sample solutions can help me do better next time (and in our case, next assignment). I did really well with proving the last two claims, though!

Overall, I passed A2. Phew! *breathes a sigh of relief*

Hitting an all time low in CSC165 enabled me to identify some weak spots. For example, I really, really, really, REALLY need to practice floor proofs and understand the definition of floor because they aren't coming to me easily. I have to keep reminding myself that CSC165 is not an easy course and I should devote a bit more time on assignments and grasping new material. I'm taking five courses this semester so it's not easy but it's doable. From the looks of things, though, I believe I can get a good mark (60% or more) in CSC165 and go on to do a major in computer science. (I'm still not sure if I want to double major in CS and math or do a double minor in two fields.)

My goals for the week are to complete my final assignment with my group and begin studying for the exam. I will keep in touch with my group members regarding the assignment. Once again, my CSC165 and psychology exams are back-to-back, but the good part is that I began studying for my psychology exam Thursday night. It's best to start studying early. I'll begin studying for the CSC165 exam by reading over my past SLOG posts, doing the assignment and going over the course notes, and I'll use my aid sheets for tests 1 and 2 as study notes. I'll make more notes for Big-O and other things.

We looked at different types of functions this week as well as induction. I'd say that this week's lectures combined material from both MAT137 and CSC108. (Yay for complementary courses!) In addition, we examined induction, another MAT137 concept.

When looking at functions in Python, we can write our code like this:

def f(n):
   if n == 0: return 2
   if n == 1: return 3
   if n == 2: return 4

and so forth. Alternatively, we can write:

def f(n):
    return n + 2

However, induction in this course is different. To prove by induction, we do the induction step (including the induction hypothesis) first and then do the base case. In MAT137, we would do the reverse. Once again, we would follow the same proof structure that we are familiar with in CSC165.

I've been looking at other people's SLOGs to see what others are posting about and to also get some ideas for mine. Before I forget, here's one that I found interesting: http://andrewgoupilcsc165.blogspot.ca/. Andrew's SLOG shows tremendous progress in CSC165. He discusses concepts he finds difficult and self-regulates. He also uses Python to tackle problem solving, and I enjoy the use of humour in his posts.