Assignment 3 Again!

Hey everyone!

I can’t believe that the fall semester is almost over. Mostly, I can’t believe that exams are just two weeks away. As planned, I had finished a rough draft of the third assignment this past weekend. Today, I went to office hours to ask for all the clarifications I needed. Like with the second assignment, it was very informative and I found out where I was going wrong for the questions I was struggling with. When I first read through the assignment, I thought that I would have the most trouble with questions on finite state automata as it is our newest topic. However, I found that I actually had the most trouble with the questions requiring proving correctness or termination of iterative programs. I think the reason why is that I have only really had practice proving recursive correctness. During office hours, I asked general questions about the approach to proving iterative correctness so that I could better understand the process involved and apply it to the assignment. I'm glad that the assignment helped me realize what I had not truly understood in the course. Now, I am ready to start writing up a good copy and hopefully start preparing for exams as well.

I hope everyone has a great week!  

Assignment 3 and Finite State Automata

This week, I am really hoping that I will be able to finish Assignment 3 by the weekend – or at least a rough draft. For Assignment 2, I found it really beneficial finishing a rough draft about a week before the due date and then spending the rest of the time looking it over and asking for any clarifications that I needed. I have already read over the assignment problems and looked over the sections of the course notes that are relevant to each question. I find that doing these assignments is what really consolidates the concepts we talk about in class. I find the questions to always be more challenging than the ones discussed in lectures and tutorials and that they require a lot of thought – in a good way.

Last week, we started learning about finite state automata. I was actually quite confused in lecture on what a finite state automaton actually is and what they are used for so I did some additional reading on my own to clear things up. As always, the tutorials were very helpful.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Second Test Again!

I am so glad that it’s fall break! I definitely need this time to catch up on work/readings in all of my classes.

I was so stressed leading up to the second term test. Now that it’s done, I think it went pretty well. Like with the first test, I found there was just the right amount of time provided for me to be able to finish both questions and look over my solutions. The proof of correctness question was the one I struggled with the most I think. Luckily, I had spent a lot of time the night before reading over the examples provided in the course notes so I just tried my best to follow the proof outline followed in the notes. I guess I’ll find out if I was on the right track when we get our results back.

Having just finished with both recursive and iterative proofs of correctness in this class, I am looking forward to starting our next topic.

 
I hope everyone enjoys the break!

Second Test

Hey everyone!

I don’t really feel like anything important has occurred or changed since last week. Yesterday, I started studying for our second term test. I’m a little worried since I don’t feel as comfortable with the material as I did for our first tem test. To study, so far, I have been looking at all the past tutorial problems and quiz questions. I have also been looking over examples from class in the lecture slides and reading over the course notes to make sure I understand everything. For out last test, there was a distinct concept, the well-ordering principle, that I was having a lot of problems with. This time around, I don’t think that one thing really stands out to me as something I understand less than everything else. I just find that in general, I feel less comfortable with all the concepts as a whole than I did for the first test. I have been finding that all the practice that I have been getting in tutorials and with the second assignment has been a huge help. I think the big thing for me to prepare will be to just do more problems to get more practice.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend and good luck on the test!