SLOG #1

My experience during the first week of the CSC165 course has opened my eyes to a completely new way of thinking. It transformed into one that involves more logic and reasoning rather than just tackling a problem without giving it any thought as I normally would have. This includes learning to solve a problem backwards, assuming that the I’ve solved the problem and thinking about the next-to-last step.

There are several things I have learned this week in class. Firstly, I learned that it is extremely difficult to find the perfect balance of ambiguity and precision. Also, the concept that I found extremely interesting is the universal/existential duality. What I learned is that in order to falsify a universal claim, you only need to find one counter-example, but to falsify an existential claim, you need to show that there are absolutely no examples. Similarly, to justify a universal claim, you need to show that there are no counter-examples, while to justify an existential claim, you need to show that there is at least one example. 

Initially, I found it difficult to grasp the idea of universal and existential claims but through the help of the Venn diagrams introduced in the lectures and tutorials, it became much easier and more interesting to learn. This made me more confident in terms of thinking logically, and as a result, I was able to successfully achieve the answer to the tutorial quiz.