SLOG #4

Despite the snow storm, the midterm for CSC165 did not go terribly, but it wasn't as well as I had expected. Although I felt confident on certain questions, my answers turned out to be incorrect. However, once I looked at the solutions, it made much more sense to me in terms of my misconceptions and where exactly I went wrong. This motivates me to work that much harder so that I am entirely clear on all the ideas that are being taught in this course.

SLOG #3

This week has been more challenging in comparison to the previous weeks of the course. Although I am finally beginning to understand how to translate logical symbols into sentences, I am having a difficult time translating a sentence in English to logical symbols. This is because I always feel like my translation is sufficient and then I discover that there is another part I am missing to make the translation complete, resulting in my answer being wrong. Although I felt confident about my tutorial quiz dealing with proofs, I am certainly nervous about the midterm which will encompass much harder types of proofs. Another thing I am struggling with is implications, in terms of deciding which statement implies which. On the assignment, I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. I am aware that truth tables makes it somewhat easier to determine the implication but I am still having a tough time with it. My goal for the upcoming week is to keep attempting various types of questions until I am able to produce answers that are correct so that I am able to perform well on the midterm.

SLOG #2

As the course goes deeper into logical notation, there is certainly an increase in the amount of difficulty in understanding the concepts thoroughly. When I initially glanced at the tutorial exercises, I was slightly overwhelmed in terms of using symbols to express a statement. I found myself being unable to be entirely confident about my answers. After the explanation in this week's tutorial, it started to become easier to answer the questions, until the difficulty of the questions significantly increased, which brought me back to where I was in the beginning. For instance, I didn't understand how to correctly write the following sentence symbolically: "No course has more than two prerequisites." I was surprised that in order to express it symbolically, you have to introduce two other variables, as well as use a combination of the conjunction, disjunction, and implication symbols. Also, I realized the importance of the order of an quantification of a variable in a set as it can completely change the interpretation of the sentence itself. It began to make more sense after I kept reviewing it repeatedly. Although it is frustrating when I attempt a question and determine that my solution is incorrect, in order to thoroughly grasp the concepts, it is essential to keep practicing until I am able to breeze through it. As the saying goes, "Practice makes perfect!"

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.