Reflection

Today is the last day of classes for this semester and that means the last day of this course. I felt that this course was a challenge. The course material was difficult to understand when newly introduced and took alot of time to wrap my head around and fully grasp which was something that I was not really used to. This course made me reflect on how I learn and how to learn in the future as I had to adjust in grasp the concepts.   

Overall I feel that this course has a great learning experience both in terms of the material in my future cs career but also in terms of how to learn material.

Last Week

This week was very hectic as it was the last week of classes this semester. Had been working on both the 148 project as well as assignment 3 for 165. I felt assignment 3 went fairly well as I felt confident in my answers. I had some questions about the material as I was completing the assignment but I feel that I got enough experience and help with the topics that I was able to complete them.

I approached the questions about big Oh and Omega by looking over the lecture notes as well as the tutorial handout on the subject. Furthermore I felt that using graphing software to illustrate the functions ,as Professor Heap  advised, was extremely helpful.

Penny Piles

For my problem solving episode I decided to attempt to solve the Penny Piles problem.

Step 1: Understanding the problem
Given two drawers, left and right with the left drawer holding n pennies(n being a positive integer), what combinations of pennies in either drawer can be reached using the following operations?

Left:If there are an even number of penny in the left drawer, half may be transferred to the right drawer. Otherwise the pennies in that drawer must be left alone.

Right:If there are an even number of penny in the right drawer, half may be transferred to the left drawer. Otherwise the pennies in that drawer must be left alone.

In this problem solving episode the unknown is the number of integers than can be found by executing the above functions on the drawers with the left containing n pennies.

Step 2: Devising a Plan
My first approach to this problem was to utilize brute force so I could observe a pattern.
I decided to use tree diagrams as I felt that the problem fit the criteria of a tree data structure.

Step 3: Carrying Out a Plan:

After drawing these tree diagrams I compiled a table.

N	Numbers found	Total number not including 0
1	0,1	1
2	0,1,2	2
3	0,3	1
4	0,1,2,3,4	4
5	0,5	1
6	0,3,6	2
7	0,7	1
8	0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8	8
9	0,9	1
10	0,5,10	2
11	0,11	1
12	0,3,6,9,12	4

The rows highlighted in red are numbers of n where n values where found.
Values of n that are of base 2^x produce all integers in their range([0,...n])
Odd numbers only produced themselves as they are not divisible by 2.
Even numbers with prime factors other than 2 produced 2 numbers, themselves and their other prime factor.
I still could not find a pattern so I decided to automate by production of further results using Python.


def penny_piles(L):
    numbers_found = [L[0],L[1]]
    if L[0] % 2 == 0:
        left= L[0] // 2
        right = L[1] + left
        numbers_found += penny_piles([left, right])
    if L[1] % 2 == 0 and L[1] != 0:
        right = L[1] // 2
        left = L[0] + right
        numbers_found += penny_piles([left, right])
    elif L[0] % 2 == 1 or L[1] % 2 == 1:
        return L
    numbers_found = remove_duplicates(numbers_found)
    return numbers_found

def remove_duplicates(L):
    L.sort()
    for x in L:
        if L.count(x) > 1:
            y = L.count(x)
            while y > 1:
                L.remove(x)
                y -= 1
    return L

As confirmed by graph, numbers n that are of 2^x produce n numbers and  odd numbers produced 1 number.
As for even numbers; numbers that are even and only have the prime factors 2 and another prime produce only 2 numbers.
However I was not able to produce a pattern for even numbers.

Step 4: Looking back
I was not able to create an algorithm for predicting the 

Revelations

During this week I was going over the concepts I needed to know to complete assignment 3 and was unsure of my understanding of the finding the constant for big Oh, omega and theta. I decided that since the computer science help center was open from 4-6 on Thursday before I had my 6-8 anthropology lecture I would drop by and ask a couple of questions. However when I got there there was no T.A on duty.I was a little upset but I decided that I would take the time to focus on the material and use the examples from lecture and tutorial. After the first half an hour I was still a bit confused yet I continued on. After a couple more looks through the material I started to get a hang of the material.

I decided to break the problem into two separate inequalities instead of doing them together which simplified
the question. Then I read over the notes so gain a better understanding of what must be done with each side of the inequality. After all this I had a better understanding of material and had a sort of revelation.

Problem Solving

I have completely forgot about the problem solving aspect requires for the slogs. I have been browsing other sloggers problem solving entries and here are some that I found interesting:

The problem solving solution entitled:  "Diagonals, Where the Formulas Actually Show " was the best problem solving example I have seen. The author Omar Hamdan did a fantastic job of explaining the problem and logic in solving the problem. He then created informative tables to present his data. I found his overall presentation and reasoning in his problem solving to be very impressive. I hope to make a problem solving case similar to his in terms of presentation, organization and reasoning.

Another problem solving entry by a fellow Slogger was Piles of Pennies by Mohammad Abubakr. I really liked what he did in his entry due to his use of Python coding. When I encountered this  problem in lecture I also thought about using code in my solution to this problem.

Studying

Today I spent a good portion of my day going over Big O notion specifically in preparation for assignment 3. With there having been some time since I had written down my notes I felt lost in my understanding of Big O so I decided that I would search up explanations on Google and came across this explanation http://stackoverflow.com/questions/487258/plain-english-explanation-of-big-o.After this I decided to watch some videos on YouTube that helped illustrate these concepts further.

These explanations helped clear up the beginning portions of the concept of Big O that I had forgotten and allowed me to better understand the slides that Professor Heap had posted. It is really remarkable how the internet can provide such an amazing source of reference and help that is suitable for all different types of learners at different paces.

Lessons

I has been a while since I last posted to my SLOG. Assignment 2 and the test have pasted and they were eye openers. I had initially intended to work on the assignment by myself, which I felt would force me to grasp the material thoroughly, however I felt a bit overwhelmed and eventually partnered up. My partner and I were confident in our answers however we ended up doing badly on that assignment. The test was better than the assignment but could have been better.

This experience has taught me the importance of seeking help when I am confronted with material that I do not understand. I suffered this problem in high school were I would ignore concepts that I did not have a solid understanding  of, and continue with trying to remedy the problem. I plan on tackling this problem by using the various resources available at the university. I started this initiative this week when I visited Prof. Heap's office hours because I did not understand the concept of  the break point in regards to the Big oh notation. Prof Heap provided an amazing explanation that really helped me with my understanding of the subject and I left that office smarter than I walked in.

Bit behind

With reading week come and gone I am a bit behind. I spent most of my reading week study for two midterms and neglected my other courses. With the two midterms come and gone I am going to concentrate on this course.

I plan on doing the assignment by myself as I  feel it would be the best way to reacquaint myself with the material. After the first assignment I felt a level of unfamiliarity with the material as I did not contribute much to the assignment me and my partner handed in. Having the assignment be solely  my responsibility will ensure that I catch up and  understand the material.

My first use of the 165 outside of the course was in the csc 148 project. Some of the methods defined in the multiset project involves subsets. To help myself better understand the project I used a combination of symbolic notation and vein diagrams to gain a better understanding of what each method asked for. I found that these techniques greatly helped me understand the question, whereas I would have just guess and checked until I found an answer.

First month of 165

After my first month of 165 I have found the material interesting and challenging. I was sick my first week of the semester so I fell behind in terms of what material I was comfortable with and what was being discussed in lecture. However I feel as though the tutorials and tutorial handouts have helped greatly in my catching up and understanding of the material, and completion of the first assignment.

I have been mainly using the course notes as a guideline to studying as they provide detailed explanations of the material and cover much of what is covered in the lectures. However if I do feel as if I have a lack of understanding on materiel I reference my notes and the lecture material.

First Post

First week of second semester and first week of CSC 165. Looking forward to the subject material that will be covered in this course. I have heard from students of the previous semester that this course helped them greatly in their calculus classes and I hope the same will apply to me.