Final Stretch (seriously, this post is super stretched compared to my others.)

My long overdue 'Final Day of Class' SLOG post has finally arrived, since I finally found the time to do this (and ignore my impending math exam failure)! I left myself a few notes as to what happened during our final lecture. My first observation was: There were only about 45 students. At first, I only counted 35, but slowly a few others entered. I noticed this in pretty much all of my courses, which leads me to a few theories:

1. All of the students are slowly becoming one amalgamation of a super-student, as had occurred in my CSC148 course last semester. I don't know how much longer I have until this super-mass devours me as well, but I do hope they'll let me finish my exams.
2. In an attempt to limit competition, some student has been locking up students that they know, causing them to miss vital information and poetntially fail their courses. Unless they starve to their deaths, but covering up a murder is probably more difficult.
3. Some third, improbable event occured. Things that fit into this category include: Motivation loss (improbable, considering motivation isn't tangible, so you shouldn't be able to lose it), sleeping in (again improbable, since you can sleep in anywhere, including class. It's much more efficient to just sleep in class, so you can absorb information in your sleep via hynopedia, and clearly, we should all be logical enough to try this), and abduction by extraterrestrial beings (possible, but I'd like to think someone would have had the decency to call me if such a thing happened).

Also, just a side note, my day was great until after CSC165 ended. I got free cereal on the way to class. Afterwards, I had to go to my MAT136 lecture (which I don't particularly enjoy, due to my dislike for that professor), and then Tim Hortons decided not to give me a Roll-Up-The-Rim cup, since I ordered a medium hot chocolate. And the only cups left were for small and large. But I digress.

It was mentioned during class that a cheat sheet could be brought for the final exam, which is a god send. Though I realized I never bothered looking at the cheat sheets I made, just having the motivation to write down the information seemed to be enough to help me memorize and learn what I needed. This will be extremely useful for computability, worst-case time complexity and algorithm analysis, considering I'm absolutely horrible at them. I'll probably stick a few examples of each on my sheet, and rely on luck and epiphanies during the exam. The thickness of the paper was never mentioned, so if anyone knows where I can find really thick paper, please send me a comment.

There was also talk about our SLOGs. At this point, I started to wonder if I had contributed to my SLOG enough, considering there was a total of 10 posts, meaning I missed around 4 weeks. Which is pretty bad. But I'll keep my own self-evaluation until the end, considering that's probably pretty boring. I do believe a lot of people had forgotten about their SLOGs. Of the random samples of SLOGs I decided to check on, a quarter of them had 10 - 11 posts, while the others had from 0 - 5. I could have gone through all of them, but I don't have a mouse at my disposal, so it'd be a bit more troublesome than I'd like. I feel like I could have done more problem solving, but I tended to lose motivation after the first few hours of attempting to solve it. My sister and I did, however, solve the "Free Lunch" problem, since we had no idea whether or not our "Paper Folding" solution would count for just me, who posted it, or for the two of us. Our attempt at the free food can be found here.

As for how I'd rate my SLOG (that's not 4/4/4/4/4, even though that would be a fantastic surprise):

• Organized: First off, that's a weird header. Regardless, I have no idea. I'm not organized, but I don't think I'm too unorganized either. My posts are really sporadic, but they do make sense in terms of daily content. So I'd give myself a 3/4. (I have no idea what 'Outstanding' organization is, for the record.)
• Reacts: Another strange header. I did talk about course material, and I did deal with whatever problems I had. Whether I posted it or not-- I have no idea. At the moment, I'm far too tired to look at all my posts and determine this. At the very least: 2/4.
• Style: This header actually makes sense, except 1337sp33k is a style too. So I think that should have been more specific. I do think I have a decent grasp of (regular, non-1337) spelling, grammar and writing. Unless you count my handwriting (which was seen in my Paper-folding solution and that one comic I did, which I never made a sequel to). In which case, you should probably dock a bunch of marks. So, 4/4 or -100/4. Your call.
• Problem: ....Solving? This header seemed half finished, but it gets the point across. I had problem solving, but as for the structure of it... Well, that's another story. I mean, it makes sense and isn't too erratic, but... I should have probably left it to my sister to document it, like she did here. So I guess, 2/4 or 3/4.

Also, I never updated my glossary or reported on a3. I have about 3 pieces of scrap paper lying around with the information I need and should have probably put into my glossary, but it seems like I was too lazy to do that. And as for a3, there wasn't much for me to say about it. Except that I really don't like computability, and that my finding a solution for it was 90% luck and 10% "I-hope-my-luck-is-actually-right-it-seems-okay-and-it-looks-like-the-course-notes". And I had around 4 hours of sleep the night before it was due, so I sort of crased after submitting it. Excuses. Excuses everywhere.

Obligatory final note: The course was great and more interesting than I thought it'd be. 10/10 would take again. Especially considering I now know 95% of all the material, so it would probably be a breeze.

Stress and Burn

As the long weekend rolls in, I realized that I'm falling into a downwards spiral of procrastinated work and final exams. On top of realizing that I hadn't updated my slog in 2 weeks, mostly because I don't have much to write about.

Since ranting about how busy I am (which is probably 100% my own fault) is boring, I decided to waste even more time for stress relief and create a representation of my mental state:



I'll probably report after I finish (or start) assignment 3.

Two's Two (to Tutu?)

I'm betting a bunch of people will be writing a SLOG post in the next few days, or at least when we get our midterms back. Excuse the title. I honestly couldn't think of any puns, so I figured I'd talk about my main problem (question two on midterm two). Which I could have probably written as II-2, 2-2, 2-II, or Tutu. (Explaining jokes makes them so much funnier. Sarcasm intended.)

Personally, I found the midterm pretty okay. My preparation consisted of this: Writing down every identity on my cheat sheet and answering questions 1 & 3 on the sample midterm. On the sample midterm, there was a question that used ceilings, so I decided to write down our whole proof structure from our notes (regarding floors and x + 1, x - 1) onto the cheat sheet. Fortunately, that was the last question of the exam, so that took all of 2 minutes.

The main problem I had was the second question. I'm still not sure if I solved it right, though everything seems to have made sense to me. It was definitely the hardest one on the test, though I might have over complicated it when thinking about it.

And since I'm pretty much going backwards, question 1 was pretty good. Required partial factoring, which we've done a lot of, and overall, it wasn't too bad. Here's hoping my marks agree with me.

Marching into March

I really should've posted this on Friday, since that was March 1st, but my ability to keep track of dates (or lack thereof) seems to have completely ruined that possibility. Slowly, my SLOG is becoming more inactive, especially since I forgot to post after reading week, which most people seem to have done. For the record, I spent it watching Hey Arnold. I wasn't productive in the slightest.

I do believe I've given up on attempting to solve the problem from a few weeks ago (February 15th), since my mind has totally died out. Which is a shame, but maybe one day I'll try and revisit it. Maybe at some point in time when I'm not trying to desperately avoid assignments and midterms. Speaking of which, progress on assignment 2 has just been splendid.

Since the due date hasn't passed, I'll keep this spoiler-free and completely ambiguous. About 80% of my problem with a2 was "Am I even writing this properly?" and doubting myself. I honestly like proofs, but I'm horrible at writing them. I can put down the basic structure and figure out the logic mathematically, but I tend to create my own variables for temporary use and at that point, I have no idea if I'm supposed to add a line noting that "k∈ℝ" or if it's fine if I just use it in the definition of, let's say, z. For example "z = ki" (for the sake of it, let's just say i was already declared as some number). Do I really need a whole line saying "Let k∈ℝ" or "∃k∈ℝ, z = ki"? And if I do, which form do I use? My sister and I decided to omit the line for now, but I'll probably post this on Piazza after I upload this post. Also, if my whole statement that I'm trying to prove is an existential, where I don't even need an "Assume" statement, do I have to indent at all? It looks extremely strange, but I don't see how I would indent it.

For the record, question 6 seems to be the hardest for me to prove, since I'm not sure if an assumption I'm making is even valid. Oh well, part marks for structure!

Midterm Marks and Mayhem

Today's class was pretty chaotic, if not a great start to reading week for me. The exercise we did confused me slightly, as I couldn't find an answer. (I feel like I was close, as using Γm/n┐*n (haha, sketchy ceiling symbols. Working on this from my phone) yielded the answer the majority of the time, as long as m was larger than n. Otherwise, just switch the m and ns. The only cases where this didn't work was in 5x7, 5x9, 5x11 and 3x11 squares. Which all yielded prime numbers, so I might have to rethink it with addition or something of the sort.)

And then there was the chaos of picking up midterms. Initially, I planned to wait it out, but the crowd wasn't clearing, so I decided to join the hunt. I found my sister's midterm relatively quickly, but mine took a while longer. Fortunately, I had doodled on the back of it, and as someone flipped through the midterms, I saw my doodles. My results were great. I sort of hope I could miss the second midterm and have my first one count for both, but that'd be a pretty bad idea, seeing as I'm horrible with proofs as is. And the second midterm would probably help me prepare for the final.

Oh well. Happy reading week! I'll 'attempt' to be productive and maybe finish a month-overdue essay or prepare for my math midterm. Sigh.

Too Bogged-- Couldn't Blog.

So the past week has been pretty hectic: I've had to learn all my psychology material in 2 days, and then work on Vikings, learn astronomy and prepare for the CSC165 exam. Midterm week is pretty fun. Oh, and then there was Chinese New Years. Which was fantastic and relatively filled with food, among other things.

That said, I figured I should write something in regards to the midterm, since just about everyone else has. And so I shall.

... After I'm done with classes for the day. (You know, if I don't forget since I'll probably be distracted by... games. A+ student, right here. I haven't touched my computer in over a week, which is horrifying. Even now, I'm just on my phone.)

SLOG Logs [001]

So I was checking out other SLOGs, and I think I figured out what was going through the minds of 90% of the class (who actually posted a SLOG entry). And maybe I'll draw more of these over the semester-- it all depends on how lazy and unmotivated I am.



I'm extremely guilty of this too. But I just started posting whatever I wanted to, so it's not much of a problem anymore.