Week 3: To be literal or not literal, that is the question...

Ermahgerd.

So far into the course, memorizing the symbols is pretty easy but knowing when to use them is a bit difficult. When I first looked at the tutorial handout for this week, I had no idea where to start. I was so confused with the structure of how we write an implication because I did not know what form was considered bad or good. It was so hard figuring out what to do because I did not know how the symbolic grammar worked at first, but referring to previous class examples and debating with other peers, for hours, helped out a lot. I'm hoping that the course exercises Prof. Heap posted on the class site will help.

At some point in the week I had the implication symbol (=>) and the comma(,) mixed up. I didn't know when which was appropriate to use. I figured that I mixed the usage of the comma in logic with its typical usage in English, where in English, we can imply if…, then… using the comma for emphasis on an implied fact, but the comma in logic is used purely for separation in logic.

Being super literal in CSC 165 is key :P.

On the other hand, what I am still stuck on is  the concept of the contrapositive and negation in terms of what they are meant to do in theory. All I that I know of for now is how they work, i.e. a negation is the opposite of a logical piece or variable and a contrapositive is formed by reversing an implication and making both sides P and Q 'opposited', but what exactly is the significance of a contrapositive versus negation and their differences?

Week 1 and 2 in review...

I like math.

Enough said.






I lied.

But seriously, I do like math and looking at the theory behind the technical aspects…

Hmmm... Let's see the first week of CSC 165 was relatively smooth sailing because the semester has only just begun. The course is very detail-intensive and it is very crucial to pay attention in the course lectures and prepare yourself for the lectures by doing the expected weekly readings in the CSC 165 course notes pdf.

So far in class, one key thing I learned was what a python list comprehension was, though it was fairly simple to understand any ways. One of the more confusing problems for myself and other classmates were how the Venn diagrams worked, but it soon became clear with what the problem was when I as debating with other classmates in my tutorials. We missed tiny facts about the properties of the sets being analyzed in the lecture that were later applied to the tutorial exercise. It's very relieving to have pre-typed course notes at hand and very important to give your full attention to all quick little facts mentioned in the lecture.

Another potential problem in this course will be dealing with our English grammar and logic to make statements literal and unambiguous or at least as much as possible in explaining concepts and answers. Understanding the mathematical symbols and terms used before class may be a pain, but it is what allows us to understand the concept in the explanations that use thousands of those terms at once. After all, the bigger problem in this course is understanding, not memorizing.  It is very easy to lose yourself in confusion for the next 15 minutes if you do not pay attention for 10 seconds in the lecture. In addition to this, you are even more unfortunate if you have questions left unanswered since lectures quickly pick up from the previous one right away without too much recap. GET YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED RIGHT AWAY.

Hopefully the more practice we get in this course the more familiar and comfortable we will be with giving proofs and solving logic problems more easily because the symbols are strange to get used to using(for now), and the English language and grammar itself are very confusing to use even for a native English speaker like me.