Week 3

Usually, I don't like group work because the random selection of members results in many incompatibilities.  With assignment 1, I was able to choose to work with people I knew I would not have any conflicts with.  My group members and I have similar work habits and all participate equally in group discussions.  As a result we were able to create a rough copy of the answers after two hours of concentrated work.  We plan to finish the assignment after our tutorial on Tuesday.

In lecture this week, we covered the rules of Boolean algebra and were introduced to truth tables.  The problems started out fairly straightforward, but the tutorial exercises were nothing like the examples.  I decided to solve the tutorial exercises using truth tables because it was the more familiar option.  However, in tutorial, it became clear to me that using Boolean algebra was faster and the better approach for more complex problems.  Although truth tables are more straightforward and are valid approaches to solving the problems, as more variables are added, the truth tables get larger and the likelihood of making an error and the time it takes to solve the problem increases. 

Week 2

The main topic this week was writing english statements using symbols.  At first I thought that this would be fairly straightforward, but once the tutorial exercise was posted, I realized that I was confused as to what to do for most of the first question.  I asked my friends how they answered the questions, but they and many other people were as confused as I was, so I decided to wait for Monday's lecture to see if it would be explained.  Unfortunately, on Monday, we moved on to new material, and I remained confused.  As such, I decided to focus on other subjects and wait for the tutorial to clear up any questions I had.  On the morning of my tutorial, I was contemplating the tutorial questions while commuting to campus and came up with what I believed was the only possible answer to one of them.  The only problem was that I was unsure if my solution was within the rules as no similar type of question had been covered in lecture.  It turned out that the answer I reached while on the TTC was the correct answer to the question and was part of the basis for answering later questions.  Sometimes, when I am stuck on a particular problem, I switch to another topic or activity and many times the answer comes to me in the most unexpected places. 

Week 1

Welcome to my CSC 165 Course Log.  As of the writing of this entry, I've been attending this class for almost two weeks.  Last week, we discussed existential and universal claims.  An exercise was posted that required us to depict the truth of  such a claim (or lack thereof) by drawing venn diagrams.  I attempted to solve the question, but found that I was confused about this concept.  The next day, it was explained in lecture and we went through a number of examples, after which I felt I had a better grasp on the material.  Later, at home, I reattempted the exercise and was able to complete it with a fair degree of confidence.  When we took up the answers in tutorial, I was pleased that I had correctly answered the question.