CSC236 SLOG#4

I did the second midterm on last Thursday, the questions were not what I was expected. I talked to some friends in the morning session, they were getting questions on Upper and Lower bounds and proving closed form. But we were tested on the correctness and master-theorem. However, since I did my review for all materials, I am able to do most of the questions. 

The correctness proof was not challenging for the most part except the proof for termination. I know how to proof the termination, it is just that I do not know which format I should use since we never do proof of termination in lecture formally.

The second question suppose to be easier, but I made some mistake there. In part a, the "b" for master theorem suppose to be 2, but I wrote 3. My reasoning was that - "b" represents the number of pieces we divide the problem into, since we divide the problem into three parts (two parts of n//2 and one part of n%2), I figured "b" is three then. However, I talked to the professor later, who suggested the last part is not valid because it only recurses once. 

But then I was thinking should "b" depends on wether the parts are recursive? In wk7's lecture, we did an example on multiply lots of bits. It occurs to me, there are four parts recursing in the recombined equation, but we got "b" equals 2. I will great appreciate if anyone can answer me what "b" really is? I guess I will need to ask professor about this since no one really looks my slog lol.

CSC236 SLOG #3

I have finished the assignment 2 on Friday. The assignment is not bad. When you really started working on it, it seemed much easier than the first time you read the questions. For me, the hardest thing in writing up the assignment was actually putting in the symbols and unusual parameters, such as ceilings, n_hat, theta etc. What I used to do was go to google, and search for "logical symbols". Then I would arrive to a wikipedia page, and I could copy-paste the symbols I need to my word file. However, I cannot find a copiable character for ceiling, floor, and n_hat. So, if any of you knows a way to get these notation into a word file or any text-editor, please let me know, it will be greatly appreciated.

I remember last week, I went to youtube and watched Vihart's videos about Fibonacci Sequences under prof. Heap's recommendation. It was fascinating. The videos talked about how plants and flowers naturally grow in a pattern that is basically Fibonacci Sequences or its alike. It looks like magic. Suddenly, you feel things are connected together. You realize that high-level math is not something that should be studied in another planet. I wish I could watch more videos like that that link math or conceptual stuff to our everyday lives. I hope the school teachers and professors could do this when they are teaching.