SLOG 4 October 13th 2014

During the two lectures of this week's CSC165, I learned more about proofs, and also went through some examples of how to prove universal and existential claims.  From what I've learned during the first few weeks of class, proving a universal claim means to show that there are no counter examples, and proving an existential claim is showing one example.  Because of this, proving an existential claim seems easier because i just need to find a number or a set the matches both the antecedent and consequent of the claim.  Proving universal claim is much more difficult, as it involves defining the antecedent, and then trying to turn the antecedent into the consequent through mathematics.  Writing proofs is something that I have been learning in my MAT137 class for the past few weeks as well, and learning how to write proofs in CSC165 has actually helped me understand the proofs in MAT137 more clearly.  This is most likely because we used simpler examples, and Professor Heap went through the thought process of each step.

Although this week's class wasn't difficult, the midterm on Wednesday told me that I have much to learn in this class.  Prior to the midterm, I have felt very confident about 165, since I was able to almost all of the tutorial problems and have gotten full marks on every quiz.  I looked over some rules about symbolic expressions and studied last year's midterm as well as the assignment 1 answers.  However on the midterm, though i was able to breeze through question 1 and 2, i got stuck on question 3 for a very long time, and in the end handed in my test before i was able to come up with an answer.  When i first looked at question 3, and the complicated statement 3, i automatically assumed that i need to transform it into its contrapositive or a simplified version, and so i began doing that, thinking the answer will eventually become evident.  It did not, and only after the exam did i realise that i should have just focused on understanding the two original statements instead of trying to transform them into some other form.  This exam taught me to not assume anything about the questions on an exam, and hopefully i will be able to do better on the next one.