PAPER FOLDING!

  During this week’s lectures, we continued our slow tread through Chapter 2: Logical Notation. We learned in Monday about negation and how to move the negation sign further into the expression. We were also introduced to truth tables, which I find much more concise and convincing than Venn Diagrams. We went through logical arithmetic and DeMorgan’s law in Wednesday’s lectures, which were mostly understandable. The part that confuses me is the distributive law. I can see it is true on the Venn Diagrams but still cannot wrap my mind around it.

  The highlight of the week came Friday when we were given an exercise in lecture to find the pattern of the creases when you fold the paper from left to right. The purpose of the exercise was to implement the “problem – solving procedures” we briefly talked about during the first week of class. 

The procedure goes like this:

1    1. Understand the problem

2    2.  Plan a solution

      3.  Carry out your plan

4    4. Review any solution you achieved

  This is almost the same as the procedures I take when I solve a problem, except that I do not always plan a solution. More often than not, I will have a vague idea of a solution in my mind and proceed with it (and improvise as I go along). That had worked for me in the past, but now as I move forward to more difficult problems, I should probably consider this new problem solving strategy…….

  On a side note, I could only fold the paper 5 times when folding it in the same direction continuously, instead of 7 times (paper folding myth).

  On another side note MythBusters folded a piece of paper more than 7 times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRAEBbotuIE