Final Thoughts

  The semester has come to the end. Like many of my peers, I am busy studying, procrastinating, and squeezing in that extra slog before the deadline. Overall the csc165 experience has been great. The course reconfirms my decision of going into computer science. I have always loved problem solving, and logic is definitely one of my favorite subject and strength.

  Below are some blog posts from my peers that I find interesting. The last one prompted me to do more research on the problem. The poster simplified the problem, and I tried to solve the original question. After finding that it was beyond my capability, I searched online for a solution. This website gives a detailed solution of the question: http://www.geometer.org/mathcircles/indprobs.pdf . Interestingly, it also proved the poster’s simplified solution wrong. In fact you only need two colours to solve the problem.

Guess my love for solving logic problems is here to stay.

Interesting posts:

An example of the halting solution that helped me understand

http://timothylock.me/sLOG/2014/11/30/week-11-halting/

Detailed recording of problem solving process and insights in problem solving

http://165choi.blogspot.ca/2014/11/tackling-assignment-3.html?showComment=1417581724893

Polya’s approach to problem solving, penny piles

http://ryancsc165.blogspot.ca/2014/12/problem-solving-episode-penny-piles.html?showComment=1417582831045#c7538314247665592910

Interesting thoughts on intuition

http://thesnailslog.blogspot.ca/2014/10/its-not-logic-its-intuition.html?showComment=1417583264352#c3351338564767101041

Detailed summary on sorting

http://csc165weeklyslog.blogspot.ca/2014/10/sorting-week-7.html?showComment=1417583589315

A familiar problem….

http://csc165judy2014.blogspot.ca/2014/11/week-11-journal-10-problem-solving.html?showComment=1417583965276#c3698401123937709652

Countability and Induction

    All good things come to an end, including csc165. In our last couple of lectures, we wrapped up with countability and induction. The two topics were very contrasting in terms of difficulty. Having learned in high school and mat137, induction is no foreign idea for me. However, I find the countability and computability sections very abstract. I had trouble understanding in class the concept of diagonalization, knowing only that it shows how there are programs that are incomputable. Going through the tables and lecture notes one more time on my own, I finally realized what Danny meant when he said there is always at least one result that is different in diagonalization. Knowing that computability and induction will not be in the exam is a relief. Yay for slightly less material to study.