Week Two

Monday,
- - - -- - - Sept. 15/2008
Today, Professor Danny presented strong induction as a "new flavor" in induction. I was surprised by the fact that base cases are not essential in this kind of proofs. We did an example about the prime factorization of natural numbers greater than one. Although I did not believe my MAT137 instructor back then, I am now totally convinced that strong induction can work magic!
I am happy because I grasped today's materials; but having to work with binary trees again is making me furious. I hope I would be more comfortable by Wednesday when we do the tree example in class.


Problem Set # 1
This problem set is not due till Friday but I am already done, what a joy!
I went to see Professor Danny today because I am not comfortable with my answers having "English" more than "mathematical notations." The professor told me to rest assured because using complicated symbols is not the only way for a proof to be correct.


Wednesday,
- - - -- - - Sept. 17/2008
I had to submit a project for a course called Architectural Representation (other than ARC213). I have not been getting enough sleep since three days and my flue is getting worse. Of course after working till 7:00 am, I did not have even have the power to set my alarm o’clock. The result was missing all today's lectures and project submission, and paying a visit to the doctor.
At this point of time, I am thinking if studying CS and Architecture together was a wise decision. I remember my instructors and advisers “literary” warning me of doing these two majors at the same time. But I cannot just give up, I really like them. But on the other hand, I have a submission due every Wednesday; does this mean I will be missing Wednesday's lectures because I stayed up all night working? I will have to wait and see; and I might even drop a course or two.


Friday,
- - - -- - - Sept. 19/2008
In today's lecture, we did two examples about induction. One of them was about 4 and 5 cents stamps that are can used to generate any postage greater than 12. I remember a similar example from CSC165 (with 3 and 5 cent stamps), so I used simple induction in my proof. It turned out that using complete induction is more interesting and it can be done in several ways depending on the base case.
Professor Danny encouraged students to use the other approaches they came up with for solving this problem. He explained that we should stick to we thought of first unless the other approach is twice as good as ours. I was happy to hear that because I have always tried to use my own ways in solving problems or expressing opinions.