Why do we do SLOG?

              For most of you, you guys probably have taken CSC165 from some other profs, but I also took it from Danny Heap and also did SLOG from that course. I am not a guy who normally writes a daily or weekly diary.  When I first had to do SLOG from 165, I was very skeptical and had to question myself why we were doing this. After finishing 165, I felt like if I had to pick one part of the course that I did not find it helpful/useful at all, it was definitely doing SLOG every week. Don't get me wrong, from my university experience at U of T, Danny is probably one of the best prof that I had, but at the time it was very annoying to do SLOG every week.

             Coming into CSC236, I had a good feeling that I had to do SLOG again. And here am I, writing another SLOG for this week and now I kind of understand why we are doing SLOG every week. When it comes to neatness, I think I am not that kind of  guy that is very neat, and sometimes can get disorganized and it sometimes effect my school performance in a bad way. I personally believe that to perform at the highest level in university, not only is it important to keep up with the work daily, but keeping yourself organized and neat is also very important part. Doing SLOG, I think it really helps me to become more organized and neat person. It also helps me to keep track of where I am in the course and to keep up with the work and refreshening the concepts that I learned that week. I still have to work hard to be more organized person, but I think that  doing SLOG is really a good way to start! :)

Are you smart enough for Mensa?

Last week,  there was CSC236 test and I was very sick during that week and did not have much to say about that week, but I just thought it would be fun to post this. I came across from one of the website and came up with these questions. If you are able to answer this, you are pretty much qualified to join Mensa.

This is a level 2 question.

16 + 9  = 1
8 + 6  = 2
14 + 13 = 3

then,
7 + 7 = ?
why?

Level 3 question.


11 = 3
12 = 4
121 = 6
122 = 7
1211 = 7
.

.
.
12121212 = ?

I wasn't able to figure out level 2 question, but I think the answer to level 3 question is 256.
12 = 4, so 12121212 = 4*4*4*4 = 256. This is my guess and I do not know the answer.
 So guys, give it a try! Who knows, you may be the newest Mensa member.

We as a Computer Science specialist/major/minor student, we put much emphasis on the importance of thinking logically. Try this question and challenge your logical ability.

Why Mathematics in Computer Science?

       To many people, the answer to my question may have been answered, but for me, it has been boggling in my mind for few years( Almost 2 and a half years) and I am still looking for an answer. Even now, it is maybe because I am still inexperienced, but it is very hard to benefit from mathematical concept when I am programming. Mathematical Induction in 2nd part of CSC236 was used to define some of Mathematical objects( i.e. Fibonacci Function and recursive functions) and analyze time complexity of some algorithm( i.e. mergesort and binary search).  And our term test 2 is on this Thursday, and I doubt I will find the answer to my question before the test, but I think I have some pretty good answers to the question. First, I think that Computer Science is very closely related to the Mathematics, or I could say that Computer Science is one of a branch of Mathematics( Applied Mathematics ). There are many mathematical concepts that are used in Computing. Just from CSC236, we learned that we can possibly build more effective and faster function or algorithm by analyzing it mathematically. It may take more than just using mathematic concepts; however, use of effective mathematical concept can substantially help making better and faster algorithm. As you all know the title of CSC236 is called "Introduction to theory of Computation", and up to now, 90 percent of our lectures involved using mathematic concepts( i.e. induction proofs, time complexity, and analyzing algorithms). The title itself would make us think that we are learning about theory of "Computation"; however, it seems like the term "Computation" implies "Applied Mathematics", because we have been heavily emphasized with the use of proof techniques from mathematics and mathematical objects that are used in Computer Science. I enjoy learning both Mathematics and Computer Science and the more I learn about Computer Science, it toughen my belief about the importance of Mathematics in Computer Science. I remember from CSC165, Danny Heap said one can be a good programmer(Compute Scientist) without good background in mathematics, but to be a great Computer Scientist, one needs a great background in mathematics. And I am on a mission to find the missing puzzles to understand what he really meant and I am starting to agree what Danny had said. In the end, I hope I find the true answer to the question before my undergrad in Computer Science and I hope that I can make a great use of both Mathematics and Computer Science in my career.