Week 3

Every since 12^th grade calculus understanding the symbols in sets always seemed a little difficult to me. Yet, after this week I’m beginning to understand that symbols are much more straightforward than English, in a course involving logic. Through the means of doing different exercises, it became obvious that different people can understand the English language in different ways. For this reason symbols are a much better method of expressing a statement.

Also, at the beginning of last week the concept of Venn diagrams was slightly confusing, but I ended up understanding it after the tutorial. This week we were introduced to truth tables, and I definitely prefer this method of comparing statements. Personally, this rectangle diagram makes comparing statements more clear, and although it can get fairly long, I definitely prefer this method of comparing.

To sum it up, this week seemed pretty straightforward to me, and the concepts were fairly easy to grasp. To wrap up the week we finished learning the laws of arithmetic’s that apply in logic, and Morgan’s Law. I like the fact that we are beginning to learn more concrete elements of math in this course, as it helps me relate it to knowledge I had before this course. To be honest, up until now this course seems very out of the box, and is forcing me to think in a different way than just normal math class. Although it is slightly different than what I’m used to, I’m really beginning to enjoy this course. My favorite part so far is definitely what professor Heap was talking about, the rush you get when you solve a difficult problem. I’ve begun to feel that when I fully understand concepts, solve problems, and I’m exciting to keep feeling that rush throughout this semester. 

Week 1-2

Coming to my first lecture last Monday I honestly had no idea what to expect from this course. I understand that ‘reasoning’ is one of the main aspects of creating a program, but at first the idea of having a whole course about this subject seemed a little daunting.  Thankfully, after the first lecture the idea of a course revolving around mathematical reasoning seamed a little bit less intimidating.  Yes, I did say a little bit because after all there still were a few concepts that gave me a little trouble during the first two weeks.

   

      Venn diagrams, two circle that intersect each other creating a common area, such a simply concept! That is until they started describing the relationship of two functions.

Yes, at first this concept of translating a relationship into a simple Venn diagram was a little frustrating, and left me completely confused.  After the Friday lecture of last week, I got on my computer and reviewed my notes and had absolutely no idea the reason for the x’s and o’s in the diagram. Although I was still unsure I decided it was time to start the first tutorial assignment, and to my surprise found question 1 extremely easy.  Now that I was finally thinking I understand, I started question 2, and it completely stops me in my tracks. Once again I found myself not understanding what to do, or really what was asked of me. Finally, Tuesday of this week came around and it was time for my tutorial. Let me just start by saying that going to tutorial cleared everything up, and was extremely helpful. Coming out of the tutorial I realized how simple the concept was, and understood how to represent statements proving them to be true or false.

Afterwards, I decided to take another look at different examples from the course slides to make sure I fully understood this concept. After finishing 3 or 4 examples from the lecture slides I can finally say that not only was I able to fill in the Venn diagram, I also fully understood them. I must say being able to find the solutions was extremely satisfying, and makes me extremely excited to solve the problems to come! Till next week!