On A2

Well, assignment two was due last week, and for a change I worked in a group. I found that that made things a LOT easier - not particularly by divvying up work or anything, but by having people to bounce your ideas off and vice versa. "Hey dude, skim this and tell me if it makes sense" are some of the best words to say and hear, because it's easy to fall into a pit of desperation and just write some pseudo-logic bull as the deadline draws closer. The first question was a real doozy, and I'm glad I went to both Prof. Heap's office hours and the T.A. office hours later in the day. Prof. Heap's explanation of considering it a sort of two-dimensional sum REALLY broke the ice for that question, and while finding and testing a formula took a while (and boy was it an ugly one, with those two sums and like three variables), I'm confident it was correct. Cue two hours of trying to figure out how in God's name to prove that hideous thing, before stopping by the T.A. (whose name I never got, seeing as we went there for one quick question). Apparently, proving it more with an essay showing the process of the derivation of the formula (which was fundamentally recursive/inductive) was most of the proof, which got us going on the road before writing out a proper proof by complete induction. What a question! Question two was kind of rough, but comparatively a breeze. Three wasn't anything to worry about, really, and while four was fairly lengthy it was quite similar to other proofs we'd seen before so it wasn't really a stretch. That's all of assignment two then; all in all a busy, long process but a rewarding one.

Other than that, my mind now turns to the upcoming midterm, considering that Profs. Clarke and Gries have shown mercy and extended the 207 A2 to next Monday, it's my exclusive focus for this week. If the first one and the CSC165 midterms are any indicator, they shouldn't be too rough so long as you do the assignments and problem sets correctly and carefully. Regardless, time to bust out the book during the remainder of this Sunday and the coming week.