Today was the last tutorial and the last day of classes! We had our final quiz today. In class this week we learned mostly about privacy, and the issues that can arise regarding computers and privacy. With today's technology, there is hardly any privacy! I enjoyed this weeks lectures. I think the topic of privacy was very interesting.
Overall I have enjoyed this course. As an arts student, I preferred the lectures with discussion, and learning about the history and different aspects of computers. I did not enjoy learning drRacket as much. I found it quite difficult, having no previous knowledge of how to use this type of program. However, there were a lot of resources, such as Professor Heap's web videos and the online textbook that helped me understand it better. I liked the wikipedia assignment, and I have enjoyed keeping this slog! It has helped me to stay focused on this course. I believe that I have learned a lot of new things over the course of the semester, and I am happy that I took this course. I have enjoyed the professor, and the T.A.'s as well. :) The one thing I am looking forward to is no more early morning wake ups!
All I have left to do now is to study for the final exam!
Friday, 5 April 2013
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
slog 8
Today I worked on solving the problems that Professor Heap posted. One of the problem solving questions was: "You are sitting in front of two drawers. The left drawer contains 64 pennies, the right drawer contains nothing. Can you arrange things so that one of the drawers has 48 pennies, using combinations of the following two operations, L and R?"
The steps to correctly and accurately solving a problem are: understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, looking back and figuring out when and how you're stuck.
To understand the problem and devise my plan, I had to read and understand the two operations L and R. These two operations state:
L: If the left drawer has an even number of pennies, you may transfer half of them to the right drawer. If the left drawer has an odd number of pennies, operation L is disallowed.
R: If the right drawer has an even number of pennies, you may transfer half of them to the left drawer. If the right drawer has an odd number of pennies, operation R is disallowed.
In order to figure out this problem I got a piece of paper and wrote down L and R on a piece of paper. I put 64 on the left side, and 0 on the right. Since the left side had an even number of pennies, I transferred half of the pennies to the right side, using operation L. Now, each drawer would contain 32 pennies. Then I performed operation R and transferred half of the 32 pennies from the right drawer into the left drawer. This left 16 pennies in the right drawer and 48 pennies in the left drawer.
I played around with this pattern using different numbers, and found that it did not work for many of them. For example, if you have 28 pennies in the left and 0 in the right, splitting up the pennies eventually leads to there being odd numbers of pennies in each drawer, therefore you can no longer carry out either of the operations.
The steps to correctly and accurately solving a problem are: understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, looking back and figuring out when and how you're stuck.
To understand the problem and devise my plan, I had to read and understand the two operations L and R. These two operations state:
L: If the left drawer has an even number of pennies, you may transfer half of them to the right drawer. If the left drawer has an odd number of pennies, operation L is disallowed.
R: If the right drawer has an even number of pennies, you may transfer half of them to the left drawer. If the right drawer has an odd number of pennies, operation R is disallowed.
In order to figure out this problem I got a piece of paper and wrote down L and R on a piece of paper. I put 64 on the left side, and 0 on the right. Since the left side had an even number of pennies, I transferred half of the pennies to the right side, using operation L. Now, each drawer would contain 32 pennies. Then I performed operation R and transferred half of the 32 pennies from the right drawer into the left drawer. This left 16 pennies in the right drawer and 48 pennies in the left drawer.
I played around with this pattern using different numbers, and found that it did not work for many of them. For example, if you have 28 pennies in the left and 0 in the right, splitting up the pennies eventually leads to there being odd numbers of pennies in each drawer, therefore you can no longer carry out either of the operations.
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