Worked through the first assignment with the partner today. Attempting to work out the questions felt like they were teaching me as I worked each of them out. Things began to click and make sense. Certain questions came up that we had to jot down and are planning on asking Professor Heap the next chance we get but all in all, I'd certainly label this one as a success, for the most part.
Still have to practice, practice, practice on translation from symbolic form to plain ol' English, but it is getting clearer. I'll have it down pat before we move on to proofs.
P.S. Kudos to Professor Heap and his ability to throw out a couple of genuinely comedic jokes during a lecture.
"A day without laughter is a day wasted." - Charlie Chaplin
Do you find symbolic form to English harder than the other way around? I feel most people would say the other way is more difficult.
ReplyDeleteFor me I usually just translate each symbol literally, and the rephrase the sentence so that it flows better. For example after translating the symbols literally it might read "there exists an x in courses such that x is a prerequisite for csc207 and x is a prerequisite for csc209", which makes it then easy to rephrase it to "there exists a course that is a prerequisite for csc207 and csc209.
Sorry for the late reply.
ReplyDeleteAt first I would have disagreed with most people, but I realized I was quite wrong. Going from symbols to english is more of a relatively simple translation compared to the thinking involved in understanding and then correct application going from english to symbolic form.