SLOG Entry #2 Jan 21, 2013 (Week 2)

In this SLOG post, I will be discussing the thing I was looking forward to the second week of class: the tutorial. The tutorials in my previous computer science course CSC148 were challenging and great learning experiences. However, the tutorial this week was lacking the challenge that I needed since it dealt with the simple introductory concepts of this course and therefore I felt somewhat bored during it. Having said that, I got to talk to people and help them with the content which was quite satisfying and the social aspect of this tutorial trumps the lack of communication in the tutorials for my other courses. Overall, the tutorial this week was okay but I hope the next one will be more challenging.

As for my learning experience, I was introduced to the ambiguity of the English language. There are so many ways of saying, “if, then”, that it can be very confusing when translating from English to symbolic language. Luckily, we went over some of the most popular English ways of making implications in lecture so I will slowly assimilate those phrases and automatically translate them into “if, then”.  The other most important topic taught this week which I was completely new to was vacuous truth. It is basically the idea that if the antecedent of an implication is false, then that implication is always true. This isn't clear at all at first, but when Professor Heap made the claim that you can’t find a counterexample to such an implication, it became very obvious. I find this way of learning to be very effective for me. First I think of something abstractly and then a concrete example makes everything clear.

In closing, I would like to say that my goal of constant learning has been completely satisfied this week and my subconscious goal of meeting other people has also been attained.