SLOG Entry #10 Week 10

Monday's class made me realize how long it has been since we did differentiation in my calculus class. Having to use L'Hopital's rule seemed impossible until I looked in my math textbook to remember how to apply it. It was obvious from the example of 2ⁿ ∉ O(n²) that the proof would involve taking a limit as n → ∞ to show that 2ⁿ grows significantly faster than n². For the second time in this course, I found myself restricted by my knowledge of the mathematical prerequisites and wishing that we would have spent more time in class reviewing how to apply L'Hopital's rule. Big-Omega and Big-Theta were very self-explanatory seeing as how there are just minute differences between the definitions of them and Big-Oh. On top of that, I really liked proving statements about more than one function since I think that such problems have more real life applications than just statements that claim something about a single function. The problems we did in lecture on Friday were super easy but I assume that’s just because there’s an intuitive feel to these kinds of problems.

I was surprised to see such a difficult tutorial handout on Tuesday. I was under the impression that I had a firm understanding of the material but I began to question that view after I sat in my chair waiting to see the problem taken up. I’ll admit that the solution to the tutorial handout was easy to understand but it simply didn't follow from any examples we did in class. I realize that tutorial is supposed to be a learning opportunity, but I think that more closely related examples to the tutorial handout should have been shown in class so I could have an idea of what I was supposed to do.

I’d like to finish off by saying that I am still working hard on the diagonal problem and that I hope to get a solution by the last week of class.