First Impressions + WEEK 1

Well, this week showed that CSC165 will be my most challenging, or one of my most challenging courses this year. The first lecture essentially went over the topics and ideas that will be discussed in this course. The majority - if not all - of the course is based upon having an abstract way of solving problems and communicating on how the problem is solved. Now throughout high school, my weaknesses have been in thinking/inquiry and in communication, so hearing this about the course made me very nervous and somewhat scared. However, I hope I can adjust to this course within the first couple of weeks.

For the second lecture, we talked about sets and had a little exercise about the relationships between two sets. The "any/not any" and "all/not all" terms sort of confused me, but after breaking down each return statement, the relationships made a lot more sense. The third lecture, on the other hand, stumped me quite a bit. I did not really understand the Venn diagrams and the placements for the 'X' and check mark. I expect get a better understanding of this before the next lecture and tutorial. Besides all of that, the quantifiers section was pretty basic.

I heard many interesting and delightful things about this course - mainly about the way it improves your critical thinking capabilities, but also that this course is pretty challenging. I hope that I find this course straightforward, but still intriguing and thought-provoking. Wish me luck!

We also did a weird, but interesting, problem in class:

A: haven’t seen you in a long time! How old are your three kids now?

B: The product of their ages is 36.

A: That doesn’t really answer my question…

B: Well, the sum of their ages (in years) is —[at this point a fire engine goes by and obscures the rest of the answer.]

A: That still doesn’t really tell me how old they are.

B: Well, the eldest plays piano.

A: Okay, I see, so their ages are—[at this point you have to get off, and you miss the answer]

     

(Using Polya's approach, as suggest in class)

Understand the Problem: 

- B has 3 kids whose ages, when multiplied, is 36

- B has an eldest child, so one of the ages is greater than the others

- since A was not sure about the ages of each child by the sum, there must be set of numbers whose product equals 36 and have the same sum

Devise a Plan:

- list all possible combinations of numbers whose product is 36

- with that list, find the sum of each set

Carry Out:

Child 1 | Child 2 | Child 3| Sum

    1       |      1      |    36     |   38

    1       |      2      |    18     |   21

    1       |      3      |    12     |   16

    1       |      4      |     9      |   14

    1       |      6      |     6      |   13

    2       |      2      |     9      |   13

    2       |      3      |     3      |    8

    3       |      3      |     4      |   10

Looking Back:

- by realizing that A could figure out the ages by the sum, sets of numbers must have the same sum, in this case, (1, 6, 6) and (2, 2, 9)

- although that these sets have the same sum, the only possible answer is 2, 2, 9 since one of the ages must be the largest in order to satisfy the "eldest" characeristic

Therefore the ages of the children must be 2, 2, and 9.

Commented on:

http://celinasopiniononcsc165.blogspot.ca/2014/09/my-struggle-on-week-1-materials.html#comment-form