The Not-So-Bad Beginning

When I first realized that I was going to have to write a BLOG for a COMPUTER SCIENCE course I was, mildly put, surprised. Turns out this CSC course has more Math and English than Python in it(so far).

In the very beginning it was the symbols of the mathematical terms in this class that made me want to turn around and walk back out of the class. But it so happens that the mathematical terms like universal and existential quantifiers, sets, subsets, unions, and intersections, that we have learnt in the past two weeks have been essentially the same as the ones I have learnt in MAT137 in the same span of time.  This made it much easier for my brain to not freeze every time it saw an inverted A or a backward E on the screen. What took longer to grasp was the concept of Quantifier claims translated in English, like "P only if/only when Q" and "Not P unless/if not Q".  Determining the 'P' and the 'Q' in situations like "Don't knock on it unless you have tried it" or "I will go only if you insist", was something that escaped my understanding until I sat back, blocked out everything else, and clearly thought them out. If I just look at them and try to identify the parts, I am more than likely to get it all wrong. But mulling over them, REALLY thinking about what leads to what, and going through all the options in my mind helps me develop a clear train of thought as to what the 'P' and 'Q' of the statement are.

Apart from the overcoming the challenge of making my mind think in the mathematical way, the thing that I was most worried about was this slog itself. The importance of communication is often undermined in technical fields such as Computer Science, but it is necessary  to understand the value of assignments like this one for the sake of communication. While I may worry about my slog turning into a complete disaster, I hope I can do enough with it to help myself and my classmates in the future, and have a little fun on the way too.