Test discussion, and propositional variables

I think the test went well? It's difficult to say. It was one of those tests where at no point was answering anything problematic in some way, and at no point did I run into something that looked like it could have been an error ... but at the same time I'd feel genuinely queasy claiming I aced it. Maybe I'm just being superstitious. At any rate I think I'll have to see what happens when it gets returned.

Not finding structural induction on the test made me a bit sad, which might be because I'd focussed much of my studying on structural induction because a part of it still kind of eludes me. I'd done a bit of studying on this because I feel like it's one of those things I "understand" but don't fully understand. Superficially, it's pretty simple to just say that structural induction is just a little more abstract a version of the other induction flavours we've seen. But I think that explanation is - in addition to being a little too vague - eliminating the question of what is a propositional variable anyway.

So there's this test tomorrow...

I don't feel like I've studied enough but at the same time I'm unsure how much more I can prepare. I understood the lectures, I've read the notes a few times now, and I've been doing practice problems and still I feel like I'm really not that well prepared for it. Maybe looking at some past exams will help me convince myself I'm prepared?

It might be because this past weekend got eaten up by another class's assignment, and today got eaten up by work and studying for another class's quiz. (Taking this many courses is difficult without also working, but combine working and it's a bit much.) I don't know, I guess I'm just used to studying for midterms by devoting time directly before the midterm, and because the time has been stretched over different days in different weeks, it feels like it's not enough, even if it's the same amount of hours.

It might also be because I found the assignment easy (long, but easy). As in, I was expecting it to be super gruelling and challenging and impossibly difficult, and was surprised when it actually wasn't all that bad, really, and I was able to do it on my own. Well, I say this now, but the marks haven't come back yet.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

It's Bad Joke Sunday!

P: All numbers are (somehow) interesting.

Proof (by well-ordering): Suppose there are a set of numbers that are uninteresting. By the well-ordering theorem there is one number among them that is the least such number.

But then that makes it interesting! Contradiction. Therefore, P holds for all numbers (which are all interesting).

(I should be reeeally working on assignments.)

Continuous but not differentiable

Today I learned about functions that are continuous but not differentiable. I'm mostly sharing this because it came up in the context of a hilarious why, math, why would you do this to us kind of conversation and I figured many people in CSC236 could relate to that feel. I don't think it has anything to do with anything in CSC236 other than that, to be honest, but it's kind of neat!

Lessons learned for Assignment 2 + Midterm

I should really start texing solutions much, much earlier. It might be because I don't use an IDE for something like LaTeX (just a notepad file and the command line) but it takes me a looong time to debug anything.

Also the midterm is in a week. The midterm is in a week. I could swear it was September tenth yesterday.