Week Eight: Salvation and Uneasiness

I submitted the second assignment for the course less than a day ago, and boy, it is still hard to digest what happened. I should probably start by saying, I have seemingly broken out of the rut known as chronic procrastination! Yay! And this was a good as time as ever, since this assignment was significantly more difficult than the previous one.

The two questions sure made me work up a sweat; this is metaphorical of course. Working on the first question, I came to the understanding that the Fibonacci Function will be really relevant. After working through it, I had a lot of trouble unwinding my recurrence! It would have been more helpful if we did more examples of the unwinding with the same format as this question. After repeated attempts, I reached an epiphany! I finally was able to smoothly write out the unwinding, as well as a proof which took a very long time to complete. I used the course notes to help me complete the missing bits of my proof throughout the entire process The feeling of knowing I completed the question had be feel ecstatic. I quickly remember that the second question was still incomplete and off I went. This question was completed through the course notes and the annotated lecture slides. The final part of the question had me guessing on the tight-bound, but I managed to put something together. Instead of going for the "slam dunk" and rushing through like the first assignment, I was able to pace myself and go in for the much more effective "lay-up". I feel that pacing myself really made a difference in how well I did on this assignment.

I should mention that I do feel uneasy though. I put a lot of calculations and made sure the structure of my proofs were on par with the expectations. I lost quite a few of marks because of missing calculations, explanations, and unclear structure on both the first assignment and test. I am uneasy in that sense. Also, the second test is approaching quickly. I still have a lot doubts that I have to clear up really soon. I have a lot of uneasiness in that sense as well. I will give you all an update on how I did after the test, in an early addition of my SLOG sometime early next week. I will clear up my doubts with the Master Theorem by looking at past tutorials, reading the annotated slides, and maybe most importantly, the course notes. Wish me luck!