{"id":40,"date":"2015-01-01T22:27:25","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T05:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/?p=40"},"modified":"2015-08-26T15:23:25","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T22:23:25","slug":"course-review-cpsc-121","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/2015\/01\/01\/course-review-cpsc-121\/","title":{"rendered":"Course Review: CPSC 121"},"content":{"rendered":"

Models of Computation<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>“The laptop that you are using is a lot more powerful than a DFA!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Text<\/strong>:\u00a0Discrete Mathematics with Applications 4th Edition by S. Epp (see website for other options)<\/p>\n

Prof<\/strong>: Dr George Tsiknis<\/p>\n

George Tsiknis is the kindest prof in the world. His amazing accent, and personal warmth really leave an impression. He also has a great sense of humour. Its unfortunate that he had family emergency towards the end. Even though he was really going through a lot, he came to class and made sure we were ready for our final. Great guy. Some of the questions in the slides are worded vaguely, making it difficult to get the I-clickers, but they are only for participation anyway, so its all good. \u00a0Really willing to slow down and take questions if you need help, in class. I suppose tutorials and office hours must have been equally beneficial.<\/p>\n

\n

Difficulty<\/strong><\/p>\n

I get the sense that the topics on this course are very deep. That said, we skirt at the surface of most of these topics, and as a result, the course is quite straight-forward for the most part.<\/p>\n

\n

Key Concepts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elementary Logic<\/p>\n

Proof Strategies<\/p>\n

Logic Circuits<\/p>\n

\n

Hard Concepts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Algorithm Efficiency: The rigorous definition is quite long-winding. Knowledge of Big-Oh notation from Calculus class could help.<\/p>\n

Interpreting Sequential Circuits: I found these really tricky in the lab and on exams. They are kind of puzzle like problems- in that you either get them or you don’t- but you can spend a long time just making sense of what’s going on, even if you understand the fundamentals really well.<\/p>\n

Predicate: Conceptually easy, but also easy to make careless mistakes or you can confused in half-way through your own translation.<\/p>\n

\n

Lab<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fun lab. I kinda freaked out the first few days since I had no clue how to operate a Magic Box or breadboard, but after a while the labs started making sense and I started to enjoy simulating circuits with Logism (which is freely downloadable, btw) or cracking circuit puzzles. Ultimately you simulate a working computer, but it is still a long way a way from the real deal. Pre-labs are not too intense. Most labs are with a partner, so efficient teamwork can get you done a lot faster.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fun course. Useful in learning basic logic, mathematical proof and simple models of a computer. But I get the feeling that the computer models we use are so simplified that they are ultimately interesting but have appear to have little real world application. I was waiting to connect what we learnt in class with my PC at home but that happened only superficially for me…The surprising\u00a0immediate\u00a0application\u00a0I got out of this class were proof strategies that helped a lot in Math 121.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Models of Computation \u00a0“The laptop that you are using is a lot more powerful than a DFA!” Text:\u00a0Discrete Mathematics with Applications 4th Edition by S. Epp (see website for other options) Prof: Dr George Tsiknis George Tsiknis is the kindest prof in the world. His amazing accent, and personal warmth really leave an impression. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28516,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281864],"tags":[564,1171123,1822,1171121,1171124,37],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-reviews","tag-computer-science","tag-course-review","tag-cpsc-121","tag-models-of-computation","tag-tsiknis","tag-ubc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}