First Week

       This week, we talked about sets, quantifiers, and statements. which is quite a happy coincidence because my calculus class was also going over the same topics but in a more formal way, so there are a huge number of symbols on the board. Mathematicians are like that. The way they explained it is comprehensive enough (by math department standards), but in 165, you get a more intuitive understanding of sets and how they could be used. Sometimes, intuition aids in internalizing concepts in mathematics and I'm glad that I gained this insight. What I learned in 165 also helps me grasp topics gone over in CSC148, which I took last year. (Of course that is obvious since 165 is supposed to be a co-requisite to that course.) When we look at how any high level computer language is built, we can see they are just a representation of mathematical concepts constructed in a way that is efficient and can be easily understood by people. "Object oriented" programming, as it is called mostly just operates on the same ideas as sets, quantifiers, and statements. Python or any other language will have symbols and syntax very similar to math notation for statements because those are already built into them. If we want to construct anything with those languages we should have a basic understanding of mathematical logic.