CSC165 2nd week journal

In the first two weeks, I knew that programming language is very precise and logical symbols are used to prevent ambiguity. The two quantifiers in logical notation are universal quantification and existential quantification.  To disprove an universal quantification, there simply needs to exist one exception. To show that something exists, simply find one case where the property applies to one instance. Implications is one of the forms of a sentence. If I study hard, then I will do well in this course.  And the converses, contrapositive of the implications have different meanings from the original implications. While equivalence means antecedent implies consequent and the meaning is the same the other way around.

These are techniques we are building up to solve proofs later on in this course. Proofs will be formalized and presented in not only a precise and accurate manner, but also logical.  

Although human language may be ambiguous at times, it is more intuitive for solving problems. It is then translated into symbols to reason more precisely. This is the background I come from, as I took PHL245 (modern symbolic logic) before, that was when I found myself really interested in symbolic logic. I am not a computer science student, but I am looking forward to learning more from this course because it is interesting. From this week’s materials, since I have learnt the logical notations from PHL245, so converting English sentences to symbols is something I am familiar with. Different from PHL245, this course is more towards mathematical expression and reasoning.  This is something I have to work on more. I am going to review the related material from the course notes during weekend and try to understand the material better.