Topic: Translating Date: 31/01/2013 Slog #3

I'm finally starting to get a clear picture of how to use logical symbols together and understanding the meaning of the sentence. However, translating from English to Symbols is still a little unclear to me. Since English is so ambiguous, I sometime mix up the way I use my symbols or maybe I'm just not good at using symbols. For example, I sometimes use the implication symbol, when it should really be a conjunction. My question is that when should I use those symbols such as ^,=>,<=>,v,etc to join a statement together in the correct order it's written in. These symbols confuse me sometimes and I can't really use symbols to express longer statements. I understand truth tables help, but some statements are just too confusing. I did practice questions and usually, at the end, I do end up understanding how to express an English statement in symbols, but it seems I have to read the sentence many times and sometimes I look at part of the answer to get an understanding of the rest, but this method will not work on the midterm coming up and I would like to know how I can get better and faster at writing out English in symbols. Also, most of the time I'm not confident with what I expressed in symbols because the corresponding English statement seems to have different meanings every time I read it. I have to find someway to get over this bump and be able to express English sentences in symbols as if it was second nature to me.

Topic: Logical Notation Date: 23/01/2013 Slog #2

It all seems fine when I learn the logical symbols separately, but when it comes down to actually using it to express a statement, I can't figure out where to start. For example, when I first looked at this weeks tutorial handout, I gave up after looking at the first question thinking in my head that I'll learn it in class and that would be enough to cope for the quiz. Although I gave up at that moment, I still went back to try it again another time. After hours of reading and asking friends, trying to figure out where to start, I finally came up with some answers that seemed right at the time (they were). The problem was knowing when to use the "," and the order of the symbols. At first I thought order didn't matter for declaring which variable is in which set and the quantification of it, but in the tutorial today I learned that order does matter and it's a serious mistake to have the wrong order. The whole statement changes. As soon as the questions started to get harder I was back to the start, where the only thing left to do was to quit! My problem was that I didn't know how to put the symbols together, plain and simply. I'm not quite sure if I was suppose to know this notation before taking this course. Either way, I'm going to practice trying to express harder claims in symbols to try and get the hang of it, and if anyone knows any practice questions with solutions available anywhere, please let me know as this will help me greatly.

Topic: Overthinking? Slog #1 - 16/01/2013

So far, I figured out that my way of thinking is not going to help me excel in this course. It seems that every conclusion I come to when I solve a problem is the complete opposite of what I'm expected to conclude with. This is extremely frustrating considering that when I try to think of an answer opposite to mine, for example the Venn Diagram drawings it is still incorrect! In my head, my first method of thinking makes perfect sense. This is why I understood the answer to this weeks quiz, but the verification of my answer was wrong. It seemed perfectly fine to me to say that q2.py does not meet the required statement (not exactly what I stated, but close enough) thus the statement is false. 

When I try to alter my method of thinking to fit perfectly with the explanation of solving a problem in this course, I get confused. This is when I realized that the way I'm normally used to thinking about a solution isn't going to work. To solve this I'm going to try and completely abandon my ways of thinking and try starting from ground zero on a conclusion. Using literal meanings and looking at the solution to a problem from a different angle than what I'm use to, might help me understand the course better. I'm completely new to this type of work and it's going to be difficult to handle problems that involve, in my opinion, a more complex way of thinking.