Good question.
This damn CSCI homework doesn’t seem like it should be hard but I must be missing a concept somewhere. I know what concept I’m missing too. It’s the same one I’ve been missing since geometry. It’s the same one I’ve been missing through calculas, through physics, through every other course I’ve taken that had anything to do with things being real.
The thing I can’t grasp is proof.
Maybe that’s not the right way to put it. I can grasp the concepts of things like because of this and this, we know this. Or because this isn’t true, this isn’t true. The things I get hung up on are trying to show something isn’t true for a range of things that equivalent. For example:
Show that when ice cream sales go up, so do the number of swimming deaths.
Ok, first stab at the problem for most people is something along the lines of, well… more people eat before they swim, so therefore they must drown. The truth is, that has nothing to do with it. It actually has something to do with what they have in common. In this particular case it’s tempature. Ice cream sales go up when it get’s warmer. The number of people who swim goes up when it gets warmer. Therefore, more swim deaths occur due to the fact that more people are swimming, not because of anything to do with Ice Cream.
Needless to say, some of this stuff I do find interesting. Mainly, the fact that I can build a Turing machine in my back yard. I would post a link to one, but I was unable to find one. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you haven’t take a automata class, or you just don’t care. In either case, your probably luckier than me.
I think I’ll ask Rob for help later tonight.
My parents are making me go look at a house tomorrow. When am I going to find time for that? 4:30 to be exact.
I have to get up to the U of M to do some homework tomorrow night. I think I’ll have the same problem. I better make sure there is an open lab.
This I best go do now before my date with the lovely Amber. She sometimes drives me mad when I have so much to do, but eh, nothing I can do about that.