I spent a little time on thinking of a clever name for the courSe bLog (aka, SLOG), but I guess the capacity of human brain to function at its best has an inverse relationship with how late it is in the night. So, for 2:45 am 'Recursion of Proof and Posts' isn't too bad.
Reading through the SLOG handout, it occurred to me that this is a very neat way of getting some feeding from students, for a professor.
As far as the course is concerned, it seems manageable till now and I like the fact that its organized. Plus, i really love that Prof. Heap kinda makes us walk our own way through the process of finding proofs during the lectures instead of just proving it outright.
Yesterday, I saw a lot of people working on the first assignment (some of them started on the day it was due!) and not being able to understand how to prove stuff. When I asked a few people why they were stuck, they just replied - 'I don't get it'. On further inquiry, I get to know that the same people skipped a few lectures and didn't bother to go to office hours and to top that off, started the assignment on its due date. I didn't want to be mean to them, but in my head I was like "There is a reason why the assignment was posted a week ago and not on the day its due" (My friends tell me I condescend quite often, but I'm practicing to give that up). Personally, I think the assignment was fair enough and was a good exercise.
Reading through the SLOG handout, it occurred to me that this is a very neat way of getting some feeding from students, for a professor.
As far as the course is concerned, it seems manageable till now and I like the fact that its organized. Plus, i really love that Prof. Heap kinda makes us walk our own way through the process of finding proofs during the lectures instead of just proving it outright.
Yesterday, I saw a lot of people working on the first assignment (some of them started on the day it was due!) and not being able to understand how to prove stuff. When I asked a few people why they were stuck, they just replied - 'I don't get it'. On further inquiry, I get to know that the same people skipped a few lectures and didn't bother to go to office hours and to top that off, started the assignment on its due date. I didn't want to be mean to them, but in my head I was like "There is a reason why the assignment was posted a week ago and not on the day its due" (My friends tell me I condescend quite often, but I'm practicing to give that up). Personally, I think the assignment was fair enough and was a good exercise.
Same here...I too have observed a similar hierarchy of actions here as well....people start the assignments the day it is due and simply copy it from others who have done it....basically from those who were sincere enough to complete it well in time...and hence the name "Recursion" in fact seems apt....very well done my friend...
ReplyDeleteThank you. But there is just one small difference here. Nobody copies the answers, that's an academic offense and its pretty serious.
ReplyDeleteConsidering we're doing structural induction and working with recursive functions, nice timing. I like Heap's lectures too, sometimes I just give up taking notes and try participating in the thought process going on instead of just copying down everything neatly when I can make organized notes later when he posts the annotations up!
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