SLOG week 8

   We are now into "big-O" notation after having completed the proof unit. I have to say that this new topic is somewhat confusing to me. I understand that what it comes down to for us in terms of work and application is these "big-O" proofs, where you show that one function is in "big-O" of another function (or that it isn't).

   The confusion for me, though, comes down to the motivation of this topic; I don't really understand why we need "big-O". I suspect that it is an important topic in algorithm analysis, which itself is a topic quite specific to computer science. Because I have not learned all that much about computer science (since I am in the first year of it), this "big-O" is sort of lost on me. Past topics have been more intuitive and connected broadly to maths and logic. 

   I suppose this is my biggest frustration this week: I want to be more interested in the concept of "big-O", but I am sort of prevented from being so because I do not understand the connections it has with the wider picture of logic, maths, etc. I will keep working on it, though, and once again, hope that it will be interesting and valuable to me when I look back on it through the lens of what is to come.

   It seems that some other people don't understand either. Here is a slog I found (check the post from oct 31, yesterday) http://vickieou.blogspot.ca/ which agrees that in general, the big O concepts are confusing. They also raise the point that the proofs require a lot of note taking in class. I think that is a smart and funny observation which is also true for me; I was pretty much constantly writing in this week's lectures, and just the act of taking notes alone took away somewhat from my attention. Maybe that is a sort of "hidden variable" (referencing my Statistics course, boo-ya) with this unit: it is wordy, so it is harder to take it all in.