Design and Analysis of Algorithms finished!

Well, I've wrapped up the work for Design and Analysis of Algorithms. I hope and plan to watch some of the remaining optional videos that I didn't get around to seeing, but that's the end of the work. I got full marks on the last homework and problem set, but on the final exam I got 25.75/30, which is a little lower than I'd like. Particularly annoying is that I lost two points on the final question, which I should have been able to get but I just didn't read my notes well enough. Ah, well. I certainly could have done better, but on the other hand, considering where I'm at, I can't be too upset by it. I'll await my final score - which unfortunately will be lower than it should, due to that brain-fart of not knowing about the existence of the programming questions. I could calculate it now, but eh.

On the class itself - interesting!! Wow, algorithms are really cool. I can see what Tim meant when he said they're addictive to think about. Although so far I don't seem to have any particular spark for algorithm design - all of the solutions offered are like "gee whiz" to me - I can understand everything well enough, and the ideas are cool enough, that I could see myself in some parallel universe studying this stuff. At the very least, it's very useful.

So with that, let's look at where I've come since the last post:

Progress:

• Algorithms: completed the course.
• I've all but given up on finding the answer to the second programming question. It's infuriating because the code sorts the list just fine - but the problem doesn't ask you to sort; it asks you to count the number of comparisons made. And for some reason, my code just doesn't count it right. Since it was late, and since I already got one of the three problems right, remaining is only a question of one or two more points. So, for the sake of my sanity, I'm going to pass.
• Programming Abstractions: watched through the 11th lecture video. Finished problem set 3.
• On the last problem of the set, I used an iterative solution rather than a recursive. They didn't say which one to use, but I'm guessing they wanted the recursive solution. Once I had the "updateVector" function built, it would of course be easy to implement a recursive rather than iterative solution, but I don't think the algorithm really would gain anything from it. Also, there might have been able to do a problem like this without vectors, but that's the answer I got and I'm sticking to it. Worthy to note is that some of the lectures coming up will be covering similar ground to the algorithms class I just finished up, so I anticipate skipping through a couple of those.
• Linear Algebra: watched through the 8th lecture video.
• The plodding pace of this class continues. I hope I can keep up a pace of at least 2 lecture videos a week; even at that I'm running behind the pace of the real class but at least it's not so slow that I'll lose track of the class.
• Programming Languages: watched through the end of unit 1.
• A really cool class. I like the content and I like the professor. I'm really looking forward to this one.
• Robotic car: watched through the end of unit 1.
• I remain optimistic about this course. Oh what an understatement, I'm totally psyched by this course! The material is a bit challenging, sometimes from a conceptual point of view and other times practical. But, if I can get a good grasp on this stuff, it will really be amazing. Especially combined with the Machine Learning and Computer Vision classes.

And coming right around the corner are Machine Learning and Computer Vision courses from coursera! They will be live on the website starting tomorrow or maybe late tonight. W00t!