Exams are over!

Yes, that’s right, the term has finally and officially come to an end. By the time anyone reads this (assuming anyone DOES read this, and at the rate people appear to be reading it), I will be back at home in Toronto playing DDR: Mario Mix nonstop due to the fact that the DDR machine in The Cove (the campus arcade) has been broken for 2 weeks and I’m suffering from withdrawal. But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my teenage angst over DDR, so I’ll get to the meat of the post.

My final exam was today. CS 134. I took the same approach with this exam as I did with the midterm: active lack of studying. There was one topic that I had to study, so I took 10 minutes out of my afternoon today and learned it. As it turned out, all the necessary information was on the exam, so I didn’t even need to study it :S

The CS 134 final was significantly more difficult than the midterm. That doesn’t mean it was *hard*; it just means I couldn’t walk in 10 minutes late, leave 10 minutes early, and get 92.5%. It was about as hard as one would expect from a final exam. If you didn’t know the material, you had to study for it. If you knew your stuff, you should get a good mark. Nothing brain-numbingly difficult, but nothing brain-numbingly easy either.

The exam was incredibly focused on the second half of the term; I don’t think there was one question on it that came from before the midterm. It was mainly focused on the various sorting algorithms covered in class (Selection Sort, Insertion Sort, Merge Sort, and Quick Sort), but had a few things from other topics as well. The only thing that took a fair amount of thinking was that for the final question we were asked to reproduce the entire code for Insertion Sort. It wasn’t worth memorizing code, so I didn’t, but I knew what the algorithm did, so I was able to do it. I found this exam fairly well-balanced for me actually. I felt invigorated after it (but with the DDR machine broken I had nowhere to vent my invigoration so I just came back to my room and ate cookies).

Cookies aside, a short rundown of CS 134:

1) If you took Java in High School, you’re going to be ridiculously bored in this class. The course material is pretty much identical, except it’s taught at a much slower pace (at least compared to my High School CS teacher). There are a few things that are new, but most of it will be old hat. Professor Ragde (a CS 135 prof) says to take CS 135 if you’re thinking of taking CS 134, although everyone I know taking CS 135 had a tremendous amount of trouble with it. Scheme is ridiculously hard to get a grasp on for someone who hasn’t learned it before (I’ve tried to read some of it and it makes no sense). I didn’t take CS 135 so I can’t say any more than what I’ve heard from other people, but I’ve heard CS 135 is incredibly difficult.

2) If you take CS 134, a lot of people in your class will be in upper years (CS 134 is a required course for most Math programs). There will likely be a noticeable divide in both grades between those who are taking the course because it’s required for their program and those who know what they’re doing. Interest-wise, I’m not sure such a great divide exists.

3) CS 134 has a course newsgroup. I highly advise you use it. Some of the assignment questions can be really confusing otherwise.

4) DO THE HOMEWORK!!! If you look at the mark breakdown of the course, it looks like each assignment is worth junk, and that’s true, but I would advise doing the assignments. Even if you think you know your stuff, there’s always going to be that stupid little mistake you’ll make and not have fixed that you would have got if you’d have done that assignment (for example the implementation of Binary Tree they use is incredibly counterintuitive for first-timers, but you get used to it, and Quick Sort is a bit confusing to look at). Plus you have to pass a weighted average both of the homework itself and of the course material in general (homework + tests) to pass the course.

Other than that, I’ve pretty much said all I’ve had to say about CS 134 in my previous posts.

As I’m leaving UW in roughly 14 hours (:’(), this will likely be my last post until May (when I come back to campus for my 1B term…I’m in Stream 4 Co-Op). If anyone would like to contact me between now and then, feel free; the G-mail account is mine until September. If someone sends me something really interesting, I may be tempted to write about it

When I return in May, I’m going to be taking Math 138 (Calculus 2), Math 146 (Advanced Linear Algebra 1 or Advanced Algebra 2…not sure what they call it), CS 241 (I don’t know the proper name but I call it “Compiler design” because I get to write a compiler ), and, unless something of catastrophic and astronomical importance happens (or I just can’t get into the course), Japan 102R. I’m not yet sure of my 5th course, because I’m applying for Digital Hardware (a CS option where I get to take some ECE courses), so it’s going to be either an ECE course or Chem 120 (which I dropped at the beginning of this term).

Until May,

Lyle Waldman

And now the homestretch!

Well, Hell Day (as I like to call it) is over. You may have heard the term “hell week”, meaning a week with a lot of exams, and hence a lot of studying, and hence no time to do fun stuff. Well, I don’t know about the other Math programs, and I suppose it does depend largely on your electives (but I’ve heard this is definitely untrue for Bioinformatics), but the way my schedule worked out, I didn’t have Hell Week. I had Hell Day, and it was today. I had my two hardest exams, back-to-back, on the same day, starting at 9am. So basically I holed up in my room for the past 2 days studying. It worked…sort of.

So…yeah. Japanese was my first exam. Over the past 4 days I spent about 4 hours studying for it. I went into the exam knowing rudimentary vocabulary but pretty much all the grammar covered in class (which is enough to have rudimentary conversation, but nothing spectacular). I hoped to get a lot of marks off Binary Equality Logic, the same way I did on the midterm and two term tests. Well, as it turned out, the vocabulary on the exam was about as rudimentary as it got. On the term tests, there would often be random phrases from various dialogues that you wouldn’t study and would have no need to commit to memory (e.g. “I work overtime”) but be expected to know anyway. Not so on the exam. The exam primarily used words that we used a lot in class, so it was easy to understand. At that point, it’s up to you (and by “you” I mean “me”) to know what the answer to the question is. I made a couple silly mistakes (writing 12 instead of 20…the words in Japanese are very similar, reading “movie” instead of “English language”, again, similar words, especially when you see the word “movie” 5 times on the same page), but I don’t think I did terribly. There’s no way I’m going to hit my goal of 85% overall though :S Probably 80%-ish.

Final notes on Japan 101R for those who plan to take it (and I would highly advise it; the course is awesomesauce):

1) It’s like French, but harder. Most of you who are reading this (if there is anyone; by the lack of response I’m getting I’m beginning to believe such people do not exist, so E-MAIL ME!!!) have likely taken a French course (or, if not, a Spanish course or some other SL course). Japan 101R is just another Second Language course. It has to be treated like one. One of my friends told me that because he speaks Chinese (I’m not sure which one, so don’t ask me) and watches a lot of Anime (even more than me; and I watch A LOT of Anime) that he took Japan 101R because he thought it would be a bird course. It’s not. You have to take it seriously and work at it, otherwise you’ll get nowhere. Also, it’s even harder than French and Spanish courses, because the entire alphabet is different, so you have to learn a brand new alphabet as well as a brand new vocabulary and a brand new grammar structure (and you’re expected to know all 46 Basic Hiragana by about a month and a half in, and the other 56 by the following week (although, truth be told, it’s not difficult since the other 56 are just variations on the main 46)).

2) Point 1 was getting long, but I wanted to make a related note. Because you have to learn this whole new structure and language and everything, I would advise against taking the course for any reason other than interest. If you’re as interested in Japanese as I am, then you’ll work at it as hard as I did, and you’ll get a good mark in it, and it won’t matter because you’ve learned something you consider to be useful. On the other hand, if you took it because you thought it would be easy or because your parents made you or for some other reason, you won’t want to work as hard, and you’ll get a terrible mark and feel lousy about it.

3) While you do have to study, don’t spend all your time at it. The course material is actually not that difficult. In terms of French, for those who have taken it (and for those who haven’t, my High School didn’t offer any other languages, so I can’t help you), I would say Japan 101R covers material up to roughly Grade 7, with a lot of stuff left out (this is of course Second Language French, not French Immersion).

4) One thing about Japanese that I haven’t found with any other language (although truth be told, I’m only conversationally equipped for English, rudimentary French, and Java) is that there are rules and the rules get followed. It has been said that English is a language without rules, because there are as many exceptions to the rules as there are words that follow the rules (if you don’t believe me, take a look at the English verb “to be”). Not so in Japanese. If you learn the rules, 9 times out of 10 the words will follow the rules. This makes the language incredibly easy to pick up (that is, of course, until you start watching Anime in Japanese and realize how little you actually know; but that’s beside the point, and one of the reasons I want to take the entire course tree for this course).

5) One thing I wrote on the Course Evaluations (in University, we get to rate our teachers and tell them how to improve at the end of the term for all of our courses): Maruoka-sensei (Professor Maruoka) is from Japan, and she’s often hard to understand in lecture because she’ll often jump from Japanese to English and vice-versa without warning you what’s going on. If you bear with it for the first month or so, you’ll eventually understand what she’s talking about, but for the first month, it’s OK if you don’t quite get it. Fumie-sensei (who teaches the tutorials) is a really good teacher and is much easier to understand than Maruoka-sensei. Additionally, the lecture (for me, anyway) serves as a warmup for the tutorial (because I had Japanese for 3 hours straight; 1 hour of lecture and 2 hours of tutorial), since Fumie-sensei covers most of the same material as Maruoka-sensei, except in more detail, so if you can’t understand Maruoka-sensei, you can likely get most of the information from listening to Fumie-sensei in the tutorial.

But that would be pretty much my only criticism of Japan 101R (aside from it being at Renison College, which is out in the boonies compared to pretty much anywhere else on campus, but the East Asian Centre is really nice, so I suppose it evens out). Otherwise, the course is awesomesauce and I would advise taking it.

My other exam today was the dreaded Math 145, which came right after Japanese. I spent A LOT of time studying for that one; well into 6 hours over the past 2 days. The thing about that exam was that it wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t long either. It was very deceptive though. It looked a lot shorter than it was (plus apparentely I can’t do math since I thought 4 pm came 2 1/2 hours after 12:30 pm), so I took my time with couple of really easy, rudimentary questions, leaving me with about half an hour to do roughly 1/3 of the exam. Additionally, I didn’t look through the whole exam and do the easy questions first, so I almost messed up a couple of really easy proofs because I rushed them, and there were at least 3 questions I could have done a really good job of that I had to half-ass because of time constraints. So, essentially, the exam wasn’t hard; I was just an idiot when writing it, and I could have done a lot better than I did and I’m really disappointed with myself. At least it’s not like Math 147 where I had no clue what was going on and I knew I had no clue what was going on so I completely screwed it up. With Math 145 I only have my own stupidity to blame, not the difficulty of the course material, since it’s really not.

That said, I managed to finish roughly 7/8 of the exam, and I think I got pretty close to perfect on pretty much all of the questions I completed, so I think my grade on the exam is going to be well into the 70’s, if not the 80’s. I could have definitely got a 90%+ though if I hadn’t been an idiot.

Final notes on Math 145:

1) It’s really not that hard. Professor Willard will try to scare you off by telling you how tough it’s going to be at the beginning of the term (he even went so far as to make the first couple of assignments insanely difficult to scare off enough people to whittle the class size down to something manageable; it started off well over 100), but it’s really not. Most of the stuff covered should be pretty simple and routine if you did well in your Functions and Relations and Geo/Discrete courses in High School (for those to whom they are offered). It’s Algebra, folks, not brain surgery.

2) You really don’t gain all that much from taking Math 135 as opposed to Math 145. The one thing you gain is the option to take a course with Professor Vanderburgh (who I’ve heard is awesome, but I have no personal experience, although I have met him and he seems pretty cool. Some of you may have seen his signature if you’ve gotten a certificate from any of the UW Math contests like the Fermat, Galois, Euclid, or Open). On the other hand, you get to take a course with Professor Willard, who I can say is awesome from first-hand experience. Also, unlike Math 147 and 137, the course material in Math 135 and 145 is pretty much the same. Math 135 is about 2 weeks behind Math 145 at any given point in the term, but otherwise the topics covered are identical. In Math 147, you’re expected to know Epsilon-Delta proofs and the proofs of all kinds of various theorems (Squeeze, Intermediate Value, Mean Value, that kind of stuff), but in 137 they’re stated as fact. Professor Willard was a bit heavy on the proofs for the midterm and on the assignments, but there were only 2 proofs on the final, both of which were very easy if you studied them. Other than that, the assignments in Math 135 are longer, and quite frankly, not that much easier (save the couple at the start of term Professor Willard used to scare people away).

3) One thing you have to know, though, and this is true for Math 145 and Math 147: In High School, if you’re anything like me, you may have been really good at Math (I was the first or second in my class on any given assignment or test in any given math course in any given year after Grade 10). Be prepared to meet a lot of people who are much, much smarter than you are. To tell the truth, as good as I was back then, being in Math 145 and 147 was truly a humbling experience, because I can say with certainty that I’m probably, if not the bottom, then darn close to it in those classes. There are that many people here at UW who are better than I am, and I was pretty good. Math 145 and 147 are the place where the really bright people go to. One of the things I noticed when I dropped from 147 is that the people in my class seemed to want the grade more than the knowledge, while the people in 147 wanted the knowledge more than the grade. In a class like the 140 sections, it’s easier to learn with people who also want to learn, because then you can discuss math outside of class without looking like a jerk.

That said, be prepared. Math 145 is more difficult than Math 135, if only by a little. More will be expected of you, and you will have to deliver in order to keep pace. I didn’t find the course particularly difficult, and I would encourage anyone who thinks they’re up for a good Math challenge to go for it, but if you’re not up to it, by all means don’t do it. As I learned from my escapade in Math 147, it’s not worth killing yourself over something like this.

So that’s all I have to say in my closing statements on those courses.

In other news, for the sake of equality (for those of you who don’t get it and are new to reading this blog, read my earlier post about why Microsoft sucks), Apple sucks. Why does Apple suck? Well, up till now, I’ve always thought the iTunes music store was incredibly limited because it only had bad North American music on it (I apologize to fans of North American music; I’ve become terribly disillusioned with it of late and listen to J-Pop and European Symphonic Metal almost exclusively now). Yesterday, I went on iTunes, only to find that they do, in fact, have J-Pop and one of my favourite bands (who happen to be Finnish) on the music store. The problem is that in order to buy J-Pop, you have to be registered for the Japanese store, and to buy Finnish music, you have to be registered to buy from the Finnish store. This means you have to have iTunes credit in the appropriate type of funds, and a seperate account for each (plus I haven’t tried registering yet; I may even need an adress in those countries). So basically, iTunes has everything I want; I just can’t bloody well buy any of it. So yeah, I’m stuck with waiting for HMV or Sunrise to order the CD I want for me (I’m a fan of buying CDs that I think are worth it if I believe the artists have moral and ethical credibility, hence why I refuse to buy pretty much any album by any North American artist…told ya I was disillusioned). So note to the RIAA (or whatever the international equivalents are) and Apple: If you want more people to buy music from the iTunes store, make it international!

Until next time (I’ve already done my “E-mail me!” plug for this entry),

Lyle Waldman

2 down, 3 to go!

Well technically my Philosophy exam was on Thursday, but I’ve been busy thinking about what to write since then. I’m not sure what Da Rules ((C), (R), and TM) say about telling what the questions are on final exams (especially in Phil 100J, since it’s entirely likely, given the nature of the course, that Professor Tremblay uses the same questions every year), so I’ll do the best job I can about it without saying what the questions are.

The final exam in Phil 100J was basically the same as all the tests. He gave us a question (I think I’m probably allowed to say it was a single question) about a wide, philosophical topic, and our job was to write about it for 2 1/2 hours. The question was similar to the ones on the tests; if you paid attention in class, he pretty much fed you the answer in great detail and you just had to repeat it in your own words, perhaps with a couple of your own additions. Professor Tremblay is big on using your own examples and not just repeating what was said in class. However, the basics and essentials (and probably 70% of the answer) were given to you in class if you paid attention. So I didn’t find the exam particularly difficult. I’ve done 2 of these tests before so I knew pretty much the style to expect, and pretty much what he was after, so it wasn’t really a biggie. There’s not much else I can say without giving away what the question was, so I’m going to end here.

A couple points about the major Phil 100J tests that I found particularly interesting:

1) Do not study. Yes, you heard me. Studying for Phil 100J is perhaps one of the worst things you can do. It’s kind of interesting really. As I said before, Professor Tremblay is big on using your own examples. If you study, you’ll be more likely to regurgitate his opinion than create your own, which is not what he’s after. If you do that you’ll wind up with a 70-75% as opposed to an 85-90%. Remember: This is a Philosophy course, not a Lit course. The basis of the course is all about thinking and making your own opinion and judgment based on what you understand, not memorizing facts, dates, and methods of analysis. Save that for English Lit.

2) The questions are obvious. On pretty much all tests and exams, Professor Tremblay will test you on EXACTLY what you think he’s going to test you on. I’m not sure if I can give examples, but if there’s a test coming up and Professor Tremblay does a big lecture or 2 on a specific topic, builds it up for a couple of weeks, and uses a few of the texts to demonstrate something, chances are pretty good it’ll be on that test in some form or other. That was the case with both term tests and the final exam.

3) The texts are meant as guides, not references. In classes like English Lit that you’ve taken in High School, the text was primary and interpretations secondary (i.e. the generalizations made from the interpretations of the text are less important than the interpretations as they relate to the text in specific). Not so in this course. In fact, in all 3 of the tests, there was not a single question that could be thoroughly and completely answer just by referencing various passages of the various texts. Heck, there wasn’t even a question that could be PARTIALLY answered by referencing various passages of the various texts. Interpretation is everything in this course. The way I understand that Professor Tremblay expects you to use the texts are as examples to a larger point you’re trying to make. Professor Tremblay will never reference a specific text in any question on a major test. Instead, he will ask a general question and expect you to apply the text to the question on your own. This makes the questions more interesting, I think, because it allows for the “no wrong answer” scenario; it’s less about what you say than how you say it, and you can use the texts in any way you like.

This is, of course, not to say that Phil 100J is a bird course. It is definately not. You do have to do the readings (15-25 pages each), and you do have to pay attention in class (because most of the answers to most of the tests will be there, so it gives you a good heads-up on the kinds of things he likes), which means you have to go to class. You also have to be ready to apply yourself, because this couse is more about application than knowledge. But I would sincerely recommend taking it. I enjoyed it thoroughly…except those stupid desks in STJ…those were horrible…

In other news, no one has E-mailed or commented on anything here for a good month or so, so if anyone’s reading this, drop me a line at uwmathblogger@gmail.com. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

Finals! 1 down, 4 to go!

Yes, it’s true. It’s that time of term here at UW. Finals are upon us, with a vengeance. For those in a term system High School like I graduated from, basically imagine your June exams in December and your January exams in October. University’s like that.

So finals have begun. I’ve spent a lot of time since I last wrote studying for my Math 137 exam. Easy as the class is (and it is; it’s basically Grade 12 Calc all over again with a bit more proofs and integration), there was a not-insubstantial amount of material covered in Math 137 that was not covered in Math 147 which I had to learn on my own. So I’ve spent the past 2 days (well, it’s Thursday now so I suppose the 2 days before yesterday) figuring out that stuff that I need to know but didn’t. I did one of the sample exams posted on UW-ACE (a website you’ll grow to become particularly good friends with over your stay at UW) and completed a copy of the second Term Test (Math 135 and 137 have 2 midterms, called “term tests”, in addition to the final; Math 145 and 147 only have a single midterm and final). Between that and doing a few sample problems posted on ANGEL (an alternate name for UW-ACE), I’ve kept myself very busy for the past 2 days.

But it was largely unnecessary. The exam was pretty easy. Most of it was definite and indefinite integration, with a couple derivatives and some basic proofs. Easy stuff. There were, of course, a couple things I missed learning in my attempt to learn what amounted to about 3 months worth of material in 2 days, but I tried it anyway. Unfortunately, because of the way my mark got curved from Math 147, I have a sneaking suspicion that this final exam is worth something on the order of 90% of my final grade in Calculus 1. It kind of sucks that a mark on this exam is actually a mark on my final grade, but I guess there’s not much I can do about it, and I think I did sufficiently well on this exam that it’s not a big deal in the long run.

So, rule of thumb to not learn the hard way in UW Math: If you take Advanced Math (and I’m not telling you not to; I thoroughly enjoyed my Math 145 and 147 classes), be sure to drop down earlier than later. The midterms in Math 147 were not returned until the middle-ish of November, so by the time I dropped down, I had to figure a lot of stuff out all over again. If you find the homework taking too long and yourself needing too much help, I’d suggest dropping down ASAP. Better to be safe than sorry.

Note that this advice does not carry over to CS 134; the assignments in CS 134, I’ve found, are generally poorly templated on the assignment page and often need additional explanation to get right (CS134 has a course newsgroup designed to do just that; you’ll learn more about that in the first or second week of class). Also, the programming assignments in CS134 will often take a good 5 or 6 hours to do a good job of, so don’t be deterred by my advice in Advanced Math, because it does not carry over to Advanced CS.

Well, my Philosophy exam is in about 8 1/2 hours, so I should probably get some sleep. I’ll write again after that exam (if I’m still awake ).

Since my last post, no one has E-mailed me (not even Professor Ragde!), so I’m getting the feeling no one is reading this. If you’re reading this and have any comments at all (even a “good job, keep it up!” will do ), please drop me a line at uwmathblogger@gmail.com. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

The Term is Over!!! For good this time!

Yes, my first term here at UW has come to an end. I’m kind of sad, really. I can’t honestly say I had a class this term I didn’t enjoy. You know in High School, especially in the lower years, you always have that one class you never like doing? For once I didn’t have a class like that, so I’m kind of sad I won’t be able to go to those classes anymore, at least not until April (I’m on Stream 4 Co-Op). It kind of sucks.

And then there’s finals. My finals begin a week today with Math 137. I’m not particularly worried about any of my exams. My midterms weren’t particularly difficult, except Math 147 which I’m no longer taking, so I don’t see a need to worry about the finals. But they’re still worth a good chunk of my mark (the CS 134 exam in particular is worth 50% of my final mark). The profs here are pretty good with giving some good study aids (past exams and so forth), so I should be able to do pretty well.

In other news, last night CASA (Canadian Asian Students’ Association, or something along those lines) organized a night where Wong Fu came to the school to show their new movie, A Moment With You. For those of you who don’t know who Wong Fu is, they’re a group of movie writers/directors/producers from the University of California. Their famous video that most people know them for is called “Yellow Fever”. It should be up on YouTube or Google Video somewhere. It’s really funny; you should check it out.

So anyway, Wong Fu came to UW last night. They showed their movie in RCH 101, which is one of those huge lecture rooms Universities are known for (which there are about 3 of on campus that I’ve ever had to go to; UW’s really good about small class sizes, which is one of the things I really like about being here). They managed to pretty much fill up the entire room, which has capacity of (my estimate) somewhere between 200 and 300 people. I thought that was pretty impressive, considering these guys don’t look much older than 20 or 25. After the movie (which was awesome by the way; not as professional or flashy as something made by Spielberg or Lucas, but good anyway), I made sure to get an autograph and picture with Wong Fu. If they can fill up RCH 101 now when they haven’t done anything really huge yet (they said this was the biggest production they’ve done to date), imagine where they’ll be in 10 or 15 years! I think it’ll be something cool to look back on. Unfortunately, once again, I don’t know how to properly post pictures on WordPress, so if someone who knows would like to let me know, I’d appreciate it so I can post the picture.

After the movie, I came back to res. I found out (just in time!) about a new rule they’ve put into place. Starting at 11 pm last night, quiet hours are in place 23 hours of the day, every day, for the rest of what could be called “term”, so that people can study. Personally, I think this idea is really stupid. Yeah, it’s true people need to study, but I, for one, need some time when I can get away from studying and just hang out with other people and have some fun. The rules of “quiet hours” are, basically, if you’re too loud, they fine you $10. I don’t know if this involves you not being able to go into other people’s rooms or not (if you’re invited, of course). But, oh well. I’m probably going to try to spend as much time at home over the next couple of weeks as possible to avoid this stupid rule.

In other news, I haven’t gotten the paper back yet, but CS 134 has an online marks database where you can check your marks. Despite not being able to properly write one of the methods from Assignment 7 (the one I wrote about in my last entry), I still wound up with a mark well above 90% on it. For some odd reason they decided to mark it out of 1024, which is kind of funny if you know about computer hardware. If you don’t, this is the gist: In computing, everything is done in binary. Thus, it makes sense to make everything in powers of 2. Thus, a “kilobyte” is not actually 1000 bytes (“kilo” = 1000). It’s actually the closest power of 2 to 1000, which is 1024 (2^10). Similarly, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, and a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes. So it’s kind of funny that a CS assignment was marked out of 1024. Or maybe I’m just a CS nerd. Probably a bit of both. There’s another stupid computing joke that came out of the mark I actually got on the assignment (out of 1024), but it’s been recommended to me that I do not divulge my marks, so I’m not going to tell you that one.

While I’m on the topic of CS 134, just another note: My textbook remains in the same cellophane wrapper I bought it in. I would recommend buying the textbook, in case you need it (better to be safe than sorry), but make sure you buy it from somewhere you can return it to, because if you’ve taken a High School Java course, chances are you probably won’t end up needing it.

That’s about it from me for now. So I’ll conclude with what has become my traditional sign-off: If you would like to reach me to ask me anything (or to tell me how to post pictures properly on this site), feel free to E-mail me at uwmathblogger@gmail.com. So far I’ve only gotten E-mails from one person aside from Professor Ragde, so I’m beginning to feel like no one is reading this. E-mail me! Come on, people! Until next time,

Lyle Waldman