The End of the Starter

Oct. 3-08

Last week of September we moved to chapter 3, Recursive Definitions. The focus of the course has shifted away from induction, but it doesn't change the fact that we are still dealing with inductive proofs. I guess we can never get away from induction in this course.

The concept of recursion is by no mean a new topic to most of the students including me. I believe most people in the class already had plenty of experiences with recursive program before. However when I looked into the logic behind recursion, I could see a whole new aspect of the topic. One thing that I really liked about this topic is "unwinding." I have never heard a problem-solving method with such a fascinating name. "Unwinding" is a very complicated process to look for the pattern of a function. I didn't understand it at all when Danny explained it in the lecture. I revisited lecture slides afterwards and tried to recall what Danny said. Eventually, I got it after staring at the slides for one and half hours.