Matt's CSUMB Journey

 This week we moved from learning how to read and understand algorithms, to a more direct approach to writing some of the more advanced algorithms that explore the more common mathematical and logical problems programmers tend to face. Learning about topological ordering, tree structuring, and quick sort was very interesting as these concepts are huge throughout the computer science landscape. COming off the test last week I feel reinvogorated to keep learning. 

 This week I was able to study some of the topics I struggled with in previous weeks like recurrence relationships. In preparing for the test being able to use two sheets of paper as notes was helpful for studying but also helpful for the test. A refresher on merge sort was also a welcome experience as well as the divide and conquer techniques. 

 This week was very interesting, understanding the differences between DFS and BFS was harder than I thought especially when thinking about their implementation within programs. Recurrence has always been a difficult subject for me to understand but thanks to the reading this week I think I am starting to get a better grasp on the topic and understand it's implementation within the programs we wrote this week for homework. 

 This week was very interesting, I had learned about time efficiency and Big O, Theta and Omega notation in the past but it was great to learn formal definitions and see some examples of how they can be applied. Understanding how to evaluate recursive algorithms was new for me and pretty difficult to understand at first but after reading the text book and other required materials it started to make a little more sense. I would like to continue practicing evaluating both recursive and nonrecursive algorithms  just to continue understand the asymptotic notations a little bit more. Overall it was a good week and the homework was challenging in a great way.