CSC 165 SLOG #10: (Week 11:Halting Problem and Computability)

Learning week 11 materials was very challenging for me. I had very hard time understanding the problem. I also started on my last assignment for Assignment 3 for CSC 165. I hoped that I would get the assignment on Nov 15th, so that I can finish it during the holidays. However, unfortunately, the assignment was posted this Tuesday. I hope to finish this assignment by next Wednesday if possible. 

Week 11 was all about halting problem and computability. I also learnt that halt(f, n) is non-computable, but well-defined. One thing that interested me is the history of algorithm that I heard during Wednesday's lecture. Alan Turing who is often regarded as the father of computer science and algorithm developed Turing machine used in the WW2. As I was more interested in Alan Turing, I searched about him on Internet. Then, I found that Alan Turing committed suicide as he was charged as a criminal. 

As a review, I also studied Larry's Week 10 slides. I learnt various terminology from Larry's slide. The slides show that Well-defined for function f is true iff we know what f(x) is for every x domain. Function f being computable means that the function is well-defined and we know how to implement function f. Others are non-computable.

I decided to practice solving the questions on the slides from last week and this week to improve my skills on proving and disproving for Big Omega and Big Theta. It's time for me to work on Assignment 3!