Classes Reflections

Overview

This semester is pretty tough! At the beginning I remember I have a mental breakdown almost every week tyring to finish my never ending homework and midterms. At first I really have to crticize myself for having no idea what I am getting into this semester: weak previews. I have underestimated the amount of work I have to do for each class. For the classes I take next semester, I want to at least have a brief overview of what is ahead of me. So complex analysis, linear models and linear algbera. Unfortunately I don’t see myself have a good boost of general productivity. Good amount of my work is under pressure. With that said, I think my mental resilience may have ramped up by a bit. And thus increasing the expectation of my productivity becomes my priority - in other words, increasing my macro-strategies. After the finals, or even before the finals I think I allocate a part of the day where I am away from the internet and just do nothing, or meditate.

Some realizations

1.some ocf staff may be staying in the lab but also not as productive. 2.Try feel less intimidated when entering a new field(h104). It is normal to struggle and you will get better overtime.

Stat 153

##What new strategies you hae used? 1.studying with classmates 2.searching online for the best testbook of … 3.answering questions in piazza ##What do you think you should have tried? I think I definitely should learn more along the road both from theories and technicals. Theory-wise I want to know more about the digital signal processing, and finish the online textbook: Forecasting, Theory and Practices; and technical-wise I wish I could have finished the efficientR book before the end of the semester and go through at least an additional project where I could use fourier transform to model seasonality.
In fact, above is like additional 200 to 400 hours of good work. And the amount of low urgent good work requires a good amount of willpower. ##What hard experience/lessons you have learned 1.There is no point going to lectures/lab if you don’t think is useful but it may be better than wasting time at home. So go with that play that gives highest expectation of productivity and updates the expectations of the strategy you use. 2.I got destroyed in the midterm 2 but I think it is just part of the growth. Completely underestimated the amount of time it required to finish the project. 3.Try to live my life as polished or organized as writing codes. It is very important. ##Thinking Lessons One of very important takeaway from this class is to see the future through forecasting, because based of everything else is just an arbitary off.

Math H104

What new strategies you have used?

1.shameless ask Mathhew for help.
2.go to office hour, like all most every single one.
##What do you think you should have tried?
1.I should really document my growth of problem solving techniques/algorithms. Actually I did gather a to-do-list and printed Polya’s How to Solve It but failed to follow through. I think it is important for me to develop a more systemic approach to problems. And I should train myself to do it well. ##What hard experience/lessons you have learned?
1.ask for help when you are desperate, I learn it the very hard way.
2.the amount of time to finish a theory-based problem could be exponentially distributed; sometiems, and often times it is better off if you set a threshold on amount of time you need to spend on each problem.
##Thinking Lessons
I am now being much more aware of the definition of things when thinking. In addition, I think I am much more detailed oriented than I used to be. For instance, in the Tassdar game I was thinking about some small details I previously don’t really consider at all. ##Add-ons
This is the only class that go to almost every single lecture. Some criticism is that lectures are often mundane and super technical. I don’t think that has much to do with the creative problem solving thinking that I am expecting from this class. Same goes office hour. Although the instructor has done a great job offering some good insights about mathematical concepts. Later in the course, I start to feel less compelled to go to OH because I don’t want to get the free answers unless I am desperate.

Math 113

What new strastegies you have used?

What do you think you should have tried?

I think I should do more exercises in the book than what is assigned, despite later in the class I can’t even keep up with the homeworks that are assigned. What a failure! ##What hard experience/lessons you have learned?
##Thinking lessons
Abstract algebra helps me with some concepts that I previous encounted in my math and cs classes. In addition, I think I am better at “partitioning” some structures into subgroups, or factor groups, since some elements could be seen as one, such as four corners at the chessboard when trying to figure out the stationary distribution of the knights’ random walk.

Stat 150

##What new strategies you have uesd?
##What do you think you should have tried?
I may want to try run some simulations on real world data, or model making. But I seriously doubt how applicable this class is, at leat I don’t think it will align with my career interest. Maybe understanding poisson would be helpful but these doubts are really cancerous for my progress. ##What hard experience/lessons you have learned?
##Thinking lessons
Stationary distribution/stability regardless of initial distribution is probably the most important concept I have learned from this class. Also random walk and first step analysis. That is why you shouldn’t signed up for a class that you think is so useless. However, I do find the professor a rather brilliant person, at least I can sense our similar obsession with reflecting and thinkings. Although our streams of thoughts may not be always valuable.