Solutions to Lab 1 exercises & Reflection

Written solutions

The written solutions for this week can be download as PDF from these links:

• Lab 1a: Discrete Maths review
• Lab 1b: Brainteasers

Reflection

Look over your attempts to solve the brainteaser problems.

• When a problem has a finite number of candidate solutions, we can (in principle) explore all the possibilities to decide if it has a solution or not. Does this method generalise? Does it have a name? How about when the number of candidates is not finite?
• What was the difference between the problems that had a "solution" which you could construct and the problems that you had to show had no solution? (Was the successful attack the same?)
• For the problems that had a solution, you often spent a lot of time trying to find the solution, but once found it was much easier to verify it. Do you think this is rare and only applies to a small number of problems?

Info

You don't have to hand-in you reflection -- this is not an assessment. Keep your notes and go over them as you understand the material more. Some of the above ideas will become clear in one week, while others will be met again towards the end of the module!

Video explanations of some solutions

I make video explanations on request when I can.

Lab 1a Q5

Functions exercise.