I took the Logic and Applications exam last Friday. I think I’m ready now to talk about the ordeal…
It wasn’t so bad really, I guess. I made a bad call as to which questions to answer (it was one of those answer three of four kind-of-things) and ran out of time. One of the questions I initially chose had what was for me a brick wall towards the midway point, and on a two hour exam, spending 20-25 mins heading down a dead end isn’t the best idea!
I guess the two frustrations I felt with this exam were firstly that the course covered so much material so quickly, but each of the topics turned out to be a bit of a rabbit-hole when I got to thinking about it during the revision process – the more I thought about it, the more questions I found!
On top of that, one of the key aspects of a course like this is transformation of formulae into alternative forms which have properties we want – usually, more efficient solving algorithms. These transformations are rather like the algebraic manipulation of mathematical formulae we did at school – progressing in unit steps, painstakingly copying out each new form as you go. That consumes a lot of time, especially when the formulae don’t give out easily, but it doesn’t really seem to prove much about the student’s skills – the pages-of-transforms kind of work was all hammered pretty hard in the coursework, after all. Then again, maybe I just screwed something up early doors and that led to the extensive transform.
The course was new this year anyway, so maybe it takes a little time for the exams to settle in terms of difficulty. Or I’m just a dumbass. Anyway, it’s too late to worry about all that now. Hopefully, I passed – that’s the main thing, right?
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