Hi to all in UIT2201 (again):
This will, most likely, be the last post on this module blog. (I am also thinking of how I will archive out some of the thought and entries in this blog for a more general audience.)
One month has just whizzed by very quickly after the UIT2201 final exam. It was a mad rush to grade everything, submit the stuffs, and get ready for a conference-***-research-meeting trip to Shanghai (somehow, all my trips to China ended up in Shanghai [I created a new joke for my talks -- a TaiHu boat joke], but that's another story, ...)
In between all that, I managed to squeeze out time for a post-module meetup -- as it turned out, only three people could make it and they were WeiXiong, Hoang, and Pooi Yean, but it was enough of a United-Nations of sorts (Singaporean, Vietnamese, Malaysian. We talked about stuffs in general, what they are doing, and what they like to do in the long run, and all manners of topics as they came up. It was fun for me. Thanx, WX, H, PY.
WX told me that he is involved in the
I was in Shanghai May 14 to May 24, had a conference (and part leisure trip) with PICB from Shanghai to TaiHu (Suzhou), gave a talk there on Gene Team Tree and told a TaiHu joke that was inspired by the trip to TaiHu wetlands, just before my talk. I also visited another research lab SCBIT and gave a talk at Shanghai University, Mathematics Department. It was a fruitful trip as I managed to have very rewarding discussions with various people on the research work and possible collaborations in research. I also participated in the 3-minute tribute to the Wenchuan earthquake victims on Monday, May 19th, at 2:28pm, as part of the 3-day official mourning period. It was a moving experience.
On my first day back to the office, I got a letter from the USP about a teaching award from the USP. This, I must say, I owe it, to all of you students in the class as well, for the cooperation, participation, enthusiasm, and hard work in the course. *Thanks of all of you* Couldn't have done it without you.
Regards, --hon-wai
Quick entry as placeholder. I am writing from the Launch of the code::XtremeApps:: 2008 competition. See details at
http://www.itsc.org.sg/codeXtremeApps2008.html
In T12 (last tutorial, no Q-problems, yeah!) we addressed your replies to the Fun Question (about the surprise visitors to lectures on 7th April) -- and the hidden and slightly censorted version of the replies. We talked about TM programs and ran through some examples. In the process, we worked thru the idea of abstraction, yes, abstraction even with TM programs.
Through one of the Q' problems, we talked about algorithms for "increment" and in so doing, we abstracted out the very simply rule that almost wrote itself as a TM program (scan left-to-right to the end, then move back right-to-left, change 1's to 0's and when you see a 0, convert to 1 and STOP).
Finally, one last item to end the course, and I proposed one of two things: (a) non-computability of the halting problem, or (b) zero-knowledge proofs. However, it was a no-brainer choice as the tag-line for (b) was "Amazing, fascinating, mind-boggling" and so that was what we did. For Zero-knowledge proof, I used the example of graph 3-colouring as illustration since it tied in well with the earlier mini-lecture on the Tourist Problem (remember?). I hope that the actual presentation did NOT disappoint and lived up to the tag-line.
Last tutorial, and we won't meet again till 30-April.
I will call for a meet-up after your exams and chill-out period so as to talk about what to do with the projects that you guys have worked on.
OK, guy! Your turn.
Last lecture: Theory, models of computation, TM, programs,
Really Cool Project presentations: Google Map Mashup, Google Gadgets, Alice Groups 2 and 1.
Haha.... the fun question was about the mysterious visitors!
Will write more later...
We covered AI and rule-based system. I also answered questions before Quiz 2.
[write more later...]