Journal 33

 January 21 - January 27

This week was honestly a bit overwhelming for me as it was all new information and had a few different formulas and numbers to memorize. Nevertheless, I am glad there is minimal work this week so I can dedicate time to studying and practicing the material. This week focused on brute-force and exhaustive techniques, as well as how they apply to classic problems. One example is brute-force string matching, and we analyzed both best and worst case scenarios and their time complexities. Exhaustive search examples such as the Traveling Salesman problem, knapsack problem, and job assignment problem each emphasized how permutations and subsets impact time complexity. We also studied graph traversal algorithms such as Depth-First and Breadth-First searches. The data structures and efficiency analysis for these two are where I struggled a bit, but I am confident I will be proficient come time for the midterm exam this weekend. Furthermore, we learned about divide-and-conquer strategies and the Master Theorem to analyze recursive algorithms. This week felt like a bit of math, and I enjoyed that. I am excited to see how I score on the midterm exam, and I will dedicate my entire week to studying for it.