Question

I feel like this course is like learning how to swim by being thrown in a river. Looking at the solution for ps1c is almost revolting. "Here's this new concept, now go write this program that takes 50 lines in a language that you barely know." Did anybody succeeded at doing this problem set?

I wrote myself a "guess the number" program in Python to better comprehend the concept of bisection search and it worked well, but there is absolutely NO WAY I could have known how to do that problem.

Sorry, just venting.

Answer 1

what class are you taking?

Answer 2

Well, the open materials by MIT are for two different classes at two different times. 6-00sc-spring-2011 assumes you know more and people that did not were supposed to take a 5 week intro to programming at the same time. 6-00-fall-2008 is supposed to be less math intensive.

In both cases, the way MIT has released the materials is really structured around a person that can dedicate themselves to it. You have no where near as much help as a person actually in a school.

On the other hand, it is free and between places like here and Stack Override you can get a lot of the help you need. There are also free books you could use to complement things.

Answer 3

I am taking the 6.00SC Spring 2011 course. I've looked at many tutorials on the web for 1 year or two, not really intensively but I can code a website in PHP and JavaScript and I already knew about functions, loops, conditions, recursion and all that stuff I can read docs so there's no problem about the "language" side of the course. I found some of the questions the students ask in the videos really easy to answer and I've learned nothing new yet except that bisection search method (which is very interesting and is the reason why I want to follow that course, I want to learn how to build programs and "think like an engineer", not being taken by the hand in a tutorial only barely covering the basics of a language)

But man, that problem set. I watched the lectures and the recitation while taking notes (got like 15 pages), I know my way around Stack Overflow, but I wanted to be able to make it really hard. Then I looked at the solution because I was stuck and I couldn't believe the same students that asked those easy questions would be able to do that problem set themselves.

So for a single person with no access to the prof., would you recommend reading the solution and then find another way to do them after?

Answer 4

I think it is always better to try first. The more you try and the more you work out on your own the better you develop your skills. The sooner people give up, the less they develop reasoning and troubleshooting skills.

Answer 5

Yeah that's what I did first, but if I had followed that class, I couldn't have handed that problem set and would have gotten a 0. The first problem set is printing your name and birthdate in the console and then out of nowhere WHAM. Calculate credit card interest using the bisection search method. O_o

Answer 6

Yah, they expect students to have already passed calculus in the SC class. If I recall, SC is for Special Challenge. They are intentionally intense.

Answer 7

Special Challenge? Wow now I get it. I thought I read somewhere it was the abbreviation of Scholar, I read it meant you could take that course on your own with only the resource provided. I was probably mistaken. Thanks.

Answer 8

I checked just now to see.
SC = Scholar Courses
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/ocw-scholar/

Someone here has said it was Special Challenge, but it looks like that is incorrect.

Answer 9

Yeah, anyway, the next problem sets look way easier than that one, I already know about functions so that should be a breeze. But that one was just particularly hard, I wondered if anybody else had trouble doing it and I wanted to know if someone else experienced the same thing.

Answer 10

I switched from 6.00SC fall 2011 to 6.00 fall 2008 because I found the teaching of Eric Grimson to be better and more interesting than Professor Gutang. Also the problems sets were more interesting solving Diophantine Equations and finding the 100th prime number. I did manage to do the credit card assignment (took me about half a day). Its actually easier than it looks...I just put a for loop in range (1 to 13) for each month. Put all the equations in the right order and boom it did work. In both courses there is a huge difference between problem 0 and problem 1. But right now I've switched from that too, to 1986 lectures of 6.001 (Structure and Interpretation of Computer programs) where they teach programming in lisp. Don't know why I can't stick to any course.

Answer 11

It's MIT, not you're community college.

Answer 12

glad i'm not the only one who found the jump from prob 1 to prob 2 excessive