Question

Problem Set 1 seems quite difficult for a beginner. Anybody else feeling the same way? I was able to solve problem 1, but I was far from the correct result for the problems 2 and 3.

Answer 1

idk what this is.

Answer 2

IMO, that's not the greatest beginner course because since it's for engineering students at a prestigious university, the assumed math expectations are too high.

Answer 3

I thought problems that one only had two problems. Just finding prime numbers and proving the theorem that the natural log of the some of primes listener number divided by that number approaches one, correct?

Answer 4

One thing they don't put out there real clearly is that students in this class were expected to have programming familiarity from an intro to computer information systems class. If they did not have that, there was a 5 week concurrent class that covered the absolute basics of programming.

I have suggested to many people that they use the first 10 to 15 of The New Boston's Python tutorials, which are about 10 to 15 min each, to fill in the gaps on the basics.

Answer 5

or probably you can first go for MIT 6.189 A gentle introduction to programming using Python. You should start with this course if you find 6.00 too difficult.

Answer 6

@shouvikroy That is the 5 week intro one.

Answer 7

I agree for a first program, it is actually somewhat complex but i did take the time to start working through "Learn Python The Hard Way" and having that prior knowledge helped alot. Otherwise what i learnt during the lectures, i think, was just minimal for the problem set.

Answer 8

I finished yesterday the second set of problems and worked quite well. On the first problem set I got stuck in the way you compute the recurring interest (The solution showed that I should have created a loop in the loop, thing that I didn't figure out).

Answer 9

Yes, the inner loop tries the value and the other sees if you have succeeded.

And yes, there are some gaps in what you see in the lecture. In this type of class, the lecture will be twice a week with 300 students and a professor. Then, once a week they do recitation or section work, which is a 30 to 50 students and a grad student. When you don't get that section work you are going to miss some of the more hands on stuff they do.

Answer 10

Yeah, I've found this class to have a pretty steep learning curve. I would just say take advantage of as many resources as you can. There is soooo much information about Python online and various tutorials that you can do for free. codecademy.com is really helpful in learning syntax and basic short programs.

Answer 11

Katiem, yes, it helps indeed to read all the additional docs. I also took the codecadamy tutorial before starting this course and made my life really easy to know the syntax upfront.