CST370 - Week 7 Reflection

  Week 7 Learning Recap

        Week 7 of CST370 was a reinvigorating volley of algorithmic delights. I found myself looking forward to the programming assignment during this week’s lectures and puzzles. I always love actionable steps, the pathway to victory as my Calculus professor once called it. As the shadow of the final exam looms ever closer, I have been quite intentional about fully absorbing the lecture, example, and textbook excerpt before moving onto the next concept. 

        This week's algorithms folded very nicely into each other throughout the module. Counting sort using frequency and distribution to place in the index was the perfect simple intro to stack Radix's LSD method of going digit by digit. The coin collection problem was my first "alright pausing on this and clocking back into work" moment, but upon returning became quite clear--I appreciate that dynamic programming is tactile and calculable. Similar to counting sort and Radix, Floyd's weighted variety of Warshall's algorithm also incremented in complexity very kindly and linearly. I was somewhat hand-crafting a solution to the Floyd algorithm before seeing the pseudocode at the end of the write up matched what I was considering, using the third loop to execute opening the intermediate vertices up for traversal was very satisfying.

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