Killed by test, again

I wasted about 5-10 minutes unwinding, when I didn't really need to... But the main killer is the loop termination proof, which I left as "I don't know how to do". It bothers me because it seems to be quite an elementary question on the topic.

To be honest, I didn't expect the test to have much on proving iteration. Particularly on proving termination using a loop invariant.

We've seen it only for a week, the week which is the last, and also busiest, week of the busiest run this semester. I'm an early starter, but as the deadlines piled on, this past week has been very hard. I've had no weekend at all for a while. Basically I had no time to study for the test until this thursday.

We've done no PS on it, no assignment on it, all we saw so far is a couple of examples in lecture, and very lengthy examples in the course notes. In situations like this, it's hard to know whether one's understanding of the topic is correct.

So, I still don't know if I even understand this topic enough, to do a seemingly elementary question like the one on the test. By contemplating the question more, on my way back home from the test I *think* I have a correct idea of what I should prove to prove termination. If I include the time during the test thinking about the question, that's about 40 minutes of thinking, to get an idea of what I think is a correct approach.

Essentially, the question was to me an assignment question that I had to do on a test.

I think it would have helped a lot if we were given more elementary examples, with clear explanations, on this topic. The posted past test had a question, but I didn't fully understand the solution either. The topic is not easy to understand, I think it warrants more examples than the ones we were given.

Maybe now after thinking about the test question I can look at the past test solution and understand it more. Though I doubt it. Probably have to go to an office hour, and spend a week thinking about it everyday and doing some practice questions to understand it. I wish I had the time this past week for that.