Grad Student

I am in my second semester of grad school doing my MS. It is the begining of a long journey. I plan to blog my experiences here. This semester I am doing Technical Writing and Database Management Systems. The assignments, tests and quizzes are all surreal. The question I keep asking myself is 'am I just drifting thru' or 'am I learning'? If the purpose of grad school is to keep you on your toes and tell you, you have a lot more to learn I think I am right on track. I recently sought out a copy of 'Concrete Mathematics' by by Ronald L. Graham, Donald E. Knuth, and Oren Patashnik (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1994), xiii+657pp. ISBN 0-201-55802-5. I was inspired to start reading this because of my desire to understand the algorithms behind computer programming. Anyone who has written simple lines of code, instictively understands that recurrance is an important concept in computing. A central theme that professors reinforce is: reduce a big problem to small problems. This is the underlying principle behind mathematical induction and recursive algorithms. That is the basic concept I have absorbed from reading about 10 pages of the book, so more later.