April 30: Announcements

  • Mock final
  • It was a really special and fantastic experience for me to teach you all! If you couldn’t tell, I could talk about math and CS all day, so please send me email if you have questions about classes, cool topics, or thoughts on life in general. Best of luck on the CS 70 final!

Past meetings

General Advice

  • Take at least an hour out of every day to study CS 70. I did this when I took the class, but most days I studied more than one hour. You should minimize distractions during this hour and really try to focus on the material to make the most of your time.
  • At this point in the semester it might be clear, but you should really treat CS 70 as a math class. With that, bring your experience studying for math classes at Berkeley, as well as any study habits you might have had for CS classes.
  • Try to balance doing problems and reading lectures or the notes. It’s unfortunate that the CS 70 notes are not great, so your best bet is often lecture slides to review concepts. But don’t spend too much time on this, I think you should spend more on doing problems. Problems are the best way I know for really understanding the math in CS 70.
  • There are many past midterms if you need sources for problems. If you can’t do a problem, sleep on it for one or two days and if you still can’t do it, peek at the solution. Don’t look at the solution unless you are completely stuck, otherwise the problem can’t teach you as much as it could.
  • If you are confused (as I was many times), bring questions to our next meeting, or even ask them at 70 office hours at low-capacity times (a good time is right after homeworks are due).
  • CS 70 moves quickly, even for a class at Berkeley. Try to take some time each week to step back and see the bigger picture, make an effort to find connections or even brainstorm some problems. During this time, think about what could be good for your cheat sheet.