:(

Good evening gentlemen. I feel uncomfortable. Have an examination in algorithms and data structures, this Friday. Therefore I have a question for You. When a person gets a grade in a course, what does that grade tell about that person?

More generally, labelling an object with an integer that determines quality, should that measurement of quality be interpreted:
- locally (how that object is right here and right now)?
- globally (what is determined now, is how the object will be forever)?
- changing (the object has a "will" to change its quality; become refined over time)?
- that it depends on the definition of "measurement" and depends on the objects properties?
- something else

For a while, I've been studying about these algorithmic design paradigms (greedy algorithms, dynamic programming, divide and conquer, randomization), flow networks and some of the popular flow algorithms, trees and so on. Yet, I feel like I know nothing. I understand the concepts and the algorithms. I also understand most of the proofs or at least they make sense to me. Although when I try to apply my knowledge to real world problems, I just can't seem to convert or model the problem into the things I've learned.

I feel, well utterly fucked in some way.
An hour ago, I found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVPCT1VjySA

Which made me feel slightly better.

Actually I'm not >>11-13, >>14 . I had my examination today and I didn't live up to my own expectations. I modelled a problem in an exercise into a flow network problem, answered some multiple-choice questions, and analyzed the runing time of a randomized algorithm.

I didn't do the dynamic programming exercise and another exercise about greedy algorithms. The dynamic programming exercise didn't look bad though, I just needed to describe an algorithm for LMIS (Longest Monotonically Increasing Subsequence) (to determine the LMIS, just looking at the lenght was enough), analyze the algorithm, give a recurrence formula and argue why it works. But I was too slow and didn't come up with an answer.

I feel like I failed; no, I certainly failed, but I insist on not giving up.

>>>Full understanding comes only from a lot of experience and repeated study.

How should I repeat the study then? Should I read everything again? Should I implement all of those things that I have learned? Reading SICP (read the K&R though and it was awesome)?
Please, recommend me some ways of learning efficiently or point me to some articles.

>>10
Please elaborate.