Recurse Center Day 5: Heaps, Logarithms, and Interviews

Today was great. Something I'd been trying and failing to understand for days finally clicked, and it feels so good. Basically I didn't intuitively understand why an algorithm is O(log n) or O(n log n), but now I do!

I wrote a post so that if I ever forget I'll have notes to help me relearn it.

It finally started making sense because while I was learning about the heap data structure and trying to implement insertion, I became incredibly frustrated that I knew the insertion op was O(log n), but I had no idea why. Once I revisited how logarithms work and walked through the insertion process carefully, it all came together.

In addition to learning a boatload about heaps and priority queues, I also did a mock conversational interview with John and James. It was a nice way to break up the day and was helpful to not only practice being interviewed, but to observe how others approach conversational interviews.

With that, this wraps up my first week at RC. It was nothing short of lovely <3.