When we talk, I want to be convinced that you understand the material. Everything else is secondary.

The best way to convince me that you understand the material is to explain your work to me. Explaining your work means more than just executing the code and getting the right answer. It means more than just reading the code back to me. It means more than just telling me what the result of executing the code will be.

Explaining your work means telling me (a) what your code is supposed to accomplish, i.e., the requirements for the code and (b) how the code that you wrote accomplishes that objective, i.e., how the code implements the requirements.

I realize that this course makes you think about programming in new ways. That's one of its purposes. Functional programming is a new way to think about programming. Not only that, it's an important way to think about programming. So if you are still struggling with understanding what it means for a function to create another function and then to return the created function as its value (as in the singletonSet function) don't give up. You will get it.  And you will be able to explain it to me.

This week you will probably be relieved to know that the exercises cover more familiar territory. .This week's videos are also quite good. Take the time to watch them and to do the exercises embedded within them. The wiki page has comments and hints. If you have trouble understanding something use this forum (or the Coursera forum). But before posting a message, think about what's confusing you. It's important that you explain your confusion well enough that someone can help. Just saying that you are confused isn't enough. Explain what you do understand and where you are running into problems. You have to put in some work on your own first.