COMP 280: The Mathematics of Computation Spring 2004; see most recent

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Announcements

• Congrats to you all; I know I run a course with some difficult material, and I'm proud of all of you who completed it. Have a good summer!
• Exam2 is available for pick-up in my office; I'm around afternoons. I'll keep them several weeks into the fall semester as well. A few comments on some of the problems will be posted to the class newsgroup.
• Exam2 and Hw-ec have been entered into the grade database. Moreover, the "grade" field is your overall grade (expressed as a grade-point). (Up 'til today, it'd been the midterm-grade-estimate.)

Course Information

This course provides an introduction to the use of mathematics in modeling and reasoning about problems in computer science. The course will focus on ideas and techniques that are widely used in Computer Science, and will present these ideas in action. Emphasis will be given in linking the material of the course with applications. The class will cover Mathematical Induction and Recursion, Methods for Proofs, Logic, and selected topics from Counting and Computability.

• Class: DH 1064, TTh 10:50 -- 12:05
• Instructor: Ian Barland
• Course Newsgroup: rice.owlnews.comp280. You can also post via mailing rice-owlnews-comp280@rice.edu.
• Text (required): Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications (5th edition) by Kenneth Rosen (publ. McGraw Hill; ISBN 0-07-242434-6).
  We'll cover most of the material in this great classic. Lots of exercises and solutions.
• Text (optional): Nuts and Bolts of Proofs, Cupillari (publ. Academic Press; ISBN 0-12-199451-1).
  A nice little book with lots of examples (all numeric).
• Text (optional): The (New) Turing Omnibus, Dewdney (publ. W.H.Freeman; ISBN 0-7167-8271-5 ).
  Two-page write-ups to let a Comp upperclassman competently discuss all cocktail-conversation CS topics, even if they never took a class in (say) neural nets or randomized algorithms. (More in-depth than what the average layperson probably wants.)
• Supplementary material will be provided for the Logic part of the course.

Course Requirements and Grading:

Prerequisites
All students should have taken COMP 210 prior to taking 280. If you have not had COMP 210, please see the instructor at the beginning of the semester.

Grade
Homeworks (roughly weekly) will comprise 50% of your grade; a midterm and final will each be worth 25% of your grade. Homeworks may involve writing small programs.

Homework Policy
Homeworks and exams in this class will be graded for correctness, clarity, and style.

• You are encouraged to discuss the homeworks with your fellow students and the class staff.
• However, you need to write down your own solutions. If you worked through a problem in detail with somebody else, please acknowledge this at the start of each problem's write-up (or at the top of the entire assignment, if the bulk of the work was done with another). This allows graders to be more efficient, as they can grade two similar approaches together.
• Unless otherwise instructed, you don't need to show your work. You may wish to do so anyway, in order to elucidate your thought processes, and perhaps receive partial credit. It's not that the graders will wade through your scratch work to pinpoint an error, but rather they may glance at it in order to judge your general approach, and at their discretion grant partial credit. In all cases, your entire submitted solution should be organized and legible. In problems with a single numerical answer, clearly emphasize your final solution.
• Copying homework, or knowingly allowing somebody to copy your homework, is verboten.
• Do not refer to previous years' exams or homework solutions, unless they are posted on this semester's web page (~comp280/04spring/). Practice problems will be distributed.
• Exams are individual work with the standard honor pledge; no collaboration will be tolerated.

Late Policy
Homeworks will be accepted late for up to three 24hr days (incl. weekends), with a penalty of 10% of the points-possible per day (or fraction of a day). Exception: the first 3hrs late is only 5% off (from the start of class). Turn in late homeworks at Professor Barland's office, with the late-penalty clearly marked, and you must include a pledge that you did not access in any way the solution set posted for that homework.

Occasional individual extensions might be granted, if you talk with me at least two one full days before the deadline; this will not be a regular occurence. Without such prior arrangement, no exceptions will be made except for (of course) exceptional reasons, e.g. severe sickness or a family emergency. "Projects due in my other classes" is not sufficient without said pre-arrangement.

Disabilities

Any student with a disability requiring accommodations in this course is encouraged to contact me after class or during office hours; all discussions will remain confidential. Additionally, students will need to contact Disability Support Services in the Ley Student Center.

Course Staff

Email sent to comp280@ will go to the TAs and instructor. Any changes to the office hours will be posted on the newsgroup and reflected on the course homepage.