COMP 280: The Mathematics of Computation Spring 2005

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Announcements

• The anonymous-feedback form will remain up all summer.
• Some things I wish I'd said: Digressions on
  1. The Ordering that wasn't
  2. ``Isomorphic''
  3. Feedback question: Are paper sol'n sets helpful?
  4. Googol vs Google
• A fun site: cut-the-knot.com

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 logic, proof methods (including mathematical and structural induction), reasoning about recursive and iterative programs, sets, functions and their asymptotic growth, counting, and modular arithmetic.

• Class: TTh 10:50 - 12:05, Duncan Hall 1042
• 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), if you want extra material on how to approach proofs.
• Text (optional): The (New) Turing Omnibus, Dewdney (publ. W.H.Freeman; ISBN 0-7167-8271-5 ).
  Not for this course per se, but a great collection of 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.
• Supplementary material will be provided for the Logic part of the course.

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

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.

The class is not graded on a curve. That is, it's possible for everybody to get an A ... (or, nobody :-o). At the end of the semester, I calculate all the points. I have a pretty good idea of what quality of homework corresponds to what grade, so i take a sampling of students, look at their work, and conclude "ah, such-and-such points represents B work", etc. Usually the cutoff for an A (of any sort) is somewhere a few %s below 90%, and goes down by 10% after that. But this formula may vary a bit from semester to semester.

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.
• Ian: make programs an exception to this?
• 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 (~comp280/05spring/). 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 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 pledged 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 one or two 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.