COMP 280 — Schedule

For each class, you are to have read that day's readings and written a brief essay.

Textbook: All readings come from Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications (6th edition) by Kenneth Rosen, (McGraw Hill, ISBN 0072880082). We'll cover most of the material in this book, which has lots of exercises, solutions, and online supplementary material.

Date Work due this day Required reading due this day
from Rosen 6th ed.		 Notes from this day's class Other
T  Jan 12     Administration, Discrete Math, Testing, Sums, Primes,  
Th Jan 14   Section 4.1 — skip Example 10
Appendix A-1 — page A-5 only		 Weak induction, Neville's Algorithm, Neville's Algorithm examples The Babbage Difference Engine
T  Jan 19   Section 4.2 Strong induction  
Th Jan 21 Homework 1
Solution 1
Extra Credit 1 		Section 4.3 — skip Theorem 1 and Examples 10,11,13
Section 4.4 — skip Examples 3,4,8,9, Lemma 1, and Theorem 1		 Recursion Integer Sequences
T  Jan 26   Section 4.5 — pages 326-327 only
Section 3.1 — skip sorting 		Recursion, Neville's Algorithm, Recursion to Pictures — Fractals  
Th Jan 28 Homework 2
Solution 2
Extra Credit 2 		Section 3.2
Section 3.3 — skip Example 5 		Structural Induction  
T  Feb 2   Section 9.1
Section 9.2
Section 9.3 — only skim Isomorphisms of Graphs 		Complexity, Plots illustrating complexity, Undecidability  
Th Feb 4 Homework 3
Solution 3
Extra Credit 3 		Section 9.4 — only skim Paths and Isomorphism
Section 9.5 		Graphs Planarity
T  Feb 9        
Th Feb 11 Exam 1
Exam Solution 1 		  Trees  
T  Feb 16   Section 9.6
Section 9.7
Section 9.8 		Trees, Bézier Curves  
Th Feb 18 Homework 4
Solution 4
Extra Credit 4 		Section 10.1
Section 10.2
Section 10.3 		Logic  
T  Feb 23   Section 1.1
Section 1.2 		Logic, Sets  
Th Feb 25 Homework 5
Solution 5
Extra Credit 5 		Section 1.3
Section 1.4
Section 1.5 — only skim 		Sets Algebra in Wonderland
T  Mar  9   Section 2.1
Section 2.2 		Relations  
Th Mar 11 Homework 6
Solution 6
Extra Credit 6 		Section 2.3 — skip floor and ceiling functions
Section 2.4 — only cardinality 		Relations  
T  Mar  16   Section 8.1
Section 8.2
Section 8.3 		Combinatorics  
Th Mar 18 Homework 7
Solution 7
Extra Credit 7 		Section 8.4 — skip Zero-One Matrices and Warshall's Algorithm
Section 8.5
Section 8.6 		Combinatorics  
T  Mar 23     Combinatorics, Probability  
Th Mar 25 Exam 2
Exam Solution 2 		  Probability, Monte Carlo Some teasers concerning conditional probabilities
T  Mar 30   Section 5.1
Section 5.2
Section 5.3 		Probability  
W  Mar 31 Homework 8
Solution 8
Extra Credit 8 		Section 5.4
Section 5.5
Section 7.5
Section 7.6 		No class, but homework and essay due. Note the unusual deadline, the day before break.
T  Apr 6   Section 6.1
Section 6.2 		Probability  
Th Apr 8 Homework 9
Solution 9
Extra Credit 9 		Section 6.3
Section 6.4 		Recurrences  
T  Apr 13   Section 7.1
Section 7.2 		Recurrences  
Th Apr 15 Homework 10
Solution 10
Extra Credit 10 		Section 7.3
Section 7.4 		Recurrences, Finite Automata (no online notes)  
T  Apr 20   Section 12.3
Section 12.4 		Finite Automata (no online notes)  
Th Apr 22 Homework 11
Solution 11
Extra Credit 11 		Section 12.5 Finite Automata (no online notes)  
T  May 4 Exam 3  

Note that the posted solutions are accessible only from the rice.edu domain. To access them from off-campus, you use use VPN onto the Rice network.

Some good related books and web sites

The following are some good supplementary sources. In addition, there are lots of other textbooks on discrete math and logic.