CS 310-0: MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

CS 310-0
MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS
OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

Miguel A. Lerma - Winter 2004

Section 20

MWF 9:00 am - TECH A110

T 9:00 am - TECH A110

courses/cs310-04w/

This is the web page for CS 310, Winter 2004.
Consult it often for announcements, homework assignments and possible changes to the syllabus.

Index

Announcements
Course description and learning goals
Teachers
- Instructor
- Teaching Assistant
Class Logistic
Lectures and Homework Assignments
Related links
List of Grades

Announcements

There is no TA session on Tuesday March 9th. Pin Ren will extend his Thursday's office hours in the final week to 5pm in order to help you with questions regarding the final exam.
Final Exam: Friday, March 19, 2004, 9:00-11:00am in TECH A110. It is a cumulative exam, it covers the whole syllabus.
It will be an open notes exam.

Course Description

725-310-0 Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science

Fundamental concepts and tools in discreet mathematics with emphasis on their applications to computer science. Topics include logic and Boolean circuits; sets, functions, relations, databases, and finite automata: deterministic algorithms, randomized algorithms, and analysis techniques based on counting methods and recurrence equations; trees and more general graphs. Prerequisites: 725-110 or 725-111 and 435-214-3. Prerequisite for: 725-322, 725-332, 725-339, 725-343, 725-351.

Learning Goals

At the end of the course, the student should be able to formulate logic expressions for a variety of applications; convert a logic expression into a Boolean circuit, and vice versa; design relational databases; design finite automata to recognize string patterns; apply, adapt, and design elementary deterministic and randomized algorithms to solve computational problems; analyze the running time of non-recursive algorithms with loops by means of counting; analyze the running time of divide-and-conquer recursive algorithms by means of recurrence equations; and use trees and graphs to formulate computational problems.

Teachers

	Instructor	Teaching Assistant
Name	Miguel A. Lerma	Pin Ren
Office	Lunt 203	Computer Science Dept. Room 230 1890 Maple Ave.
Phone	1-8020	1-3296
E-mail	mlerma at math dot northwestern dot edu	p-ren@cs.northwestern.edu
Office Hours	by appointment in Lunt 203	TH 1:30-3:30pm TH 1:30-5:00pm during final week in CS Dept. Room 230, 1890 Maple Ave.
Teaching in	TECH A110	TECH A110
Code	N.A.	223

Class Logistics

Textbooks
Richard Johnsonbaugh: Discrete Mathematics, Fifth Edition, 2001, Prentice Hall.
Miguel A. Lerma: Notes on Discrete Mathematics. (See bellow.)
Problem Sessions
The problem sessions will be held on Tuesdays under the TA's supervision.
Homework
The homework assignments will be posted on this web page.
Exams
There will be one one-hour Midterm Exam and one two-hour Final Exam.
- Midterm: Tuesday, February 10, 2004, 9:00-9:50am in TECH A110.
- Final: Friday, March 19, 2004, 9:0-11:00am in TECH A110.
No make-up exams will be given. In the event of an extreme and well documented absence (such as hospitalization) the final may be weighted to count for the missing exam. In the case of a missed exam, contact the instructor as soon as possible.
Grading
The course will be graded as follows:
- Homework Assignments: 30%
- Midterm: 30%
- Final: 40%
The lowest homework score will be dropped in calculating the homework grade.
Add/Drop Policy
If you want to change sections, or add/drop the course, please do so at the CS Department Office.

Lectures and Homework Assignments

Note: I am going to be releasing notes ("Notes on Discrete Mathematics", in PDF format) that you can download by clicking in the links of the "subject" column of the syllabus bellow. The introduccion is in here:

Introduction

Depending on various circumstances, the schedule shown bellow may experiment small modifications.

The "sections" listed on the 4th column are from Johnsonbaugh's book.

The "Suggested Exercises" column contains some exercises from the book that you may find useful to try. They are not homework nor need to be turned in.

The complete set of notes is here. However I do not recommend to download the whole set until the end of the quarter, since I may still make some changes to the notes.