Note: for the first day of class (Wed. April 2), please go to the CMPE 16 class at the same time in Baskin Engineering 152.
For this course, we have selected a number of topics that are particularly useful to computer scientists and computer engineers. The key topics are listed in the extended description of the course that we prepared for our ABET accreditation process. Perhaps the most important and difficult concept in the course is the concept of mathematical induction, which is the foundation for computer science in the same way that calculus is the foundation for physics.
I think that the topics we have selected are some of the most fun ones in all of mathematics. I was originally (since I was about 10) planning to be a pure mathematician, and it wasn't until I was in grad school in mathematics that I found out that all the fun math (graph theory and combinatorics, which were what I was then interested in) was being done in computer science departments, and I switched departments after getting an M.S. in math. Over the years, I have become more and more applied (having gotten into computer music, then VLSI Design, then CAD for VLSI, and now protein-structure prediction), but I still find these branches of mathematics a lot of fun.
The main difference between 16 and 16H will be in the teaching style. For 16H, I want the students who are really interested in the material, who like math and proofs. I will be expecting students to come to class having already read the relevant section of the book and having already tried some of the homework problems.
My job will not be to provide canned lectures on the things I expect students to need instruction on, but to help students learn to solve problems. To do this I'll be doing "live-action math", solving problems and working through examples on the fly at student request. This will allow us to concentrate on the problems that cause students difficulty and to look more at problem-solving techniques.
There are some musings about my teaching style for this course that may be of interest to students in the class.
This style of course is not for everyone---if you don't have the motivation and discipline to read the book before class, you won't be able to ask useful questions. If you want polished presentations from which you can take clean notes, my "live-action math" may seem too scattered. On the other hand, if you want to learn how to think about these problems, rather than just seeing polished solutions that develop beautifully as if by magic, the teaching technique may work quite well.
Between the first and second day of class, I'll review the applications and send the course number to those students who have been permitted to enroll in 16H. We'll be relying heavily on student self-selection to choose who gets into CMPE 16H.
If you get caught cheating in this class, you will fail the class, and you will be unable to get honors in any School of Engineering major. If you get caught a second time, you will be disqualified from any School of Engineering major. All the faculty in the School of Engineering are quite intolerant of cheating and will treat even minor offenses very seriously.
The following table gives the approximate sections of Discrete Math and Its Applications that I hope to cover in each day's class. If we go a little faster, we will be able to cover some other sections as well (perhaps 6.3-6.6, 7.4, 8.1-8.2, or 9.1-9.2)
| Monday | Wednesday | Friday |
|---|---|---|
| xxx | Apr 2 (attend 16) | Apr 4 (1.1-1.2) |
| Apr 7 (1.2-1.3, 10.1) | Apr 9 (10.2-10.3) | Apr 11 (10.4) |
| Apr 14 (attend 16) | Apr 16 (attend 16) | Apr 18 (1.4-1.6) |
| Apr 21 (1.6-1.8) | Apr 23 (2.4) | Apr 25 (3.1-3.2) |
| Apr 28 (3.2) | Apr 30 (3.3) | May 2 (3.3) |
| May 5 (3.4) | May 7 (3.6) | May (4.1-4.2) |
| May 12 (4.2-4.3) | May 14 MIDTERM | May 16 (4.3-4.4) |
| May 19 (4.5) | May 21 (5.1-5.2) | May 23 (5.2-5.3) |
| xxx | May 28 (6.1) | May 30 (6.2) |
| Jun 2 (7.1-7.2) | Jun 4 (7.2-7.3) | Jun 6 To be determined. |
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