CMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computation

David Mix Barrington

Fall, 2013

This is the home page for CMPSCI 250. CMPSCI 250 is the undergraduate core course in discrete mathematics and will deal with logic, elementary number theory, proof by induction, recursion on trees, search algorithms, finite state machines, and a bit of computability.

Instructor Contact Info: David Mix Barrington, 210 CMPSCI building, 545-4329, office hours Tuesday 11-12, Thursday 12-2, Friday 1-2. I generally answer my email fairly reliably.

TA Contact Info: (Clemens Rosenbaum, Tianbo Gu, Gene Levitzky)

The course is primarily intended for undergraduates in computer science and related majors such as mathematics or computer engineering. CMPSCI 187 (programming with data structures) and MATH 132 (Calculus II) are corequisites and in fact most students in the course have already taken both.

The course meets for three lecture meetings a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Tuesday and Thursday 2:30-3:20, in Hasbrouck 126.

There is one discussion meeting per week for each of the two sections, at various times on Wednesday as indicated on SPIRE. Most discussions will have a written assignment which you will carry out in groups. Discussion attendance is required, so that missing a discussion will incur a grade penalty. The TA's and I will cover the sections in various combinations, so they should be as interchangeable as we can make them.

The textbook is the current draft of my in-progress book, Discrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science. This will be available at Collective Copies in Amherst Center. The first half (Chapters 1-4) is being copied now and will be ready possibly Tuesday 3 September and definitely Wednesday 4 September. The second half will be ready later in the term. Prior versions of the textbook that were intended for CMPSCI 250 may be used -- the most recent versions of the book differ only by the correction of some minor errors.

The course is using the iClicker system, and the Moodle course management system. Basic information about the course will be on this site, and specifics of the course will be off of the Moodle main page here.

• Course Requirements and Grading
• Learning Goals for the Course
• Lecture Slides (now complete)
• Exam Directory (with final exam and solution)
• Syllabus

Announcements (5 January 2014):

• (5 Jan) Lecture notes are now posted on this site, in PDF format. The lectures for the Spring 2014 course will be similar, though of course there will be new clicker questions.

• (23 Dec) The final and their solutions are now posted on this site. I have computed and submitted final grades, which individual students may look up on Moodle. The Moodle gradebook does not reflect the option of counting the final exam as 50%, which was to the advantage of a small fraction of students.

  I set the final exam score at A = 108, B = 88, C = 68, D = 48, F = 28, so that the score posted on Moodle is (raw score - 28) times 5. The scores for the 98 people who took the final were:

  • A+ (112-120): 6
  • A (105-111): 5
  • A- (98-104): 11
  • B+ (92-97): 7
  • B (85-91): 9
  • B- (78-84): 11
  • C+ (72-77): 10
  • C (65-71): 13
  • C- (58-64): 13
  • D+ (52-57): 5
  • D (45-51): 4
  • F (17-44): 4

  The overall grades, for the 101 people registered at the end of the course, were:

  • A+: 5 (recorded as A on SPIRE, course citations will be given)
  • A: 6
  • A-: 13
  • B+: 11
  • B: 16
  • B-: 11
  • C+: 15
  • C: 13
  • C-: 6
  • D+: 2
  • D: 0
  • F: 3

  Students with grades below C should repeat the course in order to go on to any course that uses CMPSCI 250 as a prerequisite. A C-, D+, or D may be used for major or minor requirements as long as the overall average in courses used for the major or minor is at least 2.0.

  Thanks for an enjoyable course, and happy holidays!

• (13 Nov) The solutions for the second midterm are posted. The high scores were a pair of 105's, and the low was 0 with the second-lowest 26. The mean was 71 and the median 72. There were 14 A+'s, 9 ordinary A's, 8 A-'s, 6 B+'s, 7 B's, 10 B-'s, 8 C+'s, 8 C's, 6 C-'s, 6 D+'s, 5 D's, and 14 F's. Individual scores (normalized to A = 400, C = 200) are now posted on the Moodle site.

• (11 Nov) The text for the second midterm is now posted. I am about 2/3 done with the grading at this moment and have decided on a scale of A = 93, B = 78, C = 63, D = 48, and F = 33.

• (11 Nov) I never made the promised post here of the scale and results for the first midterm, though I did put that information on the Moodle site. The scale was A = 93, B = 79, C = 65, D = 51, F = 37. There were three perfect scores of 110, the median was 79, and the low was 37. There were a total of ten scores below 60 -- those people should by now have looked at their homework performance and how well they are keeping up, to decide whether to drop or use elective pass/fail.

• (10 Oct) I have posted the first midterm and its solution. I hope to finish grading the 102 exams by Tuesday or Wednesday, and I will then post a summary of the scores and scale here. Students in the course will be able to look up their individual grades on Moodle.

• (31 Aug) I am sending out the first Moodle email announcements tonight. If you are registered for the course, you have been included on the Moodle site. Please check there about a questionnaire you should complete to confirm your intention to take the course. (Normally we would check whether you attended one of the first two lectures, but we are not doing that this year in part because of Jewish holidays.)

  If you are not yet registered, you need to ask for an override through the CMPSCI department using the online form. We will consider and respond to all requests promptly.

• (31 Aug) Remember that there is no discussion meeting on Wed 4 September, since the scheduled meetings are before the first lecture. I will be in ELAB 323 during the discussion times in case any of you would like to talk to me.

• (31 Aug) The textbook is being copied over the weekend at Collective Copies, and the first-half packet will be available soon for $25, probably Tuesday but definitely by Wednesday morning.

• (21 Aug) I have put up the syllabus, the learning goals page, and the requirements/grading page. The textbook is not yet available at Collective Copies -- I will get it there sometime next week and announce here when it is available.

• (29 June) I am putting up only a preliminary version of the course website today. The full version of last spring's website is available here and has exams with solutions and a full syllabus. This offering will be similar to that one but even more similar to that of Spring 2012.

Last modified 5 January 2014