CMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computation

David Mix Barrington

Fall, 2015

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 Tue 11-12, Wed 2:30-3:30, Thu 2-3. I generally answer my email fairly reliably.

TA Contact Info:

To Be Determined

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 1:25-2:30, in Goessmann 64.

There is one discussion meeting per week for each of the four 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, sometime around the start of 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 when it is established soon.

• Course Requirements and Grading
• Learning Goals for the Course
• Lecture Slides (none yet)
• Exam Directory (with final exam and solution)
• Syllabus and Schedule

Announcements (30 December 2015):

• (30 Dec) The final exam and its solutions are now up. The scale on the exam was A = 108, B = 90, C = 72, D = 54, F = 36. The high was 127, the median wss 84, and the low was 25. The detailed distribution of the 157 final exam scores was:
  • A+ (111-127): 18
  • A (105-110): 14
  • A- (99-104): 15
  • B+ (93-98): 9
  • B (87-92): 13
  • B- (81-86): 19
  • C+ (75-80): 24
  • C (69-74): 12
  • C- (63-68): 12
  • D+ (57-62): 9
  • D (51-56): 4
  • F (25-50): 8

  Final grades are available on Moodle and have been posted to SPIRE. There were 19, of the 162 people who completed the course, who got grades below C. They thus cannot use this course as a prerequisite for another computer science course, and they may retake the course for a new grade. Actually, here is the whole distribution if you are interested -- the numbers are the "course total" computed by the Moodle gradebook:

  • A+ (417-455): 8 (recorded as A, course citation issued)
  • A (378-416): 16
  • A- (345-377): 22
  • B+ (311-344): 16
  • B (278-310): 25
  • B- (245-277): 22
  • C+ (211-244): 19
  • C (178-210): 13
  • C- (145-177): 6
  • D+ (111-144): 3
  • D (78-110): 4 (one who did not take the final)
  • F (28-77): 6 (four who did not take the final)

• (23 Nov) The solutions to the second midterm are now up. The scores on that test distributed as follows:
  • A+ (94-99): 12
  • A (88-92): 9
  • A- (82-87): 10
  • B+ (77-81): 15
  • B (72-76): 14
  • B- (66-71): 23
  • C+ (61-65): 13
  • C (56-60): 15
  • C- (50-55):20
  • D+ (45-49): 15
  • D (40-44): 4
  • F (21-39): 11

• (22 Nov) The second midterm has been graded, and scores have been posted to Moodle. The high score was 99 (a two-way tie), the median was 66, and the low was 21. The scale is A = 90, B = 74, C = 58, D = 42, F = 26, so the Moodle score is (raw score - 26) * (400/64). I have posted the exam text, and hope to get the solutions up tomorrow along with more detail on the results.

• (23 Oct) Solutions are ready. Also, Quiz #6 will be up tonight or tomorrow, due the morning of Friday 30 October. Finally, the second volume of the textbook will be available at Collective Copies, starting Monday morning.

• (22 Oct) The text of the first midterm is now up -- I hope to get the solutions up soon as well.

• (6 Sept) The copy shop has the new textbook version and should have it available when they open on Tuesday morning. Please remember that there is no discussion meeting on Wednesday 9 September, before the first lecture.

• (12 Aug) I have posted the syllabus for the course today. I will be out of town (with some email access) for 17-27 August. I will get the originals for the new version of the text to the copy shop soon after I get back.

• (23 July) 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. It will soon have PDF lecture notes from last semester's course as well. This offering of CMPSCI 250 will be very similar to that one.

Last modified 31 December 2015