COMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computation

David Mix Barrington and Marius Minea

Fall 2018

This is the home page for COMPSCI 250. COMPSCI 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 Computer Science Building, 545-4329, office hours for Fall 2018: TBA, Marius Minea, A261 Lederle GRC (low-rise), 545-1734, office hours Tuesday and Thursday, 5-6 p.m.

The best way to contact either Dave or Marius is by email.

TA and UCA Contact Info:

TA's Alex Dennis (Tue 11-12), Pardis Malekzadeh (Tue 10-11), William Toohey (Mon 3-4), and Qingyang Xue (Fri 10-11). TA office hours are in LGRT (tower) 220.
UCA's Hao Gao, Janja Kovacevic, Adam Rivelli, and Zhong Tang.

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This course is primarily intended for undergraduates in computer science and related majors such as mathematics or computer engineering. COMPSCI 187 (programming with data structures) and MATH 132 (Calculus II) are prerequisites though occasionally we let in a student who is taking one or the other at the same time as 250.

The course meets for three lecture meetings a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 1:25-2:30. Dave will lecture in Goessmann 64 and Marius in Hasbrouck 134. The lectures will be similar and will follow the textbook pretty closely. Both lecture sections of the course will have the same assignments, exams, and grade scale.

There is one discussion meeting per week for each of the six sections, at various times Wednesdays before lecture as indicated on SPIRE. Each discussion 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 instructors will cover the sections in various combinations, so they will be as interchangeable as we can make them.

The textbook is the current draft of Dave's in-progress book, Discrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science. This will be available at Collective Copies in Amherst Center, starting Friday 24 August. 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, the Moodle course management system, and the Piazza system for student discussion. Basic information about the course will be on this site, and specifics of the course will be off of the Moodle main page once it is established.

Announcements 1 January 2019):

(1 January) Text and solutions are now up for the final exam. The final appear to have been more difficult than usual, and the results were somewhat disappointing. We set the scale at A = 100 and C = 60. The mean scores on the individual questions were 20.5, 15.6, 19.4, and 20.0, for a total mean of 75.5.

The numbers in each grade range on the 210 final exams were:

A+ (104-124): 14
A (97-102): 11
A- (90-96): 17
B+ (84-89): 21
B (77-83): 37
B- (70-76): 33
C+ (64-69): 29
C (57-63): 26
C- (50-56): 12
D+ (44-49): 5
D (37-41): 3
F (14-29): 3

The course grades can be inferred from the "course total" on the Moodle page. Here is the number in each grade range:

A with course citation (420.3-478.8): 12
A (377.9-410.6): 15
A- (344.1-377.2): 20
B+ (311.4-343.4): 34
B (277.3-309.6): 40
B- (244.6-276.4): 38
C+ (218.9-241.5): 20
C (178.3-208.3): 18
C- (144.3-169.5): 7
D+ (124.2-127.2): 2
D (83.0-101.7): 5
F (taking final exam) (0-62.8): 2

(21 November) Text and solutions are now up for the second midterm.

(14 November) Midterm #2 has been graded and will be returned in lecture today. It appeared to be slightly harder than Midterm #1, with the median and mean both 72, so we have altered the announded scale to A = 90, B = 75, C = 60. (In particular the extra credit was harder than the one on midterm #1 -- only three students got 20/20 on Question 1.) Text and solution will be up within a few days.

The high of the 210 exams was 108, the low 28, and the number in each grade range as follows:

A+ (93-108): 21
A (88-92): 10
A- (83-88): 23
B+ (78-82): 24
B (73-77): 26
B- (68-72): 22
C+ (63-67): 26
C (58-62): 33
C- (53-57): 8
D+ (48-52): 10
D (43-47): 4
F (28-42): 3

(19 October) Midterm #1 has been graded and returned, and the scores will be on Moodle soon. There were problems with two of the true-false questions, as described in the solutions. We hope that most of the people who should get extra points for 3(m) have now claimed them.

Here is the grade distribution for the exam. The high raw score was 106, the median of the 221 scores was 76, and the low 12. The number in each grade range:

A+ (96-106): 25
A (91-95): 20
A- (86-90): 19
B+ (81-85): 17
B (76-80): 33
B- (71-75): 29
C+ (66-70): 25
C (61-65): 17
C- (56-60): 12
D+ (51-55): 11
D (46-50): 5
F (12-45): 8

(6 September) I've just updated this page with the UCA names.

(17 August) The new version of the textbook will be available at Collective Copies starting a week from today, Friday 24 August.

(10 August) The course shows as full on SPIRE because the CICS undergraduate office is controlling admission to the course directly. If you are not registered but would like to be, please follow the CICS procedures for requesting an override: On the main CICS website, look under "current students", then "courses", then the maroon rectangle labeled "override information". We should be able to accommodate most or all students with the prerequisites.

(10 August) Dave is putting up a preliminary version of the public course website today. The full version of last spring's website is available here and has exams with solutions and a full syllabus. The link above is to the lecture slides from the Spring 2014 offering of this course -- our lectures this term will be similar and slides from this term will be posted on Moodle. This offering of CMPSCI 250 will be very similar to Dave's recent ones.

Last modified 1 January 2019