CMPSCI 250: Spring 2011

Syllabus and Course Schedule

Prof. David Mix Barrington

Reading assignments are from Barrington, Discrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, fifth draft. A course packet, consisting of chapters 1-4 in one volume and chapters 5, 9, 14, and 15 in the other, is available at cost at Collective Copies in downtown Amherst.

Lecture Class meetings are MWF 11:15-12:05 in LGRT (the tower) room 101. There are two discussion sections, both meeting 10:10-11:00 on Fridays. Section 1 meets in ELAB 323 and Section 2 meets in the Computer Science Building room 142. The TA's and I will probably alternate leading each discussion section. There are two evening midterm exams as indicated -- the regular lecture classes those days are cancelled though I may use the first one as a makeup for snow cancellations if necessary.

PART I: Logic and Number Theory

Wed 19 Jan L01  Sets and Strings (1.1, 1.2)
Fri 21 Jan D01  NO DISCUSSION (snow)
Fri 21 Jan L02  Propositions and Boolean Operations (1.4)
Mon 24 Jan L03  Set Operations and Truth Tables (1.5, 1.6) 
Wed 26 Jan L04  Rules for Propositional Proofs (1.7) 
Fri 28 Jan D02  A Murder Mystery (1.9)  
Fri 28 Jan L05  Propositional Proof Strategies (1.8)
Mon 31 Jan L06  Predicates and Relations (1.10, 2.1)
Wed 02 Feb L07  Quantifiers and Languages (2.3, 2.5)
Fri 04 Feb D03  Translating Quantifiers (2.4)
Fri 04 Feb L08  Proofs With Quantifiers (2.6)
Mon 07 Feb L09  Relations and Functions (2.8, 2.9)
Wed 09 Feb L10  Partial Orders (2.10)
Fri 11 Feb D04  Practicing Proofs (2.7) 
Fri 11 Feb L11  Equivalence Relations (2.11)
Mon 14 Feb L12  Divisibility and Primes (3.1)
Wed 16 Feb L13  Modular Arithmetic (3.3)
Fri 18 Feb D05  Infinitely Many Primes (3.4)
Fri 18 Feb L14  The Chinese Remainder Theorem (3.5)
Mon 21 Feb ---  NO CLASS (Presidents' Day) 
Tue 22 Feb L15  The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic (3.6) 
Wed 23 Feb X01  FIRST MIDTERM (7-9 pm, location TBA) on Lectures 1-15 (no lecture)

PART II: Induction, Trees, and Searching

Fri 25 Feb D06  Recursive Algorithms (4.2)
Fri 25 Feb L16  Recursive Definition (4.1)
Mon 28 Feb L17  Proof by Induction for Naturals (4.3)
Wed 02 Mar L18  Variations on Induction for Naturals (4.4)
Fri 04 Mar D07  Fibonacci Numbers (4.5)
Fri 04 Mar L19  Proving the Basic Facts of Arithmetic (4.6)
Mon 07 Mar L20  Strings and String Operations (4.7)
Wed 09 Mar L21  Induction for Problem Solving (4.11)
Fri 11 Mar D08  Boolean Expressions (9.2)
Fri 11 Mar L22  Graphs, Paths, and Trees (4.9, 9.1)

SPRING BREAK

Mon 21 Mar L23  Recursion on Trees (9.3)
Tue 22 Mar ---  Last Day to Drop With W
Wed 23 Mar L24  General, Breadth-First and Depth-First Search (9.4, 9.5)
Fri 25 Mar D09  Middle-First Search and Matrices (9.7)
Fri 25 Mar L25  DFS and BFS on Graphs (9.6)
Mon 28 Mar L26  Uniform-Cost and A-Star Search (9.8, 9.9)
Wed 30 Mar L27  Games and Adversary Search (9.10)
Fri 01 Apr D10  Hexapawn (9.11)
Mon 04 Apr ---  SECOND MIDTERM (7-9 pm, location TBA) on Lectures 16-27 (no lecture)  


PART III: Regular Expressions, Finite-State Machines, and Computability

Fri 01 Apr L28  Regular Expressions and Their Languages (5.1, 5.2)
Wed 06 Apr L29  Proving Regular Language Identities (5.4)
Fri 08 Apr D11  Designing Regular Expressions (5.3)
Fri 08 Apr L30  Proving Properties of the Regular Languages (5.5)
Mon 11 Apr L31  What DFA's Can and Can't Do (14.1, 14.2)
Wed 13 Apr L32  The Myhill-Nerode Theorem (14.3)
Fri 15 Apr D12  Minimizing Finite Automata (14.3)
Fri 15 Apr L33  NFA's and the Subset Construction (14.5, 14.6)
Mon 18 Apr ---  NO CLASS (Patriots' Day)
Wed 20 Apr L34  Killing λ-Moves: λ-NFA's to NFA's (14.7)
Fri 22 Apr D13  Practicing NFA Constructions (14.9)
Fri 22 Apr L35  Constructing NFA's from Regular Expressions (14.8)
Mon 25 Apr L36  State Elimination: NFA's Into Regular Expressions (14.10)
Wed 27 Apr L37  Two-Way Automata and Turing Machines (15.1, 15.6)
Fri 29 Apr D14  Course Evaluations 
Fri 29 Apr L38  Turing Machine Semantics (15.8)
Mon 02 May L39  The Halting Problem and Unsolvability (15.10)

Final Exam (cumulative) during exam period as arranged by the University


Last modified 24 January 2011