CMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computation

David Mix Barrington

Spring, 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 Monday 11-12, Tuesday 11-12, Wednesday 2:30-3:30, Thursday 3-4. I generally answer my email fairly reliably.

TA Contact Info: Melissa Frechette (mfrechet@cs.umass.edu), office hours Monday 4:30-5:30, Cibele Friere (cibelemf@cs.umass.edu), office hours Wednesday 4-5, Girish Paladugu (gpaladugu@ecs.umass.edu), office hours Tuesday 4-5. TA office hours are in LGRT 220.

There is a supplemental instructor for the course at the Learning Resource Center in DuBois Library. His name is Tung Pham and his sessions are Tuesday 4-5:15 and Thursday 8:30-9:45 (am) in DuBois 1349.

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 two lecture meetings a week, Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-10:45, in Goessman 20.

There is one discussion meeting per week for each of the four sections, at various times on Monday 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 Rosen's Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications. The seventh edition is recommended but the sixth is acceptable. For the last section of the course we will use one chapter of my draft textbook, Discrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science. I will figure out what to do about distributing this.

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.

Announcements (21 May 2013):

(21 May) As promised, here are the aggreagate statistics for the final exam and for overall course grades:

Final Exam (high = 114, median = 85, low = 15, N = 96):

A+ (108-114) 6
A (103-108) 10
A- (98-102) 13
B+ (93-97) 6
B (88-92) 7
B- (83-87) 11
C+ (78-82) 10
C (73-77) 8
C- (68-72) 8
D+ (63-67) 6
D (58-62) 5
F (15-57) 6

Overall Grades (N = 100):

A+: 5 (recorded as A, course citations issued)
A: 12
A-: 14
B+: 15
B: 12
B-: 16
C+: 10
C: 6
C-: 5
D+: 4
F: 1

(20 May) I have posted the final exam and its solution. Individual final exam and overall grades have been posted to Moodle. The final exam scale was A = 105, B = 90, C = 75, D = 60, F = 45. Stats for the exam and overall grades will follow, probably later today.

(18 Apr) I have posted solutions to the second midterm.

(17 Apr) I have posted the second midterm and hope to post the solutions soon. The scale was A = 90, B = 75, C = 60, D = 45, F = 30, and the exams were returned with letter grades written on them. The top of the 100 exams was a 108, the median was 70, and the bottom was 25. There were 9 A+'s, 10 A's, 9 A-'s, 9 B+'s, 10 B's, 5 B-'s, 11 C+'s, 12 C's, 6 C-'s, 6 D+'s, 6 D's, and 7 F's. Individual grades are also on Moodle.

(26 Mar) I made some adjustments in the syllabus as to which sections of Rosen we are covering in the next two weeks. I'll soon be updating the syllabus as to the finite-state machine material from my book, which I will make available as PDF on the Moodle site.

(26 Feb) I have graded the first midterms and returned them in lecture today. The exam and solution are posted on this site. The scale for the exam was A = 95, B = 85, C = 75, D = 65, F = 55. (Note that while we are recording grades for individual components on Moodle, I will calculate grades myself and I don't guarantee that any calculations that Moodle does are the ones I want.) Out of 101 exams we had one 100, 33 in the 90-99 range, 32 in the 80-89 range, 23 in the 70-79 range, eight in the 60-69 range, two in the 50-59 range, and two in the 40-49 range. (Those last four people should talk to me about their future in the course.) The median was thus a B.

I am used to doing predicate calculus and proofs before doing number theory, so as you can see my first midterms usually have more logic and less number theory than this first midterm. I'm a little concerned that the arithmetic calculations, on which in general you did very well, won't be representative of the kinds of things I will ask later. There's naturally going to be an adjustment to my teaching style and the new material, but we can work through it.

(18 Feb) I am starting this web site today, as I am taking over this course from Prof. Immerman beginning with the grading of this week's exam and next Tuesday's lecture. Details will be on the Moodle site. (Prof. Immerman had volunteered to cover this course as an overload but then had to deal with a family medical issue and has reverted to his normal teaching load.)

Last modified 8 December 2013