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, private zoom number 459 532 6175, office hours for Spring 2022: TBA
Kyle Doney, A241 LGRC, office hours for Spring 2022: TBA
The best way to contact either Dave or Kyle is by email. Dave will usually eventually answer email at barring@umass.edu, but not as quickly.
TA and UCA Contact Info:
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 and are pretty strictly enforced.
The course meets for three lecture meetings a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Kyle will lecture 10:10-11:00 and Dave will lecture 12:20-1:10, both in Goessmann 64. We may occasionally swap lectures. 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 eight sections, at various times on Fridays 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, A Mathematical Foundation for Computer Science. This is available as an e-book from Kendall Hunt Publishing for $60. It has an "assessment package" where you will need the current version of the book to answer quiz questions. The book and package can be obtained from the eCampus site or directly from Kendall Hunt.
The course is using the Moodle course management system and the Piazza system for student discussion. We will also use iClickers, but they will be used in grading only for classroom attendance. 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 (27 December 2021):
Last modified 7 February 2022