INFO 150: A Mathematical Foundation for Informatics
David Mix Barrington
Fall, 2017
Requirements for Course Project
One of the requirements for this course is the following:
Project: Each of you (alone or in a pair) will research a
topic of your choice
and make a written presentation for me by the end of term.
This will count 10% of the total grade.
This page gives some more detail about this project:
- Topic: The project should concern some area of discrete
mathematics, as roughly defined by the subject matter of the E\&C book:
logic, proofs, induction, sets, functions, relations, counting, probability,
or matrices. The sections of the book that we did not cover offer a variety
of possible topics.
Combining a discrete mathematics topic with another area of
computer science or informatics, or even a topic outside those fields, is
encouraged. You should choose something about which you want to learn, so
that you will be inspired to do good work. Many of you are taking this course
for the Informatics program, which is about computational thinking in a variety
of subject domains. The ideal topic would connect to the reasons why you,
personally, want to learn more about computational thinking.
- Audience: You should write with an assumed audience who knows
the basic material of this course (the sections of the book we have covered)
but not much more about mathematics, and not that much about
computing. (If you wanted to make a point by writing Java code, you could
assume a COMPSCI 121 level of Java literacy in your reader.) If you apply
discrete math to another topic area, you may need to bring your reader up
to speed.
- Length: I am thinking 3-5 pages of text (exclusive of pictures),
longer if you submit as a pair. We may be able to schedule each of
you to give
a 15-20 minute talk on your work, during exam period, but this is not
decided yet.
- Honesty: What you submit should be your own work in presentation,
and you should acknowledge your sources.
- Timeline: I would like to have a good idea of your topic before
Thanksgiving break (let's say 5:00 pm Friday 17 November). You can email me
a description and I will give you feedback and suggest sources -- I've
discussed topics already.
with some of you. The project will be due by email to me by 5:00 pm
on Wednesday 20 December, the last day of exams.
Last modified 4 September 2017