Applied Combinatorics [ html pdf ]
Mitchel T. Keller and William T. Trotter
Course website
Roughly speaking, discrete mathematics focuses on everything finite. Questions like how many ways to distribute ten apples to three people and how to travel through cities efficiently fall into this category. Most of the time, one may solve a question like this by brute force, but we will learn many fascinating methods to do things wisely. Discrete Mathematics aims to give an overview of each topic and equip you with basic techniques for handling discrete problems (not limited to your exercises!). Throughout the course, you will learn how to prove by induction or bijection arguments, play with discrete structures such as graphs and posets, and solve recurrence relations by generating functions. As you will see (and also mentioned in the textbook), this subject is very real and concrete, so another add-on of this course is you will learn how to learn by playing with discrete objects.
15% Homework + 10% Active Learning + 3*5% Quizzes + 3*20% Exams
There are 15 homework assignments and 3 quizzes. The homework assignments will be announced in the course notes. The deadline of each assignment is on Tuesday 17:00 am one week after it was assigned. You may turn in your homework during the recitation or to the TA's office.
The question type of each quiz will be given but the numbers will be different. No partial credits for quizzes. However, within the two weeks (and before the final exam) after a quiz is given, you may ask for extra tests of the same question type. Your score for a quiz is the average of all tests you have taken under the same question type. Note: If you missed the quiz in class, that counts as a zero.
For example, you missed Quiz 1 in class, and you asked for 3 extra tests and get 2 of them correct, then your score for Quiz 1 is (0 + 5 + 5 + 0) / 4 = 2.5.
Students with diverse learning styles and needs are welcome in this course. In particular, if you have a disability/health consideration that may require accommodations, please feel free to approach me.
Percentage scores will be converted to letter grades according to the university-wide standard table.
You are expected to attend the classes.
If you miss some course components due to illness, accident, family affliction, or religious observances, please talk to me and provide the documentation. In such cases, the course component is excused, and your course score will be calculated by distributing the weight of the missed item(s) across the other course components. Missing components are limited to at most 20%.
Do not copy others' work, including others' homework, the textbook, online materials, and others' answers in an exam; if it is really necessary, add proper citations to your references. It makes no point (and gives you no point) if the work is not yours since you learned nothing.