Syllabus

Textbook

There is no required text for the course. For the first 6-7 weeks of the course, the following textbook can be useful: Rosen, Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, 6th Edition, McGraw-Hill. It is available used through the bookstore, and on short-term loan from the Engineering Library.

Grading

Your overall grade will be determined as follows (subject to change as necessary, though substantial changes are unlikely):

50% Homework
15-20% Midterm exam
30-35% Final exam

Collaboration

You are encouraged to work with other students on homework assignments subject to the following constraints:

  • You must list the name of everyone you worked with in your submission.
  • You must write up all solutions on your own.

When working on solutions with others, we strongly recommend that:

  • You do not leave with any part of the solution in writing or photographs (only in your head) and
  • You wait at least 30 minutes before writing your own solution.

Since you cannot list "The Internet" as one of your collaborators, you may not consult the Internet for problems or key-phrases. This includes Google, MathOverflow, reddit, and any other website. However, you may consult the internet for ideas, definitions, and understanding general concepts.

Abiding by those rules will help you avoid any academic misconduct as described by the Allen School policy.

Late Policy

Assignments must be turned in by the due date and time in order to contribute to your grade. Assignments will not be accepted late unless special arrangements are made at least 48 hours in advance of the deadline or in cases of a severe emergency (e.g., hospitalization). In the latter cases, contact the course staff (cse311-staff@cs).

Regrades

We will entertain questions about grades only for one week after they are posted in the course grade book. Questions about assignment grades should be written and submitted to the staff via email (cse311-staff@cs).

Our determinations of the correctness of each answer will be made based on the intention of the problem, as long as the staff believes that the intention was clear. We will not listen to legalistic arguments about why poor solutions should be considered correct.

We will not debate the amount of points deducted for mistakes. Those are entirely at the descretion of the course staff.

Extra Credit

Homework assignments will often have extra credit problems. They will be scored separately from the regular problems, and they will have relatively little impact on course grades. The main incentive for doing the extra credit problems is for the challenge of doing the problems.

Exams

There will be a midterm exam held in class and a final exam during finals week. See the calendar for dates and times. See the exams page for more details on the exam contents.