Students are expected to be familiar with all of the information below, not all of which will be repeated during lecture. Please read it fully.
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, McGraw-Hill. (Course materials will reference problem numbers from the 6th edition, but more recent versions include the same material.) It should be available through the bookstore and on short-term loan from the Engineering Library.
On occasion, there may be required readings during the course when there is insufficient time to fully cover the material during lecture. If this occurs, the readings will be posted on the web site and students will be notified of the reading via email or the message board.
Overall grades will be determined as follows (subject to change as necessary, though substantial changes are unlikely):
| 60% | Homework |
| 10-15% | Midterm exam |
| 25-30% | Final exam |
Students are encouraged to help each other learn the course material, which includes the homework assignments. However, we must disallow collaboration that aims to avoid learning (a.k.a. "cheating").
With that in mind, students are encouraged to work with each other on homework assignments subject to the following constraints:
When working on solutions with others, we require that:
Since they cannot list "The Internet" as one of their collaborators, students may not consult the Internet for problems or key-phrases. This includes Google, MathOverflow, reddit, and any other website. However, students may consult the internet for ideas, definitions, and understanding general concepts.
Abiding by those rules will help students avoid any academic misconduct as described by the Allen School policy.
Students will receive an email invitation, during the first week of the course, to a course web page in GradeScope, where they can submit their homework solutions. To do so, they will first need to scan their solutions into a PDF.
Portions of the scans that are not readble by the TAs (either due to the quality of the scan or the legibility of the handwriting) cannot be graded and will not receive credit. See the grading page for more details.
Students should plan to complete all assignments by the due date and time. However, since emergency circumstances do occur, we wlll allow students to submit two assignment up to 24 hours late without penalty during the quarter. Note that these allowed late days are intended for emergencies: students should not use them for convenience and then plead with the course staff when an actual emergency occurs.
Students do not need to take any special action when submitting an assignment late. The course staff will note the late submission and keep track of how many late submissions have occurred.
For other circumstances requiring special lateness accommodations, contact the course instructor at least one week prior to the assignment due date.
Real-world problems are rarely spelled out in precise detail, and part of the challenge is in filling in those details. In this course, however, we will aim to make all problems clear up front. That said, we cannot foresee all mistakes that students might make and write down what the corresponding point deductions would be. Instead, we will choose deductions after reading each solution and seeing close they come to solving the intended problem.
Note that our correctness determination will be based on the intention of the problem. As long as we believe that the intention was clear, we will deduct points from solutions that do not solve the intended problem. 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.
If grading mistakes occur, students are encouraged to bring those the attention of the course staff and see that they are corrected. They can do so by requesting a regrade in GradeScope.
We will only entertain regrade requests for one week after the grades are initially are posted. In particular, students searching for extra points late in the quarter by requesting regrades of problems from early assignments will be ignored.
Homework assignments will often have extra credit problems. They will be scored separately from the regular problems, and they will have little to no impact on course grades. The main incentive for doing the extra credit problems is for the additional challenge.
There will be a midterm exam held in class and a final exam during finals week. Note that the final exam times may not be at the time and place listed in the UW time schedule. See the course calendar for the actual dates and times. See the exams page for more details on the exam contents.