CSE 312A: Foundations of Computing II

Course Goals: The goals of this course are to give you an appreciation and introductory understanding of (1) methods of counting and basic combinatorics, (2) the language of probability for expressing and analyzing randomness and uncertainty (3) some basic methods of statistics and their use in a computer science & engineering context. You can looks at offerings from the last quarter to get an idea of the precise topics to come.

Textbook (required): Dimitri P. Bertsekas and John N. Tsitsiklis, Introduction to Probability, First Edition, Athena Scientific, 2000, available free online here. We are likely to cover material from Chapters 1-5 and 7. In addition, we will cover some statistics material not in this textbook. You can view slides used in previous offerings of this course here.

Reference (optional): Applied Combinatorics, by Keller and Trotter. Available here.

Reference (optional): Kenneth H. Rosen, Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, McGraw-Hill, 2012. If you already own a copy from CSE 311, keep it for reference. Some students have said they like its coverage of counting (Chapters 6 and 8) and discrete probability (Chapter 7).

Submitting Homework: You must use Gradescope to upload your homework solutions. You have been enrolled in the CSE 312 Gradescope roster with your uw.edu email. If you haven't set your Gradescope password using your uw.edu email, go here. For each homework assignment, you will submit a single PDF file containing your solutions to all the exercises in the homework. You may typeset your solutions on a computer or you can handwrite them, take a photo of (or scan) each handwritten page, and convert the photos into a single PDF file. Popular choices for typesetting mathematics are Microsoft Word (be sure to use its Equation Editor and save as PDF) and LaTeX. There is a typesetting guide here. You can also use these tutorials by Kathleen Tuite and Adam Blank.

Grading, Late Policy, and Regrades: The course grade will be based on approximately 8 homework assignments (50%), a midterm exam (20%), and a final exam (30%). Percentages are approximate. Late homework assignments will be accepted (but penalized 25%) up to 48 hours after the due date-and-time, and not accepted thereafter, barring major emergencies. If you believe a mistake was made grading your homework, initiate a regrade request via Gradescope explaining the mistake you believe was made. But before you do that, you must ensure that you understand the grader's comments and the correct answer.

Policy on Collaboration: You are to complete homework assignments individually. You may discuss the assignment in general terms with other students, including a discussion of how to approach the problem, but the solution you write must be your own. The intent is to allow you to have helpful brainstorming sessions when you are stuck, but this help should be limited and should never involve details of how to solve the problem. A good rule of thumb is that you should never carry away anything written from one of these brainstorming sessions: if you cannot recreate the solution on your own later, then you do not truly understand the solution and you have received too much help from your collaborator. You must abide by the following rules:

  • You may not work as a partner with another student on an assignment.
  • You may not show another student your solution to an assignment.
  • You may not have another person (current student, former student, tutor, friend, anyone) "walk you through" how to solve an assignment.
  • You may not look at other people's written solutions to problems, not in your friends' notes, not in the dorm files, and not on the internet.

Special Accommodations: If you would like to request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, 448 Schmitz, 543-8924 (V/TDD). If you already have a letter from Disabled Student Services indicating you have a disability that requires academic accommodations, please let the instructor know so we can discuss the appropriate accommodations.