Overview
This course will be a big change from last semester, where we spent our time learning a new programming language. This semester we may not be programming at all (we might do a little), and you will wonder how you ended up on what will really be another math class, when you thought you had signed-up for computer science.
Computer science is still a relatively new discipline, and even some of those most intimately involved with it are not entirely sure what it is (see I'm not a real scientist, and that's okay). Whatever it is, it is certainly connected with mathematics, particularly discrete mathematics, which concerns itself with operations on the set of natural numbers.
That's what we will be studying this semester, so welcome to CSC 208: Introduction to Discrete Structures!
Monday, February 3rd
We'll begin with an introductory activity, and end with a discussion of what we will doing in this course.
Classwork
Sitting at your tables in groups of four, discuss solutions for each of the following problems.
- The most popular mathematician in the world is throwing a party for all of his friends. As a way to kick things off, they decide that everyone should shake hands. Assuming all 10 people at the party each shake hands with every other person (but not themselves, obviously) exactly once, how many handshakes take place?
- At the warm-up event for ACC's All Star Hot Dog Eating Contest, Marin ate one hot dog. Akshay then showed her up by eating three hot dogs. Not to be outdone, Fikir ate five. This continued with each contestant eating two more hot dogs than the previous contestant. How many hot dogs did Trostin (the 26th and final contestant) eat? How many hot dogs were eaten all together?
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After excavating for weeks, you finally arrive at the burial chamber. The room is empty except for two large chests. On each is carved a message (strangely in English):
If this chest is empty, then the other chest's message is true.
This chest is filled with treasure or the other chest contains deadly scorpions.
You know exactly one of these messages is true. What should you do?
- Back in the days of yore, five small towns decided they wanted to build roads directly connecting each pair of towns. While the towns had plenty of money to build roads as long and as winding as they wished, it was very important that the roads not intersect with each other (as stop signs had not yet been invented). Also, tunnels and bridges were not allowed. Is it possible for each of these towns to build a road to each of the four other towns without creating any intersections?
Your presentations will be evaluated using this rubric, and are due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, February 6th.
Please create your presentations in Markdown files and put them in your new git repos.
Homework
While much of the work we will do in this class will be done with paper and pencil, we will have occasion to put things online (just how many things I don't yet know).
Create a new git repo for this class on the same
git host you used for CSC222. Name your repo csc208.
If you followed these directions, the link on the
students page for this class should not give a
404 error when your name is clicked.
Evaluation
We will have a quiz on Chapter 0 at the beginning of class on Thursday, February 8th. Your first evaluation for CSC 208 will be the equally weighted combination of your presentation and quiz grades.