Discrete Mathematics



Math 245
Fall 2000
Meeting Tues., Thurs. 15:30-16:45
Bus. Adm./Math Building #255
San Diego State University


Professor: Mike O'Sullivan
Email: m.osullivan@math.sdsu.edu
Office: Bus. Adm./Math Building #217, ext. 594-6697
Office Hours: T Th: 9:30-12:00, 14:00-16:00.
                             MWF: by appointment (I will normally be in my office and available).

Text

Kolman, Busby, Ross, Discrete Mathematical Structures 4th ed.

Course Description

Discrete mathematics is an exciting and rapidly growing area of mathematics which has important applications in computer science and in many high technology areas. To get started in discrete math you need a good grounding in the fundamentals of set theory and logic, and you need to know how to count (it's more complicated than you think!). We will cover this material (chapters 1,2,3 in the text) and then delve into relations (a set theoretic concept) and the pictures that we draw to represent them, which we call digraphs. There are practical problems for computing that are best thought about using digraphs. The next main topic is a particular type of relation, a lattice. We will look at the logic involved in circuit design and link it to Boolean algebras, which are a special type of lattice. Finally, we study trees. These are a special kind of digraph that is very useful in numerous computer science applications.

Grading

We will have weekly assignments, two midterms and a final exam. For the weekly assignments, there will be a small number of problems (10 or so) which you should write up carefully. I will either collect these and grade them or give a short quiz with some selection of the problems.

There will be a much larger number of problems assigned to do, but not to write up formally. These form the material that you are expected to understand upon completion of this course. You can safely ignore the problems that are not assigned. The midterms and the final exam will be based on the material in the assigned problems, but will not necessarily be identical to something assigned.

Weekly work 350
Test 1 150
Test 2 150
Final 350
Total 1000

The first exam is Thurs. Oct. 5.

The second exam is Tues. Nov 9.