Concrete Mathematics
MATH 540 Fall 2004 course policies
Instructor: Dr. André Kündgen
Email: akundgen@csusm.edu
Office: 339 Science Hall II
Office phone: (760) 750-8070
Office hours: Tuesdays 15:00-16:30,
and Thursdays 15:00-16:30, (when classes are in session), or by
appointment.
The easiest way to make an appointment or reach me in general
is by email.
Lectures: Tuesday, Thursday 17:30-18:45 (308 Science Hall 2).
CRN: 41395
Webpage:
http://courses.csusm.edu/math540ak/
The course webpage contains useful information,
like the homework
assignments, general announcements, and clarifications regarding
the homework. You should check it at least once a week.
Textbook
J.H. van Lint, R.M. Wilson,
A course in Combinatorics (second edition),
Cambridge University Press (2001),
ISBN 0-521-00601-5 (paperback), 0-521-80340-3 (hardback).
This is the recommended textbook, and meant for
supplementary reading. The lecture notes will be available
from the course webpage on the day of classes, and after
that on electronic reserve.
Prerequisites
A certain amount of mathematical maturity is
necessary for this course. MATH 350, MATH 370 or a similar
discrete mathematics course that stresses the ability to understand and
write proofs is required. It is also sufficient, and probably helpful,
if you have already taken a more
advanced course in discrete mathematics like MATH 472, MATH 474, MATH 542
or MATH 544.
The course is open to upper level undergraduate students as
well as graduate students. No knowledge in graph theory or combinatorics
is required, since we will develop everything we need from first
principles.
Grading Policies
The numerical scores of all exams and assignments will be used in computing
final score that will determine your final letter grade:
| Homework |
20% |
| Midterm Exam |
25% |
| Presentation |
25% |
| Final Exam |
30% |
|
| Letter grade |
Numerical grade |
| A | 85-100 |
| B | 70-84 |
| C | 60-69 |
| D | 50-59 |
| F | 00-49 |
|
There will be around 5 homework assignments and a detailed
homework policy can be found on the web.
Important Dates
| August 31: | First day of classes |
| October 21: | Midterm Exam |
| November 25: | Thanksgiving (no class) |
| December 9: | Last day of classes |
| December 14: | Final Exam, 16:00-18:00 |
Course content
You are a general, and have a group of 36 officers: 6 each from
6 different regiments. With a little trial and error it is
easy to see that you can line them up in a square formation
so that each row and each column has an officer from each
regiment. Now suppose there are 6 different ranks, and the
officers from the same regiment all have different ranks.
Is it possible to arrange them so that each row and each column
has an officer of each rank as well?
The goal of this course is to tackle a wide variety of
questions of this type: Can we arrange/order a schedule, a team,
or a group of objects in a certain way? The answer will surprisingly
often be: YES, within reason.
More specifically, we will try to cover my list of major theorems
from several areas of combinatorics, such as design theory, partial orders,
extremal set theory, and coding theory. A draft of this list
can be found on the course webpage. This list will be updated
as we go along.