Math 240 - Introduction to Discrete Mathematics

David Seal's website.
University of Wisconsin's Math Department website.

TA Contact Information:

Office: 518 Van Vleck
Voice: (608) 262-3860
e-mail: seal AT math DOT wisc DOT edu.
Office Hours (Finals Week): Monday 5:00-6:00, Tuesday, 12:00-13:00 and by appointment
Office Hours: Tuesday 10:50-11:50, Thursday, 12:10-13:10 and by appointment
If you'd like to make an appointment with me, please first take a look at my calendar to make sure I'm free.

Discussion Sections:

News Announcements and Handouts:

• If you are in lecture 002, see the main course webpage.
• If you are in lecture 001, see the main course webpage. Also, if you are in Lecture 001, and want a quick link to your homework, click here
• Here is a list of the problems from Chapter 1 Problems.
• Notes and a sample problem from Section 2-3, with a little bit of background. If you would like, feel free to use the tex file.
• Notes on the problem graded from HW2. Again, feel free to use the hw2.tex file.
• Problem 8 from section 4-4. Again, here is the tex file.
• Problem 12 from section 5-5. The trick here is to write down the correct loop invarient, and then simply walk through what the code is doing.
• Problem 13 and Problem 17 from sections 5-5 and 6-1, respectively.

Homework due dates for Lecture 002

• HW1 (Sections 1.1--1.5) due in section, week starting 2-7.
• HW2 (Sections 1.7--2.1) due in section, week starting 2-14.
• HW3 (Sections 2.2--2.4) due in section, week starting 2-21.
• HW4 (Sections 3.1--3.3) due by lecture on Friday, March 2nd.
• HW5 due week of 3-5.
• HW6 due in lecture on Friday, March 16th.
• HW7 (Sections 4.4--4.6) due in section, week starting 3-26.
• HW8 (Sections 5.1--5.3) not collected.
• HW9 (Sections 5.4, 5.5, 6.1) due in lecture, Friday, April 20th.
• HW10 (Sections 6.2--6.5) due in lecture, Friday, April 27th.
• HW11 (Sections 7.1, 7.2, 7.3) due in lecture, Friday, May 4th.

Important Dates

• Lecture 001, Exam 1: Wednesday, February 29
• Lecture 001, Exam 2: Wednesday, April 18
• Lecture 001, Final Exam: Monday, May 14, 7:25pm-9:25pm
• Lecture 002, Exam 1: Friday, March 2nd
• Lecture 002, Exam 2: Wednesday, March 28th
• Lecture 002, Final Exam: Friday, May 18, 12:25pm-2:25pm
• Spring Break: March 31--April 8

Interesting, Fun and Perhaps Relevant Links. The new stuff is at the top

• I wrote some code that you can use for practicing finding inverses with arbitrary numbers. To see which options are available, type 'python inverses.py -h' into the command line.
• Here is some more python code that checks if a function from two finite sets of integers is onto.py. In python, you can do stuff like 'for x in X:', which essentially reads exactly like how we would write this in math.
• Some python code for searching a a sorted list of integers using a binary search.
• The library has many problems from our textbook scanned into their electronic database. If you are enrolled in the course, then they can be accessed here.
• Here's a fun logic formulation of the popular phrase, Catch-22
• Smullyan Logic Puzzles In the vampire scenario, can you think of an appropriate question to ask a random sane/insane human/vampire person in order to determine whether or not they're a vampire?
• In case you're interested in extra reading, this is an excellent textbook that discusses Naive Set Theory by Paul Halmos. Of course, this text is also available in our library system.
• Command Line Fu.
• Math Movie Quiz

Links

• Kleene Mathematics Library. There is a copy of the textbook on reserve there. It's located on the second basement floor of Van Vleck. You can also find old exams on their website.

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