Steve Vickers: Mathematical Techniques for Computer Science

Mathematical Techniques for Computer Science

NEWS!
Solutions and feedback on this year's exam now available.

Lecturer: Steve Vickers

This module is compulsory in the second year of the single honours BSc in Computer Science, and MEng inComputer Science/Software Engineering.

Contents

Here is a table of the course contents, week by week. For weeks still to come, the handouts are last year's and are likely to change. They are all dated, so check the year.

The handouts have blank spaces for you to fill in during the lectures. This is partly to make you feel more involved during the lecture, and partly to blackmail you into attending. Here are the filled in boxes so far.

  1. Systems of linear equations (Gaussian elimination): General information, Systems of linear equations, Special cases. Exercises, solutions.
    Instructions for using Chris Novakovic's Gaussian Elimination tutor program
  2. Analytic geometry: in the plane, and in three dimensions. Exercises, solutions.
  3. The inner product: Two other ways of describing lines and planes, The inner product. Exercises, solutions.
  4. Matrix arithmetic: Addition, multiplication. Exercises, solutions.
  5. More matrix arithmetic: Inversion. Exercises, solutions.
  6. Sets: Notation, Cardinality and countability. Exercises, solutions.
  7. Relations: handout. (Because of the missed lecture, I have made a version for you with the boxes already filled in.) Exercises, solutions.
  8. Functions: handout. Exercises, solutions.
  9. Induction: handout. Exercises, solutions.
    You may also find helpful chapters 5 and 10 in "Reasoned Programming".
  10. Probability: handout. Exercises, solutions.
    The handout also includes (at the end) a review of logic. The unassessed exercises for week 11 include one on logic and properties of relations.
  11. Random variables handout. Exercises, solutions. Because it is the last week of term, the exercises are unassessed and I have put the solutions up immediately. Note that one of the exercises is further practice on the use of logic with properties of relations.

I shall sometimes update a file of boxes as they should have been filled. However, if you miss a lecture it will be quicker and better to borrow a friend's filled-in handout.
Index

Timetable

The teaching consists of three hours each week:
Wednesday 10:00-10:50am, LT3 Sports and Exercise Science (Y14)
Thursday 10:00-10:50am, LT1 Strathcona Building (R18)
Thursday 3:00-3:50pm, LT2 Law (R1)
One of the slots listed above will be used for exercises, usually the afternoon session on Thursdays.
The following will help with exercises: Fengzhen Tang and Ayush Joshi.

Continuous assessment

Continuous assessment counts for 20% of the total marks.

There will be two class tests, each counting 25% of the continuous assessment (5% of the total). They are planned for Week 4, Thursday 18th October (and not the Wednesday as previously announced), and Week 9, 22nd November, though this could change depending on how much progress we make.

The rest of the continuous assessment will be 10 weekly pieces of homework, each worth 5% of the continuous assessment (1% of the total). You are invited to submit your answers to these by the following Monday, 12 noon. Post your solutions in the homework box for this module outside reception.

Although the coursework submission is on paper, you will still be able to check your marks on the School's online coursework submission system.

The stretcher exercises are for bonus points, if you have time: so potentially you can get more than 10% overall from the homework. There is a separate box outside reception box for these, marked "stretchers". Please write your stretcher solutions on a different piece of paper from your main homework, and post it in the correct box, so that it can be marked separately.

If you have a serious reason for missing some assessed coursework, whether test or homework, then see someone from the Welfare Team. (The precise procedure is explained in the Student Handbook.) If your explanation for absence is accepted then we will ignore the exercise in the calculation of your mark.

Because of the tight turn-round time for marking, we will not enter marks for late coursework unless an extension is recommended by the Welfare Team.

Feedback

We will always try to return the marked homework in the same week as the hand-in date, that is, during the exercise class in that week (usually Thursday afternoon). The class tests will be returned after one week.

Class tests

Class test 1 will be in week 4, in the Thursday morning slot (10.00 in LT1 Strathcona).

To give you an idea of what to expect, here are the tests from previous years.
2007: test 1, solutions 1, test 2, solutions 2
2008: test 1, solutions 1, test 2, solutions 2
2009: test 1, solutions 1, test 2, solutions 2
2010: test 1, solutions 1, test 2, solutions 2
2011: test 1, solutions 1, test 2, solutions 2
2012: test 1, solutions 1, test 2, solutions 2

Policy on plagiarism

You are encouraged to work in small teams during the exercise classes and to ask for help from the tutor. You will, however, have to submit your work individually. Homework exercises are of a style similar to those appearing in the May examination, and we recommend that you attempt them individually, but you may still find it helpful to discuss the assignments with others. In any case, work submitted must be formulated by yourself. If we find evidence of plagiarism then we will award zero marks, irrespective of whether you copied from others or whether your work was copied by others. More serious cases will be dealt with according to the School's policy on plagiarism.

Final exam

The exam takes place in May and lasts 1.5-hour. It is marked on a scale from 0 to 100 but contributes only 80% to the module mark.

Its format is very similar to the 2012 paper. It has four questions, all compulsory, on the topics of Linear Algebra, Analytic Geometry, Set Theory and Probability. However, the distribution of marks between the different topics is slightly different this year.

You can access some previous exam papers and their solutions here:

Resit exam

There is one resit opportunity for this module in August. It contributes 100% to the module mark -- the exercise mark will not be carried forward.

Textbooks

There is no single textbook that covers all the material that I intend to present in this course, so I advise you to attend the lectures and study the handouts.