Syllabus

Logistics

Course Description

Introduces the mathematical structures and methods that form the foundation of computer science. Studies structures such as sets, tuples, sequences, lists, trees, and graphs. Discusses functions, relations, ordering, and equivalence relations. Examines inductive and recursive definitions of structures and functions. Discusses principles of proof such as truth tables, inductive proof, and basic logic. Also covers the counting techniques and arguments needed to estimate the size of sets, the growth of functions, and the space-time complexity of algorithms.

Meeting Times

Lesson (CS1800)

Sec	Time	Day	CRN	Instructor
2	9:50 am - 11:30 am	TF	10331	Strange, L.
3	1:35 pm - 3:15 pm	TF	11951	Higger, M.
4	3:25 pm - 5:05 pm	TF	15518	Higger, M.

All lessons held in ISEC 102.

Recitation (CS1802)

Most weeks will include a 65 minute seminar where students will work in small groups on a given problem set to digest and polish content. Each session will be concluded with a 15 minute low-stakes gradescope quiz which allows the student to evaluate their own understanding of the material. As the quiz is online, it will contain multiple-choice and short answer input style questions. Our goal with the quiz is to have students identify their own gaps in understanding before heading into the homework. Additionally, each student’s lowest quiz grade will be discarded when computing their final grade. Please see the Recitation Instructions for further details.

CRN	Meeting Time	Instructor	Room
12625	W 9:15 am - 10:20 am	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 212
12626	W 9:15 am - 10:20 am	Higger, M.	BK 007
12627	M 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm	Nunez, L.	WVH 210A
12628	W 10:30 am - 11:35 am	Higger, M.	BK 204
12629	W 10:30 am - 11:35 am	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 212
18007	W 11:45 am - 12:50 pm	Nunez, L.	KA 102
18040	W 11:45 am - 12:50 pm	Park, J.	WVH 212
18039	W 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm	Nunez, L.	WVH 210A
14066	W 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm	Higger, M.	WVH 210B
14067	W 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm	Park, J.	WVH 212
14068	W 2:50 pm - 3:55 pm	Higger, M.	SL 011
14582	W 2:50 pm - 3:55 pm	Park, J.	WVH 212
15037	W 4:05 pm - 5:10 pm	Park, J.	WVH 212
15040	R 9:15 am - 10:20 am	Nunez, L.	HS 209
15041	R 9:15 am - 10:20 am	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 212
15043	R 10:30 am - 11:35 am	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 212
15044	R 11:45 am - 12:50 pm	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 212
15045	R 11:45 am - 12:50 pm	Park, J.	EXP 203
15046	R 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm	Nunez, L.	HA 322
15047	R 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 210B
15049	R 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm	Park, J.	WVH 212
16807	R 2:50 pm - 3:55 pm	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 210B
18029	R 2:50 pm - 3:55 pm	Nunez, L.	SL 031
18030	R 2:50 pm - 3:55 pm	Park, J.	WVH 212
19065	R 4:05 pm - 5:10 pm	Amor-Tijani, G.	WVH 210B
19066	R 4:05 pm - 5:10 pm	Park, J.	WVH 212

Learning

Our goal is to make you a more graceful problem solver. Its not easy! Maybe most significantly, we seek to promote a sense of curiosity, playfulness and humility as you hang out in that (often uncomfortable) space of “what exactly is this problem asking me to do?”. Its expected that new problems will be confusing, this is part of doing math and you should give yourself permission and time to scribble up a piece of scratch paper or daydream about the problem for bit. Please don’t fault yourself for not knowing a solution right away, the process of coming to the solution is more important than the solution itself. This is because there are more varieties of real math problems out there than anyone can reasonably prepare themselves for ahead of time. All of us, from professors with a lifetime of experience to elementary school students, start our math problems by being confused.

Class Attendance

Showing up to class is critical towards learning efficiently. Our attendance allows us to build community with each other which will supercharge your learning. You can teach each other in ways I can’t (and making friends is wonderful in its own right too, of course!). Please do make every effort to show up so you can nurture your own math expertise in addition to the expertise of your friends-in-waiting sitting nearby in class.

In the rare circumstance life prevents you from attending a lesson in person, know that we’ll always record one of the sections. The recording will be made available to everyone (see zoom tab on the Canvas site) a few hours after the lesson ends (Zoom takes some time to process). No students may join the lesson remotely, while it is being recorded, via zoom (this is an in-person class). Please know that this recording is intended as a backup only; in our experience students who rely on it end up spending more time digesting the same material.

Online resources:

• Piazza - class discussion board

• Gradescope - submission system

• Canvas - distribution of HW, solutions and quizzes

• This Course site - all other course admin (i.e. syllabus, admin, project information, schedule, class notes)

Note

Sign up for Piazza and Gradescope by accessing the sidebar links on our Canvas site. After registering you can use the quick links on our Course site or access the sites directly.

Textbooks

"Discrete Structures" by Harriet Fell and Javed Aslam is wonderfully readable and targeted towards our particular topics. The classes associated with each chapter are listed below:

Chapter	Class Index
1: Number Representation	1,2,3
2: Circuits	7
3: Logic	4,5
7: Sets	6,7
8: Counting	8,9,10
9: Probability	13,14
10: Algorithms Search/Sort	18
11: Sequences, Sums & Series	21
12: Induction	24
13: Recurrences	19
14: Growth of Functions	20
15: Graphs	16,17
17: Relations	23

“Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications” by Kenneth Rosen is a thorough and broad treatment of the topic. Its a great resource to find extra practice problems or push your skills on these topics a bit beyond our lessons.

Grading

The total course average is computed as the weighted average of the following categories:

Exam1	18%
Exam2	18%
Exam3	6%
Homework	50%
Recitation Quiz	8%

Letter grades are assigned according to the highest thresholds met:

A	A-	B+	B	B-	C+	C	C-	D+	D	D-	E
93	90	87	83	80	77	73	70	67	63	60	0

To keep a transparent, consistent grading standard among all students:

• grades will not be rounded before applying the above threshold

• no extra credit will be offered to individual students

• We will not adjust anyone’s grade individually because they’ve asked (so please don’t)

  • If there are extraordinary circumstances which have impacted your learning, please reach out to Northeastern’s WeCare who can get in touch with us to make accomodations as necessary

• Remember, there are already a few quality-of-life adjustments which will nudge grades upwards:

  • Lowest Quiz Score Dropped

  • Late Day Passes

Exam Logistics

Students will take the exam online during a time window of their choosing on the date of the exam (nobody will be in ISEC 102 during regular class period). Students may start as early as 9AM and submit their exam no later than 6 PM on gradescope. The procedure is similar to homework: students are given a set of questions and upload their own written solutions to gradescope. One big difference is that students will get exam questions directly via gradescope, not canvas, as gradescope will track each students the starting and submission times.

Exam1 and Exam2 will be written to take 100 minutes though 120 minutes will be given to complete them, allowing for ample time to upload student solutions under the deadline. Similarly, “Exam3” will be written to take 30 minutes and 50 minutes will be given to complete it. We only call it an “Exam” to avoid any confusion with recitation quizzes, but its more of a quiz really.

• Students may only use the following to aid them during the exam:

  • class notes

  • previous assignments / solutions / recitation materials

    • (anything we’ve given you really)

  • textbook

  • calculator

• Students may not use generic internet searches or other people / AI to complete the exam

  • use of these resources may result in a zero on the exam or failing course grade

• TAs and instructors will be available to answer clarifying questions on piazza

  • we will not answer content related questions or provide any hints

  • please be sure to mark all questions as private

To help you all focus on the math content, rather than the process of doing an exam, we’ll provide a “dummy exam” on gradescope so that you can practice and get a sense of what it all looks like ahead of time. We strongly encourage everyone to quickly run through this “dummy exam” so there aren’t any surprises when you begin the real thing.

Late HW

Late HW will incur a penalty of 15% of the total possible points per day it is late up to two days. After 48 hours beyond the due date no HW will be accepted for credit. (Extending beyond this 48 hour mark makes for tight TA grading deadlines and may muddle other students’ ability to work on the next HW without feedback from the previous HW). Additionally, each student has 3 late day “passes” which are automatically used to neutralize the first late day penalties possible; you needn’t contact anyone to utilize late day passes.

A single student’s late HW (example):

HW 1 is 2 days late	2 late passes used
HW 2 is 2 days late	1 late pass used. 15% penalty applied to this HW
HW 3 is 1 day late	15% penalty applied to this HW
HW 4 is 2 days late	30% penalty applied to this HW
HW 5 is 3 days late	no credit is given for this HW

Note

The intention behind giving all students these late passes is to provide flexibility when you just “forget”, need a travel day, are ill for a few days, have some computer challenge or trouble submitting the work to gradescope. We will not give further accommodation to students who contact us under these or similar circumstances.

Academic Integrity and Conduct

Warning

Under no circumstances may one student view or share their ungraded homework with another student.

Sharing or viewing another students ungraded work may result in a failing course grade. With that said, you are welcome to discuss concepts and ideas with other students so long as you don’t view any written work. One approach to collaborating effectively is to work through practice problems (examples given in class or from the textbook) which are similar to the HW problems. See OSCCR for further details.

Additionally,

Note

We report every academic integrity violation to OSCCR, which track such violations across semesters to detect patterns.

Wellness Day Policy

Students are welcome to take advantage of the University’s Wellness Day Feature. Because this course already has a few mechanisms to facilitate flexibility (late days for HW, recitation quiz re-takes beyond the day of the quiz) wellness days will not move other deadlines.

Please do take great care of yourself through the semester!

Disability Resource Center

Students who have disabilities who wish to receive academic services and/or accommodations should visit the Disability Resource Center at 20 Dodge Hall or call (617) 373-2675. If you have already done so, please provide your letter from the DRC to me early in the semester so that I can arrange those accommodations.

Title IX

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects individuals from sex or gender-based discrimination, including discrimination based on gender-identity, in educational programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.

Northeastern University and its faculty are committed to creating a safe and open learning environment for all students. If you or someone you know has experienced a Prohibited Offense including sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating/domestic violence, or stalking, please know that help and support are available. Northeastern strongly encourages all members of the community to take action, seek support, and report incidents of Prohibited Offenses to the Title IX Coordinator within The Office for University Equity and Compliance (OUEC) through the Online Discrimination Complaint Form found at https://www.northeastern.edu/ouec/file-a-complaint/.

Please be aware that faculty members are Mandatory University Reporters who are required to disclose information about alleged discrimination, including sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating/domestic violence, or stalking to the OUEC. If the OUEC receives a report, a member of their office will reach out to offer information about your rights, support resources and pathways towards a resolution as a member of the campus community. Community members are not required to respond to this outreach. If you, or another community member you know wishes to speak to a confidential resource who does not have this reporting responsibility, please contact University Health and Counseling Services staff (http://www.northeastern.edu/uhcs/), the Center for Spiritual Dialogue and Service clergy members (http://www.northeastern.edu/spirituallife/) or the Sexual Violence Resource Center (open@northeastern.edu). By law, these confidential resources are not required to report allegations of discrimination to the University without your signed release.

Please visit www.northeastern.edu/ouec for a complete list of reporting options and support resources both on- and off-campus and contact the OUEC (ouec@northeastern.edu) at any time.