Discrete structures course information

Vietnam National University, Hanoi

College of Technology

CS281 - Discrete Structures

Spring, 2008

Student Manual

Letter to student

To the Student:

This course and this Student Manual reflect a collective effort led by your instructor. This course is an important component of our academic program. Although it has been offered for many years, this latest version represents an attempt to expand the range of sources of information and instruction, so that the course continues to be up-to-date and the methods well suited to what is to be learned.

You will be asked from time to time to offer feedback on how the Student Manual is working and how the course is progressing. Your comments will inform the development team about what is working, and what requires attention. Our goal is to help you learn what is important about this particular field, and to eventually succeed as a professional applying what you learn in this course.

This Student Manual is designed to assist you through the course by providing specific information about student responsibilities including requirements, timelines and evaluations.

I hope you enjoy the course.

Faculty information

Name: Bui The Duy Office Location: 306, E3 Building

Email: duybt@vnu.edu.vn

Office Hours: 8am-5pm, weekdays

Before or after class: 10am-11am, Tuesday

Support personnel:

• Le Thi Hoi – Assistant, 306, E3 Building

• Ngo Thi Duyen – Assistant, 306, E3 Building

• Ma Thi Chau – Assistant, 306, E3 Building

Resources

• Course Reading material
• MIT’s OpenCourseWare
• Connexions
• On-line Discrete Math tutorials

Purpose of the course

The main goal of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to gain an understanding of the theoretical foundations of Computer Science. The main areas of the course are Mathematical Logic, Set Theory, and Relations. Topics include proof methods with emphasis on mathematical induction, solving recurrence relations, propositional logic, first order logic, proof techniques, mathematical induction, sets, operations on sets, relations, operations on relations, and functions. The emphasis is on the applications of discrete structures in computer science rather than the mathematical theory itself.

Course description

Discrete structures is foundational material for computer science. By foundational we mean that relatively few computer scientists will be working primarily on discrete structures, but that many other areas of computer science require the ability to work with concepts from discrete structures. Discrete structures includes important material from such areas as set theory, logic, graph theory, and combinatorics.

This course covers the mathematics that underlies most of computer science, which are the fundamental mathematical concepts and reasoning along with problem solving techniques. Topics covered include propositional logic, predicate logic, inferencing, proof methods including induction, set operations, binary relations including order relations, and equivalence relations, graphs, and functions.

Course requirements

• CS101 - Introduction to Programming course
• MATH102 - Pre-Calculus II, or equivalents.
• Calculus is preferred, but not required.