Lecture 1

Learning objectives

After this class, you should be able to:

1. Describe the course objectives in general terms.
2. Describe your responsibilities regarding: following deadlines and instructions, participation, and reading assignments.
3. Schedule your activities to accommodate the assignment deadlines and exams.
4. Explain different components of the assessment process that contribute to your final grade.
5. Explain course policies regarding attendance, missed exams, late assignment, an "I" grade, and professional ethics.
6. Explain some study skills that can help you do well in this course.
7. Given a set, prove that it is countably infinite or not countably infinite.

Reading assignment

1. Read the syllabus on blackboard.
2. Review material from your Discrete Math courses, in particular, proofs by induction and contradiction. (The section on 'Proof Techniques', pages 10-13, will help.)
3. See the video at: www.wimp.com/biginfinity.
4. Read the JFLAP document in the course library on Blackboard, and install the JFLAP software.

Exercises and review questions

• Exercises and review questions on current lecture's material
  1. Obtain CS and FSU computer accounts, if you do not have them already.
  2. Access the class website using blackboard. Take the survey available under "assignments".
  3. What will your grade be if you get 75% on the assignment portion, and 60% on the exams?
  4. Post, on the discussion forum, any study techniques that you have found effective.
  5. Prove that the number of English sentences is countably infinite.

• Questions on next lecture's material
  1. Chapter 1, exercise #25. (Prove, using induction, that the sum of the squares of the first n positive integers is n(n+1)(2n+1)/6.)
  2. Chapter 1, exercise #31. (Prove, using contradiction, that the square root of 3 is not rational.)

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Last modified: 29 Dec 2013