Office Hours
Professor O’Hanlon:
Mondays 2:40-4:40PM, FFSC then LSRC D214 [may be moved to D215]
TAs:
Sundays 12-2PM, Physics 235
Sundays 6-8PM, Physics 235
Mondays 6-8PM, Physics 235
Tuesdays 6-8PM, online (see Ed or Sakai for link)
Wednesdays 6-8PM, Physics 235
Saturdays 6-8PM, online (see Ed or Sakai for link)
Course Content
We will be using Ed this term. All course communications outside of class will go through Ed or Sakai Announcements. Announcements from TAs and those that expect/require student responses will be made via Ed, so you are required to look at these just as you are the Sakai announcements!
Gradescope is where you will submit your assignments.
Sakai will be used for anything that must be more restricted. This mainly means score records and the course materials that are not on this site.
We will use Sakai to record grades. However, some grades will appear on both Gradescope and Sakai. If those scores are updated on Gradescope, it may take some time for Sakai to be updated. At the end of the semester, the Sakai grade will be used.
Course Staff
Please do come to office hours to ask questions and get clarifications. This is what we are here for! If none of the regularly-scheduled times work for you, please post privately on the class forum to request an appointment.
Instructor: Kate O’Hanlon
Teaching Associate: Violet Pang
Graduate TAs: Zhengran (John) Ji, Shao-Heng Ko, Su Lee, Da (Justin) Lin, Yimeng (Eamon) Ma, Zijun (Allen) Wang
Undergraduate TAs: Prince Ahmed, Alejandro Breen Herrera, Erik Dahlberg, Alexander Du, Anirudh Jain, Divyansh Jain, Erick Jiang, Kevin Jiang, Jeff Jung, Orhan Khan, Paige Knudsen, Kevin Kong, Luke Lorentzatos, Anoushka Sinha, Ben Underwood, Huiwen Wang, Haiyan Wang, Yuzhe Yuan, Felix Zhu
Recitation Instructors
We have seven recitation sections, each co-taught by one graduate TA and one undergraduate TA.
8:30AM
01D Da (Justin) Lin, Kevin Jiang (Biological Sciences 113)
10:05AM
02D Zhengran (John) Ji, Luke Lorentzatos (LSRC A247)
03D Yimeng (Eamon) Ma, Alexander Du (Old Chemistry 101)
11:45AM
04D Zhengran (John) Ji, Paige Knudsen (LSRC A247)
1:25PM
05D Su Lee, Prince Ahmed (Gross Hall 104)
06D Zijun (Allen) Wang, Divyansh Jain (Gross Hall 105)
3:05PM
07/08D Shao-Heng Ko, Yuzhe Yuan (Biological Sciences 113)
Textbooks
The textbooks for this course are completely optional and can be found for free online, either courtesy of Duke Libraries or as a publicly available PDF.
- FDM: Tom Jenkyns and Ben Stephenson, Fundamentals of Discrete Math for Computer Science, Springer, 2013.
- MCS: Eric Lehman, F Thomson Leighton, and Albert R Meyer, Mathematics for Computer Science
There are several other books on Discrete Math, and you may benefit from reading excerpts from those. Here is a sample of what is available, in alphabetical order by first author, as compiled by Professor Tomasi. Since the following are not official textbooks, any materials used from these books must be cited if used in course work.
- K. Bogart, C. Stein, R. L. Drysdale, Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science, Key College Publishing, 2006.
- G. Chartrand and P. Zhang, Discrete Mathematics, Waveland Press, 2011.
- K. Ferland, Discrete Mathematics, Brooks/Cole, 2009.
- D. J. Hunter, Essentials of Discrete Mathematics, Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2012.
- K. H. Rosen, Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, McGraw-Hill, 2007
Additionally, in spring 2022 two new textbooks were introduced. I have a few physical copies of each which students are welcome to borrow for the semester if you want to check them out!
LaTeX
- You will probably hear this a lot: while LaTeX is not required for this course, if you are in CompSci 230 you will most likely also take CompSci 330, in which case it is much more efficient to take the time to learn LaTeX now. As long as your assignments are typed and readable by the TAs, however, it is entirely your choice.
- LaTeX installation instructions for several platforms can be found in the class notes on LaTeX, as well as in Appendix A of George Grätzer’s book More Math Into LaTeX, which is also a good text to read when you delve deeper into LaTeX.
- Movie tutorials on LaTeX can be found in this zip file.
- A quick LaTeX tutorial can be found here, and the quick start version on the same site is an even faster, one-page introduction, and is required reading.
- The LaTeX Wikibook is an authoritative online reference to LaTeX.
- Overleaf is an awesome online resource for LaTeX, and makes managing packages and organizing files easy. It also includes a series of easy tutorials, which we strongly recommend.
Programming
There will not be programming assignments during this semester. That said, Racket is a great functional programming language, and provides a good way to get a feel for these concepts from a more application based standpoint. It is included in about a third of the offerings of 230. The resources below are included for your convenience.
- The place to start for an introduction to Racket is the official Racket documentation page. This page links to tutorials (of which the Quick Intro is required reading), a programming guide, which is meant to be read, and a language reference, which is meant to be consulted for detailed form syntax.
- If you Google for programming help, anything on Scheme will be close to what is needed in Racket, since the latter language is a variant of the former.
- The online book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman, MIT Press, 1996, is by no means a programming book. However, understanding the principles in that book will help you make sense of programming constructs as well. The book has also several examples in LISP, of which Racket is a variant.
External Resources
ARC
The Academic Resource Center (ARC) offers services to support students academically during their undergraduate careers at Duke. The ARC can provide support with time management, academic skills and strategies, course-specific tutoring, ADHD/LD coaching, and more. ARC services are available free to any Duke undergraduate students, studying any discipline. Contact: (919) 684-5917 or theARC@duke.edu
Mental Health and Wellness Resources
Student mental health and wellness are of primary importance at Duke, and the university offers resources to support students in managing daily stress and self-care. Some resources are listed below:
DuWell provides Moments of Mindfulness (stress management and resilience building) and meditation programming (Koru workshop) to assist students in developing a daily emotional well-being practice. All are welcome and no experience is necessary.
If your mental health concerns and/or stressful events negatively affect your daily emotional state, academic performance, or ability to participate in your daily activities, many resources are available to help you through difficult times.
DukeReach provides comprehensive outreach services to identify and support students in managing all aspects of well-being.
Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) services include individual and group counseling services, psychiatric services, and workshops. To initiate services, walk-in/call-in 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (M/W/Th/F) and 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Tuesdays. CAPS also provides referral to off-campus resources for specialized care. Contact: (919) 660-1000
TimelyCare (formally known as Blue Devils Care) is an online platform that is convenient, confidential, and free way for Duke students to receive 24/7 mental health support through TalkNow and scheduled counseling.
Academic Accommodations
If you are a student who needs accommodations for this class, it is your responsibility to register with the Student Disability Access Office (SDAO) and provide them with documentation of your disability. SDAO will work with you to determine what accommodations are appropriate for your situation. Please note that accommodations are not retroactive and disability accommodations cannot be provided until a Faculty Accommodation Letter has been given to the instructor and teaching associate. Contact: sdao@duke.edu
