Office Hours

TA Office Hours: Sundays-Wednesdays 7-9PM
Sunday and Tuesday will be online, with the Zoom link available on Canvas. Monday and Wednesday will be in Physics 235.
For TA office hours, you are required to use the queueing system OhHai. Here is the OhHai tutorial. 

Instructor Office Hours: Fridays 1-3PM in LSRC D214 (may move to a larger room nearby if sufficient demand)

 

Course Content

We will be using Ed this term. All course communications outside of class will go through Ed or Canvas 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 Canvas announcements!

Gradescope is where you will submit your assignments.

Canvas 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 Canvas to record grades. However, some grades will appear on both Gradescope and Canvas. If those scores are updated on Gradescope, it may take some time for Canvas to be updated. At the end of the semester, the Canvas 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: Violette Walker

Graduate TAs: Ling Lei, Yanzheng (Ryan) Wu, Runxin (Zoe) Zhi, Andrew Cascio

Undergraduate TAs: Anirudh Jain, Austin Huang, Divyansh Jain, Jeff Jung, Kayla Liang, Orhan Khan, Shawn Ma, Xuerui (Sherry) He

Recitation Instructors

We have five recitation sections, each co-taught by one graduate TA and one undergraduate TA. If you need to miss your section one day, these are the people to reach out to!

10:05AM

01D/02D, in LSRC A247: Zoe and Divyansh

11:45AM

03D, in LSRC A156: Ling and Kayla

1:25PM

04D, in Biological Sciences 130: Ling and Shawn
05D, in Physics 235: Yanzheng and Sherry

3:05PM

06D, in LSRC A247: Yanzheng and Jeff

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.
• 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.

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.

The BC Fellows meet with students individually and in groups, supporting the development of healthy relationships and building meaningful community in all areas of a student’s lives. To get in touch with the BC Fellows, go to
https://students.duke.edu/wellness/duwell/sexualhealth/balthrop-cassidy-
fellowship/.

Another resource is DukeLine. Students who want to anonymously connect with a Peer Coach can text 984-230-4888 from 5-11 pm daily. DukeLine offers in-the-moment anonymous, non-emergency text support from a peer. Additional information is available at https://sites.duke.edu/dukeline.

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