Instructor: Vidya Venkateswaran
E-mail: vidyav at math dot mit dot edu
Office Hours: Friday 2-4pm in office E17-331.
E-mail: biriarte at math dot mit dot edu
Office Hours: Monday 3-4pm in Stata Center, 32-D516.
Class lectures: Tuesday and Thursday, 1.00 - 2.30pm in room E17-122
Course description: Combinatorial problems and methods for their solutions. Prior experience with abstraction and proofs is helpful. Topics include: enumeration, generating functions, recurrence relations, construction of bijections, introduction to graph theory, network algorithms, extremal combinatorics.
Course level: undergraduate
Textbook: Miklos Bona, A Walk Through Combinatorics World Scientific, 2002 (Third Edition). See also Author's errata, errata by R. Ehrenborg, errata by R. Stanley.
Additional Reading: Enumerative Combinatorics, Vol 1 and Vol 2, by R. Stanley, Cambridge University Press, 1996 and 1999. Introductory Combinatorics, R. Brualdi, 3rd or 4th edition, Prentice Hall.
Problem sets: Homework will be due weekly (unless otherwise indicated); it should be handed in during class. The assigned problems will be posted on the course website at least a week in advance. Late problem sets will not be accepted unless arrangements have been made with the instructor in advance. A problem marked by * is a bonus problem and is optional.
Collaboration policy: Working together on problem sets is allowed, and even encouraged. However, you *must* write up your solutions in your own words to prove that you understand the ideas behind the solution. This process will also help you learn to communicate mathematical ideas clearly and effectively. Please indicate on your problem set the names of your collaborators and other sources of information. Obviously you may not consult solutions to homework problems from external sources (e.g., previous year's classes, solutions found on the internet, etc.).
Disability accommodation: If you have a disability accommodation letter from SDS, please speak with the Mathematics disabilities accommodation coordinator Galina Lastovkina in MAS (galina at math dot mit dot edu) as soon as possible to make arrangements for the semester.
Exams: There will be three in-class exams, tentatively scheduled for Tuesday Oct 1, Tuesday Nov 5, and Thursday Dec 5. Please make sure you have no time conflicts. There will be no final exam.
Grading: Your final grade will be computed as follows
Grading complaints: If you believe a problem on a homework assignment or exam has been graded incorrectly, or that your score was not correctly recorded, you may bring it to the attention of the grader or instructor during office hours within two weeks of receiving the graded assignment or exam in question.