18.204 Undergraduate Seminar in Discrete Mathematics

Spring 2019, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Class time: Tuesday, Thursday, 1pm-2:30pm, Room 2-146
Instructor: László Miklós Lovász
Email: lmlovasz AT (the university) DOT (education extension)
Communication specialist: Malcah Effron. Use https://calendly.com/meffron to schedule a meeting.
Gradebook/Stellar: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/18/sp19/18.204

Course Description

The goal of this class is to read and present papers around Discrete Mathematics, and learn how to effectively communicate mathematical ideas both in presentation and in writing. Each student will give two 35 minute chalkboard talks, write a term paper, and give a 20 minute slide presentation based on their term paper. There will be 4 workshops in total, run by communication specialist Malcah Effron.

Syllabus

Grading

20% for each chalkboard talk, 25% for term paper, 15% for the slide talk, and 20% for quizzes.

Attendance policy: If you miss your talk, or miss more than three classes, you will automatically fail the class. Exceptions will be granted for students who have a note from Student Support Services.

Reading material for first presentation workshop (available through MIT Libraries).

Slides from the paper writing workshop.

Slides on citations and fair use.

Unanimated, less optimal and animated, better slides.

Schedule

(Schedule subject to change)

Tuesday Thursday
2/5 Introduction 2/7 Presentation workshop
2/12 Yinzhan Xu
Charlotte Chen		 2/14 Maude Gull
Suchan Vivatsethachai
2/19 No class (Monday schedule) 2/21 Christopher Olson
Elizabeth Chang-Davidson
2/26 Kate Yuan
Hans Li 		2/28 Chad Qian
Rayna Gadzheva
3/5 Kushan Tyagi
Dimitrios Konstantellos 		3/7 Austin Mayweather
Joshua Xiong
3/12 Kelly Zhu
Suchan Vivatsethachai 		3/14 Quiz
Christopher Olson
3/19 Workshop on writing 3/21 Yinzhan Xu
Austin Mayweather
3/26 No class (Spring vacation) 3/28 No class (Spring vacation)
4/2 Rayna Gadzheva
Chad Qian 		4/4 Joshua Xiong
Elizabeth Chang-Davidson
4/9 Charlotte Chen
Kushan Tyagi 		4/11 Dimitrios Konstantellos
Kate Yuan
4/16 No class (Patriots’ Day) 4/18 Hans Li
Maude Gull
4/23 Quiz
Kelly Zhu 		4/25 Workshop on slide presentation
4/30 Maude Gull
Austin Mayweather
Kushan Tyagi 		5/2 Dimitrios Konstantellos
Kate Yuan
Suchan Vivatsethachai
5/7 Workshop on peer critique 5/9 Yinzhan Xu
Elizabeth Chang-Davidson
Joshua Xiong
5/14 Kelly Zhu
Rayna Gadzheva
Chad Qian 		5/16 Hans Li
Christopher Olson
Charlotte Chen